The neo-conservative agenda is clearly on-line

Leon Jones

The influence of officials and advisers adhering to a broadly neo-conservative world-view on the current United States Administration has been a subject of discussion for some time. But what exactly are the components of this neo-conservative outlook?

A visit to some of the websites listed below provides an insight into the world of the ‘neo-cons’ and conveys something of the flavour of the controversy that has surrounded the neo-conservative agenda since even before the current ‘war on terror’.

Most of the controversy does not involve Indonesia in a direct way. The heart of the matter is very much the intersection of American Foreign Policy with the politics of the Middle East, West Asia generally, and Israel in particular.

However, given Indonesia’s historic and ongoing links with West Asia for many hundreds of years, through trade, religion (particularly Islam) and migration, it is no surprise that much of what concerns the ‘neo-cons’ (and their critics) has great relevance to an understanding of Indonesia and its place in the world.

One need only look at the way the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) campaign in Aceh mirrors the adventure of the US Military in Iraq, or the way the reaction to the Bali Bombing has been contextualised as part of the overall ‘war on terror’ to see the connections.

The neo-conservatives say

Perhaps the most contentious and commented upon neo-conservative website of all is that of the wonderfully named ‘Project for the New American Century’ (see box). Many of the standard bearers of the neo-conservative tendency proudly display their credentials on the pages of this site. The ‘neo-con’ agenda can easily be discerned by clicking through <www.newamericancentury.org>, and in particular at the following pages: statementofprinciples, Bushletter-040302, and iraqmiddleeast.

It is interesting that many of the signatories on the Project’s Statement of Principals (dating from 1997 — well before the election of Bush Jnr.) are now prominent members of the US Administration. These include Dick Cheney (Vice President), Don Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defence), Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defence), and Elliot Abrams (National Security Council staff).

Related sites whose leading figures are signatories, contributors, or otherwise fellow travellers of ‘The Project’ include the avowedly conservative The Weekly Standard at <www.theweeklystandard.com> Search for articles by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Also check out articles by Norman Podhoretz in Commentary Magazine at <www.commentarymagazine.com> including the following article: <www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1061/2_113/82352357/p1/article.jhtml?term=>

Commentary Magazine is a publication of The American Jewish Committee <http://www.ajc.org/>. Also prominent among ‘neo-con’ journals is The Middle East Forum <www.meforum.org> and in particular the articles by Daniel Pipes to be found on this site. Pipes and The Middle East Forum have been instrumental in setting up ‘Campus Watch’ <www.campus-watch.org>

Daniel Pipes’ recent appointment by President Bush to the board of the United States Institute of Peace has been criticised by Arab Americans and Liberal Jews at <www.motherjones.com/news/update/2003/22/we_420_01.html> and: <electronicintifada.net/v2/article714.shtml>

Other neo-conservatives in or close to the Bush Administration include Richard Perle (Chairman of the Defence Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon made up of leading figures in national security and defence). An insightful interview with him in October 2001, long before the invasion of Iraq, can be found at <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/perle.html>

Perle is a key figure with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (<www.jinsa.org>), and is also a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute <www.aei.org> ‘one of America’s largest and most respected think tanks’, as is Thomas Donnelly (also Deputy Executive Director, Project for the New American Century). Donnelly’s classic ‘neo-con’ perspective can be seen at <http://aei.org/publications/pubID.19234,filter.foreign/pub_detail.asp>

Also of interest is Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Policy at the U.S. Department of Defence, whose interesting views on the Middle East can be found at: <http://www.freeman.org/m_online/jan97/center.htm> Feith’s appointment was criticised by Arab Americans, as can be seen at: <http://middleeastinfo.org/article701.html>

Critiquing the neo-cons

The neo-conservatives influence over American Foreign Policy has been widely critiqued. Some interesting examples include: <www.merip.org/mero/mero040603>, <http://www.merip.org/mero/mero041502.html>, <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n19/print/liev01_.html>, <http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Elliot_Abrams.html> and <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/607/focus.html>

On the other side of the Atlantic, Tony Blair has apparently been greatly influenced by the ideas of Robert Cooper, who has popularised the term ‘liberal imperialism’, perhaps as a counterpart term to that of ‘compassionate imperialism’, sometimes used in the United States to describe the neo-conservative position. Cooper’s views have summarised in several articles in the guardian: <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,680095,00.html>, <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,680117,00.html>

In Australia, neo-conservative views can be found in the pages of The Institute of Public Affairs at <www.ipa.org.au)>. This site is interesting mainly for comment on Australian domestic issues, although recently prominent for their campaign on NGOs working in the international arena.

For conservative comment on international issues try ‘The Centre for Independent Studies’ at <www.cis.org.au>. In the pages of these Australian conservative sites what is most surprising, perhaps, is the lack of comment specifically on Indonesia in the Post-Suharto period. Maybe it is a case of considering additional comment unnecessary given the splendid neo-conservative derived coverage of Indonesian affairs carried in the Australian and the Herald-Sun newspapers. When you have Greg Sheriden, Paul Kelly, and Andrew Bolt working in the mainstream Murdoch press, who needs to look any further afield?

Leon Jones (leon_c_jones@yahoo.com) is a member of the IRIP Board, and is currently the In-Country Manager for Indonesia at Australian Volunteers International.