ANTI-TOTALITARIANISM
by Oliver Kamm
Social Affairs Unit £13.99 pp127

Neoconservatism is neither new, nor particularly conservative. Its intellectual roots lie firmly on the left among American liberals and radical socialists opposed to Stalinist totalitarianism. Politically, it first emerged on the centre-right of the American Democratic party, which was alienated by the counter-cultural relativism, self-hatred and defeatism of both the leadership and grass roots towards the close of the Vietnam war. The champion of this wing was senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a strong contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 and 1976. Many of his followers, including Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, eventually gave up the struggle and joined the Reagan administrations of the 1980s. Today, American neocons are an embattled group, unfairly assigned primary responsibility for the intelligence mistakes preceding the Iraq war. They are also, with more justice, portrayed as the architects of a supposedly quixotic project to democratise the Middle East.

Hitherto, neoconservatism has travelled badly; even among Conservative MPs only a handful — including two of the most intelligent, David Willetts and Michael Gove — openly accept the label. Now the Social Affairs Unit, a Conservative-leaning think-tank, has brought out two timely books exploring the case for a British neoconservatism. Douglas Murray’s Neo-conservatism: Why We Need It sees it as the only viable intellectual strategy for the Conservative party. It is a trenchant attack on “counter-cultural degradation, growing statism and relativism”. Much of the argument is familiar. In this respect, the message, delivered with panache, doesn’t differ much from Conservative platforms in the last two elections; some of it has a distinctly hard edge.

Where Murray makes a refreshing break is with regard to the removal of Saddam Hussein. He defends this not as an exercise in pre-emption, but as part of a broader enterprise to promote democracy in Iraq and the wider region. This is a risky strategy (not least because deposing Middle Eastern tyrants can also make it easier for terrorists to operate), but Murray does not flinch from seeing his argument through to its logical conclusion. He sees the replacement of Arab despotisms by participatory politics and civil society as the first step towards defeating the Islamist terror that threatens western security. This places Murray well outside traditional Conservative foreign policy, which has tended to be guided by a more narrow, pessimistic sense of the national interest.

Oliver Kamm reaches broadly similar conclusions from his strongly Labour background. In Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-Wing Case for a Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy, he embeds his argument in an account of the valiant struggle of the Labour mainstream against Soviet apologists within the party, and the threat of world communism. After the disastrous experiment with unilateral nuclear disarmament in the 1980s, this “anti-totalitarian” tradition was restored, in a post-cold-war context, by Tony Blair: his famous “Chicago Speech” of April 1999 articulated a liberal interventionist policy for Britain, with Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam the only two dictators singled out by name, long before George W Bush was anywhere near the White House. It is perhaps no accident then that Kamm, like this reviewer, is an active member of the Henry Jackson Society, a bipartisan group devoted to the pursuit of a “Democratic Geopolitics”.

At first sight, Kamm’s enterprise seems eccentric. It is true that no Labour MPs describe themselves as neocons. But there is no need: the legacy of Jackson, the Labour cold warriors and the humanitarian interventionism of Tony Blair provide an authentic lineage within the framework of progressive politics. An example might be Gordon Brown, with his interventionist instincts and (mildly) redistributive economics; last year, he even provided a little-noticed puff for a collection on neoconservatism edited by Irwin Stelzer. Other Labour MPs such as Gisela Stuart, Ben Bradshaw and Denis MacShane are now firmly in this tradition. Like Scoop, they see no contradiction between the robust export of democratic values, and support for “left-wing” policies at home. Unlike the “Jackson” Republicans, and contrary to recent press speculations, they have no plans to defect to the right. Perhaps they sense that if the battle for the soul of the Democratic party has long been lost, that for the soul of the Labour party after Iraq has yet to begin.

Available at the Books First prices of £18 and £12.59 (Kamm) on 0870 165 8585

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