The Liberal Hawks' Neoconservative Allies

Both the Clinton-Rice-Power clique and their neocon counterparts share an ideology of nationalist socialism and internationalist imperialism. The former would stress the importance of “multilateralism,” of course, but only as a propagandistic tool of providing their decisions with a veneer of quasilegality. They are not opposed in principle to a gradual transfer of sovereign prerogatives to regional groupings exemplified by the European Union. By contrast the neoconservative urge for uninhibited physical control of other lands and peoples bears resemblance to the New European Order of seven decades ago, or to the “Socialist Community” that succeeded it in Eastern Europe. The Kristols and Kagans are merely more frank on who should call the shots. Both are statists par excellence who believe that society can be and should be managed by the state, i.e. themselves. They are not “patriotic” in any conventional sense of the term and do not identify themselves with the real and historic America.

Both neolibs and neocons believe that their relentless pursuit of an American Empire overseas should not be bound by constitutional restraints. Hillary Clinton’s mentor Madeleine Albright declared, back in the ‘90s, “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” The neocon-dominated Bush administration then proclaimed, a decade ago, that such use of force is exempt from legislative control or oversight: “no statute can place any limits on the President’s determinations” because “these decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.” The same spirit was triumphantly flaunted by Hillary Clinton when she told the House of Representatives that “the White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission.”