America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy Francis Fukuyama Yale University Press New Haven, 2006, 240 Pp

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impossible to come to a national agreement, the author that soon this magnificent book will be expanded to underlines the national public interest as the cross - seek answers to the challenges of the future. cutting theme of a new national security strategy, chan - neled by social participation and the formation of a Silvia Núñez García collective consciousness, capable of taking root in CISAN Academic Secretary a new formula of community cohesion. Lastly, and considering that the author alludes to the NOTES

possibility of alternation in power that would favor 1 The author notes that in 2004, 35,000 Mexican troops were the left in the July 2006 presidential elections, we trust involved in the fight against drug trafficking, p. 124.

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy Francis Fukuyama Yale University Press New Haven, 2006, 240 pp.

The image of the United States is disqui eting. The country is divided, torn apart by petty po - lemics, corroded by doubt, undermined by sui - cidal hedonism and dazed by the shouting of the demagogues…The other road, the road of public health, pas ses through the examina - tion of the con science and self-criticism: a return to their roots, the foundations of the nation . In the case of the United States: to the vi sion of the founding fathers. Not to repea t what they said: to recommence. These beginnings sion of Iraq. So, how will history judge George W. are simultaneously purification and change. Bush’s term? Reading about the ingenuity of U.S. interventio n- OCTAVIO PAZ 1 ism and its repercussions in the international sys tem is the common task of any avid reader. Nevertheless, reading the acrimonious critic isms of a prestigious ow much has President George W. Bush’s for - neoconservative thinker like Francis Fukuyama is ver y Heign policy been influenced by U.S. ident ity and different. The author of the polemical The End of politics and how much by the specificities of the pre s- History and the Last Man , in his new book, America ident and his administration? Five years after the at the Cross roads: Democracy, Power, and the Neo con - September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. foreign policy stra - servative Legacy , traces his journey through neocon - tegy is conditioned by the failure of the armed inva - servatism and defines himself as an intellectual crit -

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ical of the administration. His new aim: to denounce threat of communism disappeared, the United State s the mili tarization of Washin g ton’s international poli - would withdraw behind its borders and depend on cy strategy. collective security mechanisms for preserving peace It is paradoxical that Fukuyama, a member of th e and stability in the world. The post-Cold War would bombastic “Project for the New American Cen tury,” is require the leadership of the United States to deal denouncing the ideology that he himself had fostered with dictatorships and hostile ideologies and pro mote since the 1990s. His main argum ent is that the Bush the principles of liberal democracy by military force Doctrine of preventive war has l imited itself to an if necessary. Thus, the 1990s was a period of great ideological effort unprecedented in the annals of U.S. political activism for the conservative nation, which history. His proposal is to reconcile in the internatio n - promoted the doctrines of security and defense rep - al system what Louis Hartz called the powerful lib - resented in a single U.S. pole in the international eral absolutism with a realist current justifying U.S. system. hegemony. In this sense, Fukuyama calls for a “real - Finally, the third stage began with 9/11. The stra - ist-Wilsonian” strategy for international policy. tegies of dissuasion and contention were insufficient Neoconservatism is an ideological and political to deal with the new threat. In this way, the neocon - mo vement that has pushed for U.S. leadership of servatives renovated the crosscutting themes of a the international system for 40 years through a for - foreign policy built on the basis of the principles of eign policy that ranges from anti-communism to a preventive war, unilateralism and hegemonism. change in regime and preventive war as articulating U.S. foreign policy has been the product of a pe ren - axes of national security. Thus, the prefix “neo” is a nial struggle between two different but com plem en - product of its assimilation as the contemporary ex - tary ideological perceptions: the tradition of liberal in - pression of U.S. conservatism. In this way, passing ternationalism and that of conservative na tio nalism. through three major stages, neoconservatism not onl y Therefore, U.S. foreign policy is subject to cyclical renovated conservatism defined as an ideology of the fluctuations of inter ven tionism and isolationism. search and institution of values of the old communi - Arthur M. Schlesinger says that the conceptions of ty, but it also aided in translating it into a permanent these fluctuations correspond to the old dispute be - element of international politics. tween perceiving the United States as an experiment The first stage began in the 1970s when a grow - or as destiny. ing polarization of U.S. society —manifested after Fukuyama’s work is interesting when he argues, the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War, the imbalances in indirectly, that the study of the international system the international economy, the political crisis caused requires not only the analysis of materialist aspects, by Watergate and followed by the resignation of but also the incorporation of new social concepts like President Richard Nixon—fostered an isolationist national identities. Then, is it possible to design and discourse in foreign policy inscribed in a theory of im plement a foreign policy that on the one hand pays historic cycles of the great powers. Then, the neoco n - obeisance to realpolitik and at the same time to a pol - servatives, with their liberal, anti-communist roots, not icy of change and alignment of external national iden - only renovated the Republican Party, but also gave tities? As a result, will states with poli tical, social and great impetus to the conservative nation (think tank s, cultural affinities grow closer toget her? Could this be foundations, associations, interest and pressure groups a reliable, successful strategy for U.S. foreign poli cy? that were all part of the conservative move ment) that President George W. Bush’s foreign policy is a revolt fin ally consolidated with the arrival of a pre si dent who understood as a return to the principles de fined as the jibed with the movement: Ronald Reagan . “American Creed,” a rebellion, seen as the sub ver sion The second stage was the direct result of the and dissidence of a traditionalist, nativist po litical implosion of the Soviet Union and the emergence of group, and a revolution, not in the sense of a transfor - new scenarios in the balance of world power among ma tion of society, but as an accelerated, radical change nations. The neoconservatives feared that once the in Washing ton’s international policy strategies.

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In short, what Fukuyama says about neoconser - its role in the international system. Therefore, the vative foreign policy doctrine is that the United State s idea list Wilsonian tradition of internationalism and must maintain and promote its status as the sole mi - the nationalist realist tradition in the foreign policy litary, economic and cultural pole; increase its na - of President George W. Bush demonstrate the radi cal tional defense budget; and promote democratic val - resurrection of U.S. national identity as a theory of ues through —in the words of Joseph S. Nye— hard international policy in the post-9/11 international power and soft power. Thus, the single-pole charac - system. ter of the international system is built based on three With things in this state, it is probable that if there elements: 1) the promotion of democracy; b) the crea - were another terrorist attack in the United States tion of a new U.S. internationalism through strength - similar to 9/11 or even deadlier, the neocons ervative ening and developing new alliances; and c) main - foreign policy doctrine would be taken out of moth - taining and expanding the pax Americana . balls and cleansed of its failures in Iraq. The res - Thus, President Bush’s neoconservative foreign ponse by future generations of U.S. political leaders policy rests on five principles: 1) the United States to any threat to security will be inexorably linked to exists in a dangerous world; 2) states are the main the reactions of their own national identity. Thus, actors in the international system; 3) military power power and ideas will be assimilated into a single body , is something that reaffirms hegemony and the sin gle- a doctrine, a perception. pole system; 4) international accords and multilater - America at the Crossroads marks a trend: conser - al bodies are neither essential nor necessary; and 5) vative intellectuals’ rejection and criticism of the Bush the United States is the world’s only super-power. administration prior to the November mid-term elec - There are three theories about the impact of neo- tions, and the loss of credibility of the U.S. political conservatism on President Bush’s foreign policy. The class. So, Fukuyama presents the reader with yet first is that the administration has been waylaid by a another critique of President Bush’s messianic inter - neoconservative group. The second states that the ventionism, at the same time that his book triggers neoconservatives foresaw the threat of terrorism and even older and at the same time modern misgivings were able to adjust their strategy. But, the third the - about the role of intellectuals in the discursive han - ory is more valid and Fuku yama seems to defend it: dling of universalist, exclusivist ideologies as the un - after 9/11, the neoconservative discourse attracted fathomable dogma of international policy. and convinced a conservative nation. Therefore, neo- As Octavio Paz wrote, Americans are a people conservative foreign policy became a conservative hurtling into the future, but for the “public health” of focus of U.S. international policy after 9/11. their own government, they examine their own self- In this way, after 9/11, President Bush pushed for criticism and moral judgment. The resurrection of the the creation of a new and powerful foreign policy elite American Creed, the product of the seventeenth- in side the establishment, so that neoconservative doc - century Anglo-Saxon Pro testant culture and its links trine currently provides one of the most plausible to so-called chauvinists and xenophobes, is the pro d - guidelines for Washington’s international policy. Thus , uct of American recovery of the other , of the quest the interventionist-unilateralist-messianic triad is part for answers for dealing with the external world and of the post-9/11 political discourse. In that sense, it its labyrinths. is undeniable that the foreign policy strategy is revo - lutionary: it abandons a perennial debate between Adrián Villanueva Delgado dissuasion and contention as instruments of interna - Research assistant at CISAN tional policy. The experience in Iraq proved to be an expensive chosen —not necessary— war. It has sparked in - NOTES

tense debate within the United States and through - 1 Octavio Paz, Tiempo nublado (Barcelona: Seix-Barral, 2003), out the rest of the world about U.S. foreign policy and pp. 55-56.

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