Rating: 
Summary: Catastrophic Victory: Foreign Policy the Neo-Con Way
Review:
In AMERICA ALONE, Halper and Clarke, senior foreign policy experts of the moderate internationalist, school, shed light on George W. Bush's catastrophic embrace the neo-con doctrine in the wake of 9/11 -- a doctrine which they describe as a radical and disastrous departure from the proven multilateralist strategy of post WWII U.S. foreign policy.
Contextualizing their criticism through examples of past U.S. successes, Clarke and Halper show neo-conservative foreign policy for what it is: a swaggering and simplistic dogma with a strong unilateralist streak, a set of idealist notions which in a few short years has destroyed U.S. prestige and moral credibility throughout the world.
Here are the authors on the means of suasion the U.S. has formerly employed: "Past administrations, many of them Republican, have successfully employed a range of diplomatic instruments to advance American values and interests, including foreign aid, trade, military agreements of various kinds, and personal relationships, not to mention the closed-door deal making so much a part of decision making within the international institutions such as NATO." The authors hold up as an example of the success of such tactics the case of terrorism in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland, "where negotiation and compromise turned terrorists in politicians, cast the challenge not in apocalyptic terms but as a "problem management" issue.
Here they are explicating the neo-con ideology, which they describe as a set of "very simple and doctrinaire notions: 1) supporting democratic allies and challenging evildoers who defy American values, 2) America's total responsibility for global order, 3) the promotion of political and economic freedom everywhere, and, (4) increased spending on defense. (pg. 101).
The authors clearly describe how the neo-cons sought to and continue to seek to "operationalize [neo-con doctrine] in a region -- the Middle East -- that has followed a different path, in the belief that without their intervention the benighted cultures of the Middle East will remain dispossessed, hostile and dysfunctional. It is an America-centric view that dismisses the institutions and social mechanisms of local cultures as reflecting in appropriate values -- and certainly not the Enlightenment values that have animated the West." pg. 309 - 10) "It represents a radical departure from the distilled, yet cooperative diplomacy that when it has been applied, has produced the greatest advances in American interests, such as the creation of the post-World War II international institutions and the handling of the Cold War endgame. The neo-conservatives have transformed exceptionalism into an aggressive, oppressive quality, which is singularly counterproductive in terms of America's interaction with the world." (page 310).
"Theirs (the neo-cons) was not the only voice in policy making after 9/11, but their ready-made plans for the Middle East were the ones adopted. We [Halper and Clarke] believe that we have shown that, had these plans not already been in existence and had the neo-conservatives not adroitly melded their agenda with other more permanent themes in U.S. national security thinking -- the belief in American Exceptionalism, a predisposition to act independently, and a commitment to progress through market democracy -- thus acquiring a broad and unassailable base within the administration, events might have taken a very different course." (page 297).
"In order to make the case for the decade-old neo-conservative objective of attacking Iraq," the authors say, "a web of deception was needed: that Saddam Hussein had, and intended to use, weapons of mass destruction; that Saddam Hussein protected and supported al-Queda, which could use them against the United States. These claims, in effect, transformed the issues at hand by turning the possible existence of these threats into "proven" facts. The process, which anthropologists call the "discursive construction of reality," uses language to create a reality different from that which existed prior to the use of the language." Halper and Clarke then give these examples: "U.N. inspectors 'believe' Iraq maintains...," "the U.S. has long 'suspected...," "'who knows' how many of these factories...," "we 'can only imagine' how many anthrax...," "'what if' Saddam provides...," "'Saddam 'could help' a terrorist...," and "'there may have been interaction' between Mr. Hussein and various terrorist networks, including that of Osama Bin Laden." (page 306-307).
These constructions are related to one of the favorite neo-con rhetorical techniques: the slippery slope. A classic example of this cause-and-effect construction is the "domino effect" which, interestingly, was used in the Vietnam War as the basis for invasion -- stopping the spread of global communism. In the case of Iraq, we are expected to believe the opposite, i.e., that the slope slips upward into victory. As the authors point out: "...the promised democratic domino effect under which the regime change in Iraq would unleash a new political culture in the Middle East that would somehow transform the dynamics of the Israel-Palestine questions shows no sign of materializing." pg. 313.
Summarizing the disastrous impact of the neo-con doctrine, Clarke and Halper at the end intone: "The neo-conservatives have had their moment. Sadly, their doctrine of unipolarity has done great damage. They leave a legacy in Middle East policy and the wider struggle against terrorism that, unchecked, could aggravate this damage many times over, not just on foreign policy but on how Americans relate one to another. Their pessimistic notion that American ideals need to be delivered on the back of a cruise missile rather than be allowed to speak for themselves as universalist aspirations has severely distorted America's relations with the rest of the world... Work will...be needed to revive America's moral authority, but it will be inspiring, worthwhile work of the sort that Americans have shown themselves capable for generations. And there will be plenty of help from American's friends, who know that the world works best when they and Americans are in partnership." (Final paragraph page 338-339).
Rating: 
Summary: Great historical accounts of the neocons but....
Review: America Alone is quite possibly one of the most important books to read if you want to understand Bush's foreign policy. The authors do a wonderful job of describing the creation and evolution of the neoconservative movement. Some of the people described in this book are the ones deciding this country's foreign policy, so it would do all of you well to read it.
As long as the authors stick to neocon history, the book is great. If this were the only thing Halper and Clarke discussed, I would give the book a five. However it is when the authors start talking about their own beliefs that things get sticky. Case in point: On page three, the authors state that "it was once a proud Washington boast that well-fashioned American policy towards Latin America had moderated that region's love affair with its generals and returned the military to its barracks." This type of statement is what gets the authors into trouble. Anyone familliar with the history of Latin America (particularly the past 50 years) that is not blinded by ideology knows that American policies were responsible for INSTALLING most of the military dictatorships in the region. Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Nicaragua all had military regimes with full American backing. I understand that this is not a pleasant reality, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
On page six the authors state that when it came to countries like East Germany, China, and Cuba, "they couldn't defend the mass murder that had taken place in defense of their ideology." This is an important point that says a lot about the authors. Yes it's true that the regimes in those countries repressed and murdered their own citizens. But Halper and Clarke leave out the fact that over a million people were killed in Latin America, mostly by the military dictatorships we propped up, in defense of OUR ideology. You either think murder in the name of ideology is right or wrong. These guys want it both ways. It's bad when the Soviets do it in Eastern Europe, but it's ok when we do it in Latin America. There's a word for that. Hypocrisy.
My advice is to pay close attention to the neocon history, but when the authors stray off that path, be wary.
Rating:
Summary: Try Reading Before Reviewing
Review: Exempting myself to deliver this message, which is not a review (I assigned the book a rating only because it is a required field):Don't review this book, or any other, unless you have READ it. A review based SOLELY on ideology or political sympathies is worse that useless. Read the book. Then say what you will.
Rating: 
Summary: America Alone
Review: For anyone confused about how our foreign policy made a decidely right-hand turn after 9/11, this book is for you.
These two academic gentleman (one is British and the other an American with a decided British accent) describe themselves as conservative Republicans concerned that the neo-con ideologically based policy adopted by the Bush administration after the New York terrorist act has dangerously isolated America, hence the title. They methodically discuss the origins of the neo-con ideology (in the '30s at City College of New York by a clutch of intellectuals), how it grew in the '60s as a reaction to excesses of the flower children, and blossomed with media, think tanks and foundation monies at the time of the 1994 congressional elections. Many of them had served in the Reagan and Bush, Sr. administrations.
When George W. Bush brought Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield into his administration, dozens of neo-cons got key policy positions particularly in the Department of Defense. They spawned the pre-emptive strike policy and the Patriot Act, focused on the democratizing the Middle East, fingered Saddem Hussein for a regime change (as early as 1992)and staunghly depended anything that Israel did to the exclusion of the Palestinians. The "go it alone" attitude is their's to the point of arrogance, "My way or the highway" as the authors state. All in all, an important and revelatory book, particularly the part that described the role that Murdoch's Fox TV and Clear Channel have played in aiding and abetting the neo-con messages.
Along with Kevin Philips', "Wealth & Democracy" and Marc Reisner's, "Cadillac Desert", I count this book the most important that I have read years.
Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: For anyone interested in either the intellectual pursuit of foreign policy or gaining a better understanding of today's political environment, this is a must read.
The authors do a remarkable job of explaining the history of the Neo Cons and the role that they play in today's US government.
Rating:
Summary: BUY this Book
Review: For anyone who is interested in foreign policy or the Iraq War, buy this book. This book offers a well written history of the Neo-Cons and how they hijacked our President and US foreign Policy. This book is not about Democrats and Republicans, its about Ideologues vs. Americans.
Rating:
Summary: Sound diagnosis of the abuse of power by special interests
Review: It is not the kind of book that you would throw away after reading it. The authors have carefully and precisely chosen concise and effective words and organized the text in attractive style. The subject is well referenced in a manner that indicates the great depth of experience of the authors with the American journey towards democracy and civil rights.
The book presents a rational analysis on the interjection of a faction of special interests after 9/11 into the top center of decision making and with ready preset plans to drag America to fight Islam and attack Iraq to protects Israel and the Saudis with total disregard to the economic cost or the loss of American moral authority. The result of that factional control on the constitutional authorities undermines the great domestic achievements of freedom and justice and puts America in a permanent state of crisis of 'all war all the times'. Thus the neo-cons have capitalized on the terror committed by few maniacal suicidal youth and transformed America into another Israel with obsession of war on terror on daily basis.
The authors argue that the collapse of Arab tyranny would have been followed without military invasion such as the case with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union without any NATO sortie, since both possessed the elements of their own demise. They also argue that the wrong use of military power has caused America to lose its moral authority and stimulated participation of radical Islamists in anti-Americanism. Thus, instead of waging war against terrorism, the government has undermined civil liberty through intrusive policing in the name of fighting terrorism and in diverting economic resources for military expenditure. The authors strongly argue that 9/11 would have been dealt with as a 'management problem' rather than total fruitless war on many fronts.
The book defines the causes of the rise of neo-cans as the uninformed citizenry, over-reaching group of people with unique skills in foreign affairs that do not attract the public scrutiny, and the unwilling of such faction to present the available alternatives to the governed masses. While the authors have cited George Washington's writings that warned against the control of power by combinations of factions of secretive intents, they also enforced the skepticism of the outside world about the American ambition in invading other states and imposing American-made governing puppets.
Rating:
Summary: Refreshing conservative perspective
Review: It's refreshing to see two conservatives take on the neo-cons. Stefan Halper is a senior fellow at The Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University and served in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations. Jonathan Clarke is a foreign-affairs scholar at the CATO Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. They carefully and compellingly illustrate how the neo-cons abandoned the successful foreign-policy model pursued under the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush administrations. Halper and Clarke's book should give any Republican pause for thought, and it seems that the Bush administration is finally starting to make a slow return to the foreign-policy model that served America so well under Reagan and Bush Sr. Highly recommended reading!
Rating:
Summary: Useful study of current US foreign policy
Review: Stefan Halper, a White House and State Department official during the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and Jonathan Clarke, a Counselor in the British Diplomatic Service, have written a scathing denunciation of current US foreign policy.
They show how Bush illegitimately extended the USA's war from counter-attacking Al Qa'ida to attacking terrorists in general, then to attacking `those who harbour them', meaning a state like Afghanistan, and then to attacking states that don't harbour them, like Iraq. The US ruling class hijacked the war on terrorism and aimed it at `universal dominion'. The authors describe this as `a highly imprudent trajectory of missionary imperialism and international confrontation'. They ask whether the US's policy "distracts the United States from the pursuit of terrorism and whether it may indeed aggravate the threat" and conclude that it does.
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News helped Bush: its watchers were three times more likely to believe the government's three big lies - that Al Qa'ida and Iraq were linked, that WMD had been found, and that the world approved of the US attack. These misperceptions `arose as the direct result of deliberate government action'; administration speeches showed `a pattern of deceit'.
Now the US government is bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq, dragging British troops down with it. It said that just 75,000 troops could occupy Iraq, and only `several thousand after a year or two'. It told Congress that Iraq's oil, not the US taxpayer, would pay for the occupation.
However, the US army is not geared to occupying a country, still less to nation-building; it is designed to carry out the old imperial practice of `Butcher and bolt'. Not too surprising then, that the USA's occupation of Iraq is failing, just like earlier British occupations in the Middle East, in Iraq, Palestine, Aden, etc.
In sum, the authors show that the costs of US foreign policy are huge, including economic damage, vast expense, reduced civil liberties and worse security. Unfortunately, they see this disastrous policy as due to the neo-conservatives' seizure of power, not as the inevitable result of capitalism's absolute decline.
Rating: 
Summary: Nonsense in Hardback
Review: The authors' first mistake is failing to realize the obvious differences between dealing with the Soviet Union --- which collapsed under its own military and ideological weight in 1990 --- and dealing with global terrorism, which doesn't even have a home economy to collapse.
The United States and its Coalition allies have effectively forced groups such as al--Qaeda to fight on their home ground and commit large amounts of resources to trying to prevent the democratization of Iraq and Afghanistan. No matter what any partisan pundit wishes to say about it, al-Qaeda's own captured records and public statements say as much. Terrorism has been forced onto the defensive at this point, and it is safest to keep it that way.
Nor has the price been high...except to those who want to pay no price at all. No nation in history has been democratized for such little blood or money.
Finally, claiming that the US is "going alone" makes no sense when you consider the fact that the current Coalition has more involved nations than did the Korean War's UN contingent. The US has also historically provided the lion's share of military force for UN actions, including 75% of the 1991 Coalition. If the current situation in Iraq is supposed to be indicative of American "isolationism", then in fact we have been "going it alone" since 1946, with only England as a regular and militarily noticeable ally.
EDIT: Regarding "neoconservatism", I happen to remember when the term first came out. It was invented by conservative hard-liners to attack conservative moderates like myself and try to whip them into line behind certain Republican policies they did not agree with. To be a "neo-con" meant being, for example, pro-gun and also pro-choice. It had nothing to do with support for or opposition to Israel.
For that matter, I find it highly insulting that there are those who believe one cannot be supportive of Israel without being a member of the "neo-con cabal". I have seen certain statements in this very review column that fall just shy of outright anti-Semitism, painting Jews in media in the exact same fashion as slapping crayon fangs and pointed ears and forked tails on photographs. Such people should be ashamed of the fact that they can obvious write coherent sentences while still wallowing in a Stone Age mindset.
Not to mention that the term "neo-con" is used as a perjorative by both Democrat and Republican partisans --- you will find it very hard to find anything about neo-cons which is actually written BY a neo-con. Although neo-conservatism was supposedly responsible for the rise of both the Reagan and Bush/Bush Jr. presidencies, the purported description and aims of neo-cons radically change from one to the other. There appears to be no solid standard by which one is in fact labeled as such.
It seems, in the form of the "neo-con", American pundits and political activists have found a new style of McCarthyism, whereby all rational debate and investigation into the issues and events of the day can be shut down with the utterance of a single buzzword.
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