The last six years have been fallow ones for the neoconservatives. From around 2005,
when Iraq began its descent into chaos, the ideology that did so much to shape US foreign policy became marginalised as, first, George W Bush turned increasingly realist and, then, Barack Obama
continued where his predecessor left off.
While ideas are not responsible for the people who hold them, it did not help that, after President Bush left office, those who espoused a neoconservative outlook included the likes of Sarah Palin.
Funding for democracy-promotion was slashed, and the focus for aid programmes became “accountability” – with the word “democracy” banished from sight.
To declare oneself a neoconservative – or even to believe that democracy might be possible or even desired in the Middle East – became akin to admitting some sort of punishable deviancy. As a leading British neoconservative told me: “I don’t really tell people I’m neoconservative anymore”.
So emasculated was the neoconservative movement that even the Weekly Standard, its one-time stand-bearer, was initially dumbstruck by the events in the Middle East with one writer arguing:
The tone the entire article is not dissimilar to the almost Tsarist statement issued by Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt. “The most important thing for us is the return of stability,” declared the Bedfordshire MP.“It is not always a good thing when people go to the streets; indeed the history of revolutionary action shows that people go to the streets to shed blood more often than they do to demand democratic reforms.”
But though the neoconservatives have been down, they are not out. For with popular unrest sweeping the Middle East, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt, the neoconservative ideal – that the West must stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity; that is, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance – looks more attractive than it has done for years.
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