What Is a Neocon? Neoconservatism Explained

What a neocon is

A neocon, or neoconservative, is someone associated with a particular strand of American conservatism. The word has two layers of meaning.

• The original meaning refers to a group of writers and scholars who began as liberals, and in some cases as socialists, and moved right in response to the turmoil of the 1960s.
• The common meaning today refers to people who favor a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy aimed at maintaining American power and spreading democracy.

Britannica describes neoconservatism as a movement that combined support for free markets and a strong military with respect for traditional institutions such as religion and the family, and that, unlike earlier conservatives, favored an active American role in the world while distrusting international bodies like the United Nations.

The neoconservatism ideology page summarizes its positions, and conservatism vs neoconservatism compares it with the broader tradition.

Where neoconservatism came from

Liberals mugged by reality

Many early neoconservatives were children of immigrants who came of age in New York in the 1930s and 1940s. Some, like Irving Kristol, had been involved in anti-Stalinist left politics as students. By the 1950s they were Cold War liberals: anti-communist, pro-New Deal and pro-civil rights.

In the 1960s, they grew critical of parts of the liberal agenda. In magazines such as The Public Interest, founded by Kristol and Daniel Bell in 1965, and Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz, they argued that many Great Society programs had unintended consequences. They also opposed the New Left, the counterculture and what they saw as a weakening of American resolve against the Soviet Union.

Kristol is often credited with the quip that a neoconservative is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality."

The name

The socialist writer Michael Harrington popularized the term "neoconservative" in the early 1970s as a criticism of his former allies. Kristol eventually embraced it. NPR, in its 2009 obituary of Kristol, noted that he had described neoconservatism as "hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic," and that he named Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as its twentieth-century heroes.

Into the Republican Party

Many neoconservatives broke with the Democratic Party after its 1972 nomination of George McGovern, whom they saw as too dovish. Some, like Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, stayed Democrats. Many others joined the coalition around Ronald Reagan. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Democrat whose 1979 Commentary essay "Dictatorships and Double Standards" drew Reagan's attention, became his ambassador to the United Nations.

What neoconservatives believe

Domestic policy

First-generation neoconservatives did not want to abolish the welfare state. They accepted a basic safety net, which set them apart from libertarians and some traditional conservatives. Their focus was on:

• Skepticism of large-scale social engineering and the idea that government programs can easily remake society
• Support for economic growth and lower taxes, including support for supply-side economics in the late 1970s
• Concern about crime, family breakdown and the decline of civic virtue
• Defense of traditional institutions and bourgeois values against the counterculture

Foreign policy

The second generation, prominent from the 1990s, made foreign policy the core of the label. Common positions include:

• American primacy. The United States should remain the world's leading power and prevent rivals from dominating key regions.
• Military strength. A large defense budget and willingness to use force.
• Democracy promotion. Spreading democracy and human rights serves both American ideals and American security.
• Moral clarity. Foreign policy should distinguish clearly between friendly and hostile regimes, and should not rely on balancing alone.
• Skepticism of international institutions when they constrain American action.
• Strong support for allies, including Israel.

The Bush Doctrine and Iraq

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, these ideas shaped the George W. Bush administration. The 2002 National Security Strategy stated that the United States would, if necessary, act preemptively against emerging threats, and it set out the goal of extending freedom and democracy. Several officials and outside advisers associated with neoconservatism were prominent supporters of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The war's costs, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and the long insurgency that followed made the term far more controversial.

Key neoconservative figures

The label covers a loose network of writers, scholars and officials rather than a formal movement. People commonly associated with it include:

• Irving Kristol, editor and essayist, co-founder of The Public Interest, often called the godfather of neoconservatism.
• Norman Podhoretz, longtime editor of Commentary, who moved the magazine from the left to the right.
• Daniel Bell and Nathan Glazer, sociologists who shared the early critique of social programs, though Bell called himself a socialist in economics and a liberal in politics.
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic senator and former Nixon adviser whose writing on poverty and family policy drew both praise and fierce criticism.
• Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and Reagan's UN ambassador.
• William Kristol and Robert Kagan, who in the 1990s argued for an assertive American foreign policy and helped found the Project for the New American Century in 1997.

Several of these figures later rejected the label or disagreed sharply with each other, especially over Iraq. Some prominent supporters of the war, such as the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, later broke publicly with neoconservatism.

Neocons vs other conservatives

The sharpest conflict on the right has been between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, who accused them of drawing the United States into unnecessary wars. See neoconservatism vs paleoconservatism. Since 2016, the rise of national conservatism and the America First movement has pushed many neoconservatives to the margins of the Republican Party, and some have moved toward the Democrats.

The debate

The case for

Supporters argue that American leadership underpins a relatively peaceful and prosperous world order, and that retreat invites aggression by authoritarian rivals. They argue that democracies rarely go to war with each other, so supporting democracy abroad is both moral and practical. They credit Reagan-era firmness with helping to end the Cold War, and argue that their domestic critique of over-ambitious social programs was largely borne out.

Criticism from the left

Critics on the left argue that neoconservative policy led to the Iraq War, large civilian casualties, abuses such as torture, and a huge cost in lives and money. They argue that democracy cannot be imposed by force and that military interventions often create instability.

Criticism from realists

Foreign policy realists argue that states should focus on concrete national interests and the balance of power, not ideology. They contend that neoconservative idealism overestimated what American power could achieve.

Criticism from the right

Paleoconservatives, national conservatives and libertarians argue that neoconservatives were never true conservatives, that they accepted big government at home and that foreign wars drained resources and liberty. Some describe neoconservatism as a form of liberal internationalism under a conservative label.

Find where you fit

You may lean neoconservative if you believe the United States should use its power, including military power, to defend allies and promote democracy. You may lean paleoconservative or libertarian if you favor restraint, or progressive or realist if you favor diplomacy and multilateral institutions.

The Political Values Test measures your foreign policy views on a separate axis, and the 12 Axes Political Test matches you with ideologies including neoconservatism and paleoconservatism. For background, read what is a conservative and liberal vs conservative.