In a recent Atlantic article, Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan declares that the United States has already lost its war against Iran.
“It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored,” writes Kagan.
“Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored,” he continued. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done.”
Kagan began his career as a foreign policy advisor for Jack Kemp, then spent the 90s pushing for multiple U.S. wars in the Middle East, consistently claiming that Iraq posed a military threat to the United States.
In another recent piece, Kagan gets strikingly close to introspection, writing that “Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking” the United States if it didn’t have a military presence in the region. “Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of ‘who we are’ but because of where we are,” he writes.
Kagan is not the only prominent neoconservative to criticize the Iran War. Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol, a longtime critic of Trump, says the United States has been “humiliated” in the Middle East.
“It’s important to hold Trump accountable for his reckless and incompetent war and emphasize its costs,” declared Kristol.
In 1996, Kagan and Kristol co-authored a seminal Foreign Affairs essay titled “Toward A Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” which condemned the Clinton administration’s skepticism of regime change wars and called for the U.S. military budget to be doubled. Less than a decade later, many of their dreams were realized thanks to George W. Bush. A year later, they founded Project for the New American Century, a think tank advocating war in Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.
So, what does it say that they’re criticizing the current attacks on Iran? Is there really, in the words of a recent Spectator headline, a “battle for the neoconservative soul”?
Andrew Day, senior editor at American Conservative, says that most neocons have never been fans of Trump and are happy to throw him under the bus amid an unpopular war.
“The Never Trump neoconservatives, like Kristol and [Bush speechwriter and conservative pundit David] Frum, have always objected to Trump’s characterological problems and potential corruption and worried that he stoked far-right nationalism and white identitarianism, so they’re already inclined to be critical of his actions,” Day told Mondoweiss. “Other neoconservatives made their peace with Trump once it became clear that he was reliably pro-Israel, but even they don’t prefer him to traditional Republicans or hawkish Democrats. Neither of these groups will support Trump at the expense of their own ideological project suffering–again–from the association with an unpopular president.”
“Robert Kagan is probably the smartest of the bunch and, being a sharp analyst of foreign affairs, can see what a disaster the war has been for global stability and America’s geopolitical positioning,” he added. “Just because neocons have supported foreign policy calamities in the past doesn’t mean they’re dumb. And you’d have to be dumb to not recognize how poorly the Iran war is going. Certainly, Trump, Rubio, and Vance seem to know it’s going poorly.”
David Klion, a journalist and Jewish Currents contributing editor currently working on a history of the neoconservatives, says that the group is effectively split between those categorically opposed to MAGA and those who believe it’s worth aligning with Trump to take down the left.
“On foreign policy specifically, the NeverTrumpers are more committed to the priorities of the Cold War liberal establishment, like maintaining traditional alliances and checking Russia in Ukraine, while the MAGA-friendly neocons align closely with the Israeli right and support Trump’s aggression against Iran,” he recently told The Spectator.
The MAGA-friendly neocons that Klion references remain entrenched in the Trump administration’s policy designs. For instance, infamous war criminal Elliott Abrams currently heads the Vandenberg Coalition, a neoconservative think tank with direct connections to the White House. Additionally, neocon pundits like Bret Stephens continue to advocate for the war despite everything.
As professor and writer Abdaljawad Omar observed at Mondoweiss last month, neoconservative influence on U.S. foreign policy helped pave the way for the current campaign.
Quincy Institute advisor and Responsible Statecraft editorial director Kelley Vlahos points out that, amid Trump’s empty campaign promises about ending international conflicts, some proponents of intervention briefly changed their tune.
“Cold War warriors and even old neoconservative types like Tom Cotton started talking more about how the ‘Jacksonian’ foreign policy approach was the way to go: Build up a powerful national defense and don’t use it until you are provoked. Long, regime change wars were out — short, sharp, punch them in the nose and tell them who’s boss, was in,” she told Mondoweiss.
Vlahos says it, obviously, didn’t work out that way, as many of these same individuals dutifully backed the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.
“It turned out a lot of those folks talking about Jacksonian ‘America First’ were were really the old regime changers in a convenient ‘peace through strength’ disguise and when it came to Iran, there was no question that we were going back to the future,” added Vlahos. “Locking arms with Israel, they went right for decapitating the regime and are now ripe for a long war.”
Day says that, in the end, Trump supporters and many of his neoconservative critics embrace the same foreign policy goals, and simply disagree on tactics.
“So-called MAGA foreign policy and neoconservative foreign policy share this in common: They serve the interests of foreign nations, most prominently Israel, rather than the interests of the American people,” he told Mondoweiss.
