Back in the Game

(Photo courtesy The New York Times)

If you had attended the Foreign Policy Initiative’s (FPI) inaugural event yesterday, you would have walked down the long, ornately decorated first-floor hallway of the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. on your way to the Chinese Room, where the half-day conference, entitled “Afghanistan: Planning for Success," was being held. Along the way, you would have first passed by the National Funeral Directors Association’s Advocacy Summit.

No one would have blamed you for chuckling.

Given the FPI’s standing as a government-in-exile of sorts for neoconservative thinkers, the joke almost writes itself: At one end of the hall, you had an organization that plies in a trade that benefits from terrorist attacks and other catastrophes; at the other, you had a gathering of funeral directors.

There was nothing funereal about the FPI’s event, however. Washington’s neoconservatives don’t plan on going anywhere during the age of President Obama, and the FPI is their way of regrouping and reasserting neoconservatism’s role in helping to shape America’s foreign policy. Recently started by a trio of the nation’s most visible neoconservatives—Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, historian Robert Kagan, and former Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq Dan Senor—the group is tasked with rehabilitating the movement’s image, which took a beating for its leading role in advocating for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And if today’s event was any indication, they think their most prudent first step is to stand directly behind Obama.

And stand behind Obama is what they did during the four panel sessions, which culminated in a lunchtime discussion between Robert Kagan and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). Kagan described Obama’s recently announced Afghanistan policy as “a gutsy and correct decision.” His younger brother, Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, started his remarks by saying that he “fully support[s] the president’s stated policy,” and that he planned to “work as hard to help the president as I worked to help the previous president succeed.” Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) thanked Obama for taking a “whole-theater approach” to the problem of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and for recognizing that we have to build our military and economic engagement in both countries. For his part, a tired-sounding McCain asserted, “I support the plan.”

All of them admitted to having quibbles with Obama’s strategy, of course, but the overall agreeableness which permeated their comments stood in stark contrast to the campaign-season climate from which we so recently emerged, in which neoconservatives regularly bashed Obama’s foreign policy beliefs as childish and naive, particularly on Iraq. At the time, Robert Kagan, who was an informal advisor to McCain during the campaign, said of Obama’s foreign-policy view: “It does fit into a certain way of looking at the world that takes the view that all you ever need to do is get everyone in the same room and have a nice, pleasant chat and work everything out.” Fred, for his part, accused Obama of pushing for politically expedient, irresponsible Iraq policies. McHugh derided Obama’s Iraq strategy, saying, “Vision is wonderful. Change is terrific. But you know what, being right has to count for something as well.” And McCain predictably bashed Obama’s foreign policy credentials at every turn.

It was odd at first to hear some of the folks who spewed apocalyptic warnings about the prospect of an Obama presidency agree with and pledge support for the president’s Afghanistan strategy. But in a way, it makes perfect sense. Standing behind Obama allows neoconservatives to maintain relevance at a time when they would otherwise be shut out of policy debates, and it lets them focus on Afghanistan, a vital second chance for their tarnished ideology.

For the Kagans of the world, Afghanistan is an opportunity to re-assert neoconservatism’s salience. The mission in Afghanistan, after all, is largely predicated on the notion that if a U.S. presence is able to build up the country’s stability and democratic infrastructure, peace will follow and the country’s extremists will fold, all of which will benefit the United States. This is as close to a paradigm of a neoconservative best-case scenario as you can get, and members of the FPI needn’t pursue it alone. Benefiting their efforts is an extremely popular, newly elected president who happens to agree with large swathes of what they’re saying. Both Obama and the neoconservatives represented in the FPI believe that our mission in Afghanistan entails a large-scale commitment, that more troops are needed there, and that our role will entail American involvement at various military, economic, and political levels.

The FPI panelists who spoke yesterday framed their qualms with Obama’s strategy in mostly quantitative, not qualitative, terms. Some of the panelists expressed concern that Obama had not called for larger up-front troop commitments to the nation, and for training larger numbers of Afghan security forces. There was also some talk about whether our role in Afghanistan is being labeled correctly; the general consensus seemed to be that we are indeed “nation-building” there, but that Obama might have to be dishonest about this fact to maintain political support at home. Nowhere, however, was anything approaching a full-throated critique of Obama’s world-view vis-à-vis Afghanistan—this despite the fact that certain tenets of Obama’s strategy, such as his focus on international cooperation and his acknowledgement that more troops may not always be the answer (a view echoed as recently as this Sunday on “Face the Nation”) fly in the face of the neoconservative vision of a muscular, unilateral America having its way with the world.

Politically, lining up to express support for Obama’s Afghanistan plan will keep the neoconservatives in the game for a long time. Following any success Obama has, they can (accurately) claim they supported him and the mission all along. Following any failures, they can, depending on how Obama responds, accuse him of not marshaling sufficient resources, or of lacking the will (a favorite concept in recent conservative foreign-policy rhetoric) to succeed there. Either way, the combination of the surge in Iraq—which many neoconservatives see as proof-positive that the situation there can be eventually “fixed” and that they were right all along—and the next five, ten, or 50 years in Afghanistan will enable outfits like the FPI to continue trumpeting the importance of the neoconservative vision.

The most telling moment yesterday may have come when Kristol, introducing a panel he was moderating featuring McHugh and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), joked, “I’m sure we’ll hear some fierce partisan sparring here.” Everyone in the audience laughed, and why not? This was not a day for disagreement.

Jesse Singal is an associate editor at Campus Progress. Sarah Karlin, an editorial intern at Campus Progress, contributed research to this story.

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