America at the Crossroads

Book by Francis Fukuyama

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy is a 2006 book written by Francis Fukuyama. This book briefly discusses the history of neoconservatism, with particular focus on its major tenets and political implications. Fukuyama outlines his rationale for supporting the Bush administration, as well as where he believes it has gone wrong. Fukuyama argues that the Iraq invasion was poorly planned and orchestrated, and that the George W. Bush administration underestimated the social construction that would be necessary to create a new democracy after the war. Fukuyama highlights the controversies that surround neoconservatism, describing how it has evolved into something he can no longer support. He suggests that neoconservativism can be described as having four common principles through the end of the Cold War:

A belief that the internal character of regimes matters and that foreign policy must reflect the deepest values of liberal democratic societies. A belief that American power has been and could be used for moral purposes, and that the United States needs to remain engaged in international affairs. A distrust of ambitious social engineering projects. A skepticism about the legitimacy and effectiveness of international law and institutions to achieve either security or justice. At the conclusion of the book, Fukuyama proposes a new order in international politics, stating the world needs a change in its actual institutions, advocating what he calls multi multilateralism.

In this part, Fukuyama traces back the intellectual roots of neoconservatism and its subsequent evolution. First, Fukuyama discusses the "enormous amount of ink [that] was spilled on the subject of neoconservatives and their alleged capture of the Bush administration." The author claims all kinds of conspiracy theories were launched by many political rivals of the Iraq war, such as Elizabeth Drew. Fukuyama claims that the fact that many neoconservatives in the Bush Administration were Jewish, like Wolfowitz and Feith, made many critics believe the invasion of Iraq was in Israel's interest while others claimed that Strauss who was a major inspiration of the movement had defended the idea of "the noble lie" and that elites were thus allegedly allowed to lie in the public interest, which the neocons did, according to this reasoning, in the case of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Fukuyama says this is all wrong, and that neoconservatism was strongly rooted in several American traditions and that there was diversity of ideas within the movement itself. He names and describes the roots of the movement:

City College: a group of largely Jewish New York intellectuals of the anti Stalinist Left attended CCNY from the 1930s to the early 1940s. These include people like Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer and several others. They eventually became anticommunists as they "came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused." The revelations of Stalinist Terror and the American participation in World War II, that proved that the capitalist US could wield its power for moral purposes, pushed them further to the political right. The Public Interest: a magazine founded by Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell (soon replaced by Nathan Glazer), it attracted many contributors such as James Q. Wilson, Moynihan and Charles Murray in the 1960s when the New Left and Counterculture became popular among students radicals who protested the Vietnam War. They supported initiatives like the Great Society and were often sympathetic to communist regimes like North Vietnam and Cuba, Fukuyama claims. These contributors were critical of large scale social engineering and eventually contributed to the domestic policy and welfare reforms like the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. has written a better account of Strauss' philosophy. Fukuyama claims there is little direct influence of Bush Administration people and policy and Strauss:
text=If you were to ask Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or President Bush himself who Leo Strauss was, you would probably draw blank stares. The idea of Straussian influence gained currency only because Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, studied briefly with Strauss and with Allan Bloom, who was himself a student of Strauss. But Wolfowitz never regarded himself as a Strauss protégé, and his foreign policy views were much more heavily influenced by other teachers, in particular Albert Wohlstetter.|author=Francis Fukuyama|title=America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy|source=The Neoconservative Legacy, p. 21 Strauss didn't write about political issues, but was interested in the "theological political problem" of claims of 'the good life' and tried to respond to modern moral relativism by bringing back premodern Greek philosophy. Later generations of Strauss students did (try to) interpret his thought to prescribe policies or take positions in socio political issues. He thus provided the neoconservative movement with "a much deeper understanding of the sources of weakness of contemporary liberal democracy." But, Fukuyama claims, a profound understanding would have warned the Bush Administration of the difficulty of this democratic transition, as informal habits play a fundamental role too. He had worked at the RAND Corporation and later was a professor at the University of Chicago. He had two major concerns: (1) extended deterrence, which meant that having a minimal nuclear deterrent isn't enough so that further investment was needed to have second strike capabilities an important part of Cold War deterrence theory; (2) nuclear proliferation and a skepticism towards the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty which maintained the right to enrich uranium for civilian use while, in his view, a sharp distinction between civilian and military use was impossible to make in practice. These two concerns and his views drove him to be skeptical of MAD and he argued that, in a counterforce scenario, the Soviet Union could be willing to accept massive casualties for political ends, thus neglecting deterrence. These views were incorporated in the Reagan Doctrine of the 1980s, Fukuyama claims. Neocons generally shared an opposition to political realism such as implemented by Henry Kissinger in the 1970s who tried to have a 'détente' with the USSR, Fukuyama writes. Realists generally believe communist or nondemocratic regimes are not necessarily superior to liberal democratic regimes, because all states just desire power, Fukuyama claims. Neocons then integrated in the conservative movement, both because conservatives in general took over neoconservative opinions and because neoconservatives took over 'traditional' conservative ideas, such as support for free market economics, Fukuyama states. or "Wilsonianism minus international institutions". Fukuyama says their interpretation has come to define neoconservatism, and that "it is an uphill struggle to try to redefine neoconservative foreign policy after the fact." and endorsed by Fukuyama and that only a small number of Muslims would support jihadi terrorism and that suicide terrorism is not inherent to Islam as a religion, but because of the process of modernisation that the Greater Middle East and Muslim minorities in Europe are confronted with in which alienated Muslims struggle about their identity (as posited by Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel). Fukuyama thus advises smaller scale military activities and "a battle for hearts and minds" of Muslims instead of 'World War IV' or 'Clash of Civilizations' rhetoric. Fukuyama also states there were several alternative cases for the Iraq War (other than WMDs, an al Qaida connection or democracy promotion), such as the untenability of the sanctions regime or arguing it was a global public good to prevent the nuclear proliferation of the Middle East. These were not used, Fukuyama claims. Instead, the Bush Administration outlined a policy of 'preemption' however, Fukuyama claims the Iraq War was rather a war of prevention, where a lot of mistakes can be made (as he cites Ken Jowitt

The author focuses on the problem of "American exceptionalism" a form of US centrism which had made the Bush Administration blind to world public opinion and the structural anti Americanism in the international system, Fukuyama writes.

Fukuyama posits that two fundamental principles of neoconservatism may collide in the area of political and economic development: on the one hand, neoconservatives are concerned about the internal character of a regime, thus democracy promotion and human rights are important considerations in foreign policy (unlike for political realists); on the other hand, there is a danger in large scale social engineering which could have unintended consequences as a result. On the domestic front, neocons like James Q. Wilson had warned about extensive social programs and the Bush Administration should have put this principle into practice in foreign policy as well, Fukuyama asserts. Fukuyama cites an interview by Dick Cheney in which the Vice President said: "to suggest we need several 100.000 troops there, after the conflict ends, I don't think it's accurate I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators." President George W. Bush remarked at a speech that democratic desires are a human universal, but Fukuyama contrasts this to his own thesis of "The End of History" and caution: "One can argue that there is a universal human desire to be free of tyranny and a universalism to the appeal of life in a prosperous liberal democracy. The problem is one of time frame involved. It is one thing to say that there is a broad, centuries long trend towards the spread of liberal democracy something that I myself have strongly argued in the past and another to say that either democracy or prosperity can emerge in a given society at a given time. There are certain critical intervening variables known as institutions ( ). And if there is one thing that the study of democratic transition and political development teaches, is that institutions are very difficult to establish." Neoconservatives ignored by and large development and put too much emphasis on defense.

The author talks about the history and challenges in economic development aid, beginning with the 1940s Harrod Domar growth model through the Cold War struggle over influence and economic orthodoxy in the 1980s to 1990s and (in 2006 present day) 2000s debates on development, especially involving institutions (a subject he would tackle in his 2011 book The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman times to the French Revolution and 2014 book Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy) and institutional economics.

Debate on political development and the creation and evolution of institutions.

Here, the author discusses international institutions: their importance, complexity and diversity and the evolution towards a multi institutional world order.

Here, Fukuyama proposes a demilitarisation of US foreign policy, a counterinsurgency campaign against Global Jihadism (rather than "World War IV" or militarised rhetoric), support for good governance and suggests Otto von Bismarck is a good inspiration for the US if it wants a good balance between power projection and international legitimacy.

Yale University Press, 2006, hardcover .