The Swan Song of the Neocon

A diplomatic deal with any terms of any importance anywhere in the world has been made, and so the neoconservatives are in full force to cry “Munich.” Good for them. If that’s what they enjoy, let them enjoy themselves. Because they matter not in the slightest anymore.

Last night, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes had the pleasure of interviewing former deputy secretary of defense and textbook neocon Paul Wolfowitz about the Iran “first step” deal, which, believe it or not, Wolfowitz simply does not care for. It was a tense exchange:

Near the end, Hayes lures Wolfowitz into the classic argument for which hot-blooded hawks have yet to discover an answer: if the goal is to avoid war, then what other answer is there besides negotiations? Wolfowitz, pressed with this multiple times, just trots out the same line about keeping the pressure on Iran through sanctions. But then what is the alternative with a group that you think is constitutionally incapable of ever negotiating in good faith? Keep up the pressure. But then what? Keep up the pressure. Et cetera, et cetera.

It plays out almost exactly like a passage from Peter Baker’s new book Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, the most thorough play-by-play of the Bush administration that I’ve read. Following the trigger-happy military disasters of the first Bush term, some who had swilled the neocon Kool-Aid then, like Condoleezza Rice and, to a certain extent, George W. Bush himself, were over it by the second term and recommitted to diplomatic negotiations. (At the very least because use of the overstretched military was no longer a viable option.) Others, like Dick Cheney — the rare political figure whose caricature seems to grow the closer you inspect — remained the same as ever. Leading to situations like so:

Rice regularly responded to Cheney’s skepticism by asking what his plan was. It was true that the North Koreans had proved to be unreliable and manipulative, but what was the alternative to negotiations? “They never had an answer for that,” [diplomat Christopher] Hill said. “It was sort of, we don’t want you to negotiate with them, but, no, we don’t have any better idea.” While Cheney wanted them to stick to a hard line, Hill said, Bush wanted to move beyond his first term. Bush “did not consider himself a warmonger, did not consider it fair that he be regarded in history as someone who always would reach for the gun,” Hill said. “He was persuaded by Condi and other people that we should give diplomacy a chance.” After all, Rice said, “Even before they exploded a nuclear device, we didn’t have a military option.” Bush framed it the same way. “I am not going to go to war with North Korea,” he told aides. “So what is the alternative?”

We sometimes overestimate the role that hawks like Cheney or Wolfowitz have in contemporary foreign policy. Because their window in history was brief, they were proven to be failures, and it’s been shut ever since. September 11, 2001 through 2003-2004, and then it was over. By 2005 Bush began to park long-simmering disputes with North Korea and various non-Iraq actors in the Middle East into the State Department’s hands and Obama has more or less done the same. There is no appetite in the United States for new overseas military action. So let the boys who had their chance howl “Munich!” at the moon as much as they want, and leave them be.