The making of the ‘long war’: neo-conservative networks

and continuity and change in US ‘grand strategy’

Naná de Graaff and Bastiaan van Apeldoorn
VU University Amsterdam
Department of Political Science
De Boelelaan 1081
1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
na.de.graaff@fsw.vu.nl ; eb.van.apeldoorn@fsw.vu.nl

Work in progress: first, very preliminary draft, please do not cite or circulate without permission

PAPER PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION, 24 -29 MARCH 2008, SAN
FRANCISCO

PANEL: Transnational Class Formation after the Imperial Turn 1:

Transatlantic Relations
 I am running for president of the United States of America because I believe the transcendent
challenge of the 21st century is the struggle against radical Islamic extremism, which takes
many forms, is the greatest force of evil we’ve ever faced, and is bent on our destruction and
our extinction. And my friends, we will never surrender, they will.
Senator John McCain, Republican Presidential Candidate1

I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that
this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we
lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. I still believe that
America is the last, best hope of Earth (…) we must lead the world, by deed and example (…)
We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world in order to defeat and
deter conventional threats. But while sustaining our technological edge will always be central
to our national security, the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating
the shadowy terrorist networks we now face. (….) That’s why I strongly support the
expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.
(….) These are the ways we will answer the challenge that arrived on our shores that
September morning more than five years ago. A 21st century military to stay on the offense,
from Djibouti to Kandahar.
Senator Barack Obama, Democratic Presidential Candidate2

INTRODUCTION

On the eve of the US Presidential elections, and with the occupation of Iraq in its sixth year and the
US-led counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan almost in its eighth year, it seems appropriate to look
back at the now soon ending reign of the Bush II administration and its foreign policy strategy, not so
much to evaluate its record but to engage the politically relevant question what will remain of this
strategy under the next president, Democrat or Republican (male or female, black or white). Is the
‘long war’, as then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and others called it, initiated under Bush jr. here to
stay or will it turn out to be a much shorter war once the current so-called neocons have left office?
Although the answer to such questions has to remain speculative we argue that signs are that what can
be called the neoconservative turn is far from going to be undone by the next president, whomever of
the three leading candidates still in the race at the time of writing it is going to be. Although there will
be changes of style (and different changes depending on who wins) and in some limited respects also
with regard to substance, the ‘grand strategy’ of the US is not likely to revert to either the (neo)liberal

1
As quoted in the New York Times, January 19, 2008.
2
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 23, 2007,
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13172 (accessed 15 February, 2008).

1
internationalism of the 1990s or, even less, so, to a so-called more ‘realist’ foreign policy advocated
by some (‘non-neo’) conservative critics of the Bush administration. We argue that to understand why
this is so, it is necessary to come to a deeper understanding of the forces – referring to both structure
and agency – that have made for the imperial turn in US foreign policy.
Although tons of literature by now have been produced on what we denote as the
neoconservative project and the US’s ‘new imperialism’, so far surprisingly little has been produced in
the way of a theoretically consistent and empirically substantiated explanation of to what extent, how
and above all, why this shift in US foreign policy took place. The bulk of the literature is above all
heavy on polemics and relatively light with regard to scholarly (empirical) substance. In terms of
explanations, conventional International Relations (IR) theories tend to either take it as an aberration
that cannot be explained by ‘our’ regular theories, but which (therefore) the course of history is also
likely to correct again (neo-liberalism and neo-realism), or fall into the trap of a naïve idealism
(‘constructivism’).
In seeking to advance a more comprehensive explanation – combining structure with agency –
this paper draws upon a historical materialist understanding of geopolitics, i.e., one which sees
interstate relations (and rivalry) as internally related to capitalist social relations, but adds a neo-
Gramscian dimension to this by focusing on the critical role of agency in effectuating shifts in
geopolitical strategy. In particular, following this framework, we will interpret and analyse what we
see as the neoconservative shift in US geopolitical strategy in terms of a hegemonic project. The term
hegemonic project here is to denote the agential moment of structural change, in which agency
transforms pre-existing structures while at the same time being enabled and constrained by those same
structures (which are again the result of past strategies).3 From this perspective we interpret
neoconservatism as an ideologically driven project but not as an irrational or arbitrary strategy, but
rather as conditioned by deep structural shifts within the global political economy, shifts related to the
dynamics and contradictions of neoliberal globalization. Hence, why this particular ideology has
become hegemonic has to be explained with reference to structural conditions that are still in place. At
the same time, and crucially, these structural conditions themselves do not determine the strategy
pursued. It is thus that we here have to examine the role of agency and how what we identify as the
neoconservative network has succeeded in securing the hegemony of its foreign policy ideas as the
answer to what we view as the contradictions of neoliberal globalization.
This paper is structured as follows. The first section below starts with a brief review of the
various recent neo-Marxist attempts to theorize the ‘new imperialism’ (in this paper we do not give an
account of the mainstream, as it clearly fails to explain the neoconservative shift, which it deems to be
'
irrational, (see e.g. Ikenberry 2004 a/b; Mearsheimer and Walt 2003; 2006). We will conclude that

3
Our view of the relationship between structure and agency is informed by a Critical Realist
understanding of the dialectical interplay of structure and agency over time (in particular Bhaskar 1979). The
agency of the present is shaped by structures that are the outcome of past agency, yet the agency of the present,
transforming or reproducing structures transmitted from the past, also instantiates those structures in the present.

2
although enlightening, these explanations are incomplete and above all ignore the role of agency. It is
thus that we turn our attention to the neo-Gramscian concept of hegemonic project and argue how this
can help us to make sense of both the agency and the structural forces involved in the making of the
‘long war’. The second section outlines some of those structural forces by examining first how after
the successful destruction of the Soviet Union, US foreign policy under Clinton came to promote
neoliberalism as a global project. This project of neoliberal globalization has however in the post-Cold
War context run into some inherent limits related to its own contradictions. Far from determining the
outcome though the (geo-)political and (geo-)economic changes that we identify have only made the
neoconservative turn possible. How it in fact emerged as a hegemonic concept for the geopolitical
strategy of the US is what can only be analysed with reference to the agency of social and political
forces as they have operated through what will identify as networks of neoconservative intellectuals
and policy-advisers. Employing the methodology of Social Network Analysis, the mapping of this
network and the analysis of the strategies pursued will be the focus of the third section. In this section
we will also see that the neocons are no free-floating intellectuals but actually closely linked to
corporate interests, and in particular to US global financial capital. The evidence will show that
although representing a transformation of the neoliberal hegemonic project, the neoconservative
project as yet appears not to represent a fundamental shift in the underlying (neoliberal) accumulation
strategy. We will conclude this paper by returning to the issue of the durability of the neoconservative
project.

THEORIZING THE NEW IMPERIALISM

US post-9/11 foreign policy, and in particular its war in Iraq, naturally has also inspired many (neo-)
Marxist writers to revive the somewhat dormant Marxist tradition of theorizing (capitalist) imperialism
in order to make sense of the bellicose interventionism of the world’s leading capitalist power.4 Given
the long-standing concern of historical materialism with imperialism as an inherent feature of global
capitalism, the question of course arises to what extent there is actually anything new about current US
policies: is it not the same US imperialism that we have seen since at least 1945, maybe only with a
slight change of emphasis here and there? This then brings us to the question of continuity versus
change, which is one of the dividing lines within the Marxist debate. Representing a sophisticated
version of the continuity thesis Ellen Wood for instance has argued that the Bush doctrine maybe
madness but that it is a ‘madness firmly rooted not only in the past half-century of US history but in
the systemic logic of capitalism’ (Wood 2003: XVI; for similar views see Kiely 2005). It is an
extension of a logic of capitalist imperialism – the US empire being the first truly capitalist empire –
that is premised on the separation of the economic from the political but in which nevertheless or in

4
In the 1980s and 1990s also neo-Marxist writers in IR preferred to use the term hegemony rather than
empire in reference to the US (as noted by Arrighi 2005a).

3
fact precisely because of it ‘[c]apitalist appropriation still requires the support of extra-economic
appropriation’ (ibid.: 24). In a similar vein Panitch and Gindin (2005) stress the continuity of US
imperialism and argue that its historical uniqueness resides in having (re)created the current world
political economy after its own image. Thus, the American empire is as yet here to stay. Although that
might be true, the problem of these accounts is that they cannot explain the recent strategy changes
that they do see as having taken place, even if within the same overarching capitalist imperialist
framework (Panitch & Gindin 2005). As Wood (2003: 162) herself writes ‘[t]oday’s Bush Doctrine is,
to be sure, a distinctively extreme manifestation of the old strategic vision’. Even if we accept that the
strategic vision itself has not changed, it is still pertinent to ask a) what exactly makes this new
manifestation so ‘distinctively extreme’, and b) what accounts for this distinct extremeness?
Arguably the most innovative and influential Marxist account of the US’s current geopolitical
strategy has been David Harvey’s The New Imperialism (2003). The title here is somewhat ambiguous
in the sense that it appears to refer both to a capitalist imperialism in general (which, as Wood also
argues, is new with respect to that of previous empires) and which therefore has been characteristic of
the Pax Americana since the Second World War, as well as to the grand strategy of the Bush
administration, representing a significant break with the postwar era in at least some respects. Harvey
here thus suggests both continuity and change. The theoretical crux of Harvey’s argument is his
distinction - adapted from Arrighi 1994: 33-4 (see also Arrighi 2005a) between a ‘capitalist logic’ and
a ‘territorial logic’ of power, where capitalist imperialism represents a ‘contradictory’ fusion between
the two, or between ‘“the politics of state and empire” and ‘“the molecular process of capital
accumulation in space and time”’ (Harvey 2003: 27-7). Harvey insists that these logics should be seen
as ‘distinct from each other’, frequently clashing yet also intertwined in contradictory ways, that is,
dialectically (ibid: 29-30). Harvey suggests that as neoliberal imperialism ‘was weakening on the
inside’ (Harvey 2003: 190), the relationship between the capitalist logic and the territorial logic has
shifted such that we have witnessed a shift from ‘consent to coercion’ with the rise of neoconservative
imperialism. Whereas the former pursued what Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’ through
the privatization and structural adjustment programmes of the ‘Wall Street-Treasury-IMF complex’
(ibid.: 185), in the latter the weight shifts to coercive, indeed, military means. Although there is much
in this analysis that we find very compelling (and we shall return to part of Harvey’s explanation
below), the precise process through which this shift from one form of imperialism to another took
place is neither analysed empirically nor accounted for in theoretical terms.
Arrighi’s analysis of the unravelling of US hegemony (Arrighi 2005a/b), which builds upon
yet also seeks to go beyond Harvey, finally represents the clearest example of the ‘change thesis’, a
change from the (neo)liberal internationalism of the Clinton years, and more generally a break with the
whole tradition of US hegemony in the postwar era, a break that, however, according to Arrighi will
only accelerate the latter’s downfall. Where Vietnam was the ‘signal crisis’ of the decline of US
hegemony, Iraq is likely to turn out to be its ‘terminal crisis’ (Arrighi 2005a: 57). The relevant

4
question for us is how Arrighi characterises the nature of the change that he identifies and above all
how he seeks to explain it. Here, in line with his earlier work on the rise and fall of capitalist
hegemonies (Arrighi 1994), he emphasises above all what he sees as the origins of neoconservatism in
the structural changes in the global political economy and the US’s position within it. Arrighi here
draws upon Harvey but also goes beyond it, in particular stressing the rapidly deteriorating financial
power position of the (former) hegemon. Here the neoconservative project becomes a response to the
structural and inevitable decline of US hegemony, indeed a desperate attempt to cling on to it by
playing the trump card of US military superiority, an attempt that is, however, doomed to fail (see also
Wallerstein 2002; for a more heterodox variant of the same idea, see Mann 2003). As with Harvey, we
find that much in Arrighi’s analysis is very plausible and indeed we will draw upon some of his ideas
below. We also see the neoconservative shift as a response to structural changes within the global
political economy, although we would more emphasise what we see as the (geo-)political
contradictions of neoliberal globalization. More fundamentally though, what we see as missing in
Arrighi’s account (which in any case more focuses on the consequences of the neoconservative project
in precipitating America’s downfall rather than in offering a systematic explanation of its origins) is
attention to the role of agency and to the battle of ideas within US foreign policy making, and how the
interplay of these with the structural changes that Arrighi identifies has produced the particular
outcome of a neoconservative hegemonic project.
Agency matters because there were, given the changing structural context, several options for
US foreign policy after the turn of the millennium. The course that was chosen after 9/11 was far from
a pre-determined one and was certainly not the only realistic response to the terrorist attacks
themselves (Dueck 2004 also makes this argument). It is thus that structuralist explanations, whether
realist or Marxist, cannot give a complete account. They cannot fully explain how and why one
particular option was chosen over another. Our conclusion is thus that although generating important
theoretical insights into the nature of capitalist imperialism, insights upon which we will further build
below, current historical materialist scholarship on the neoconservative shift in US foreign policy
either tends to deny that such a shift has taken place or to the extent that it does fails to go beyond a
rather structuralist, and empirically unsubstantiated account.

The neo-Gramscian dimension: hegemonic projects and the integration structure and agency

To express the importance of agency and of the role of ideas in constructing ´grand strategies’, whilst
at the same time keeping a close focus on how agency interacts with structure, and how ideas are
linked to material conditions (as they are tied to the strategies of materially situated agents), we will
use the Gramscian term ‘hegemonic project’ as defined by Bob Jessop (1990). Following Gramsci,
Jessop (1990: 208) refers to a successful hegemonic project as involving ‘the mobilization of support
behind a concrete, national-popular program of action which asserts a general interest in the pursuit of

5
objectives that explicitly or implicitly advance the long-term interests of the hegemonic class
(fraction)’. It is thus that a successful hegemonic project in the longer run will have to be linked to a
successful accumulation strategy. Yet, as Jessop points out, it is important to see that while ‘they may
overlap partially and / or mutually condition each other’, accumulation strategy and hegemonic project
are not identical:

While accumulation strategies are directly concerned with economic expansion on a national
or international scale, hegemonic projects can be concerned principally with various non-
economic objectives (even if economically conditioned and economically relevant). The latter
might include military success, social reform, political stability or moral regeneration (ibid).

In the short run, then, given ‘specific conjunctures’, there may well be a ‘dissociation or inconsistency
between them’, and we may observe a hegemonic project that ‘undermines the conditions for
accumulation’ (ibid.: 208-209). Indeed, there is no ‘necessary relationship between hegemonic
projects and accumulation strategies’ (ibid.: 346). It is precisely because of the way Jessop sees
hegemonic projects and accumulation strategies as linked yet distinct, with their precise relationship
not being predetermined that we here prefer the term hegemonic project to that of the related notion of
a comprehensive concept of control as developed by the Amsterdam IPE project (Van Apeldoorn
2004), and which is precisely to denote a congruence or synthesis between hegemonic project and
accumulation strategy (Van der Pijl 2004; Overbeek 2004). Although effective class hegemony
arguably depends on such a successful synthesis, we are rather interested in those ‘specific
conjunctures’ in which a hegemonic project may change without necessarily being linked to a
concomitant change in accumulation strategy.
Whereas Gramsci used the concept of hegemony in a national context, the neo-Gramscian
approach has also conceptualised hegemony, and empirically identified hegemonic projects, at the
level of a regional order (especially as in the case of the European Union, see Van Apeldoorn 2002),
and at the level of world order (Cox 1987; also Gill 1990; cf. Van der Pijl 1998). Indeed, various
national hegemonic projects must often be seen as constituted transnationally within the context of
such a wider hegemonic order. Here, a hegemonic world order, Cox (1987) argues, is underpinned by
a hegemonic state but this hegemony itself is also the expression of the outward expansion of the
hegemonic capital fraction of that state and the transnational links it forges with other national
capitalist classes. By in this way linking state power within international relations with capitalist class
rule, Cox offers another approach to the problématique identified above, viz. that of the dialectic of
global capitalism and the states system. The way we have to understand this though is that capitalist
class hegemony itself already implies a connection between the latter two. Although state power may
be seen as constituted by, or at least structurally dependent upon capitalist class power, the latter is
only possible through the separation of the economic from the political and the constitution of the
latter in the form of a state with a considerable degree of institutional autonomy.

6
 We argue that capitalist class rule is thus enabled and indeed upheld by state power and by the
states system. Therefore, although Harvey’s capitalist logic maybe contradicted by a territorial logic
the former also presupposes the latter. Capitalist classes not just benefit from the existence of multiple
states (fragmented sovereignty) but also are dependent upon the application of state power both
nationally and internationally. Focusing upon the latter, capitalist class strategies, or hegemonic
projects as expressive of underlying class interests, will therefore (have to) articulate not just a vision
with regard to how to establish control or leadership over subordinate social classes and groups
(mostly in a domestic context) but also with respect to world order and the position of the respective
state or states within it, and in some cases quite explicitly with the question of how to ‘control’ other
formally independent states.
Here not all national ruling classes and national states are alike - rather there is a given power
hierarchy between them which makes for a differentiation of interests and certainly of strategies. If
there is one state in the system that is predominant (not necessarily hegemonic), the ruling class of that
state will attach particular importance to, and have strong interests in, the strategy of that state vis-à-
vis other states. Of course capitalist production and finance are no longer (in as far as they have ever
been) primarily nationally organized, and processes of transnational class formation have since long
created organic links within what Kees van der Pijl (1998) identifies as the extended Lockean
Heartland. Yet as Cox (1987) pointed out some time ago, such transnationalization processes have
been most intense when under the aegis of a territorially defined hegemon and within a hegemonic
world order (and in non-hegemonic world orders these processes tend to slow down or even be
reversed). It is thus that these processes, at least at a global scale, have always taken place within the
context of a certain interstate power hierarchy. Although there has been the tendential rise of a
transnational capitalist class even at a global scale (Van der Pijl 1984; 1998; cf. Robinson 1996, Sklair
2001), underlying this emergent reality there is still a layer at which national identities and interests
are more salient (Van Apeldoorn 2002). In as far then as national capitalist classes still exist there is
also likely to be a power hierarchy between them, mirroring that of the interstate system. The status of
members of the TCC is likely to be determined not just by their capitalist credentials (i.e., how big the
corporation that they lead or how vast their personal wealth) but also to an extent by their nationality
and their elite position vis-à-vis one state apparatus rather than another. Moreover, the
denationalization of capitalist elites is arguably stronger in relatively small and open capitalist states
than in bigger ones.
Although the ruling class of the biggest or most powerful state in the system may on the one
hand be very cosmopolitan in its outlook and have the capital it controls well integrated into global
circuits, it may at the same time also have a relatively acute sense of a distinct national interest within
the larger transnational interest precisely because of the fact that it sits at the top of the international /
global hierarchy, and is thus aware of the interest it has in maintaining the current system (and of what
is has to lose if the system breaks down). Hegemonic projects formulated within the context of such a

7
dominant and possibly hegemonic state will thus tend to express a strong geopolitical consciousness,
and include a rather elaborate strategy with respect to how to exercise control over other states and
their societies. Crucially, such a strategy, reflects not so much, as in neorealism, the interests of the
state as such, that is, as abstracted from society, but of the state as a ‘form-determined condensation of
social forces’ (Jessop 1990), in which the dominant, that is, capitalist, social forces, have a large and
direct stake in the the international or global rule of ‘their’ state. It is thus that in the formulation of a
hegemonic project within the national arena of such a state the geopolitical of what is a comprehensive
and integrated programme is bound to be a critical and prominent element. From the perspective of the
dominant or hegemonic class (fraction) of the dominant or hegemonic state, the projection of the
(territorial) power of that state is indispensable to the reproduction of its class rule. It is this
geopolitical component or geopolitical strategy of a broader hegemonic project that will be the focus
of the current investigation.

It is thus that this paper interprets the shift in the US geopolitical strategy in terms of the rise of a
neoconservative hegemonic project. We analyse this project as it has been formulated and propagated
within the national political arena of the US, within its civil and its political society, and has
subsequently been very successful in shaping US foreign policy after 9/11. To see it in the first
instance as a national hegemonic project does not mean that its origins are primarily national too. On
the contrary, we will argue that we can only come to a complete explanation of the rise of this project
if placed in the context of a changing global political economy. Secondly, the implications of this
project are of course by definition global. The neoconservative project is not just a domestic ‘political
formula’ seeking ‘the hegemony of a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate groups’
(Gramsci 1971: 182) within a national context but also, and maybe above all given the explicit
internationalists commitments of neoconservatism as well as its overriding concern with maintaining
American primacy, a project for the rule of the US state and US capital globally. Indeed, as indicated,
it is this external aspect of it that we are primarily concerned with in this paper. However, whether,
internationally and transnationally, the neoconservative project can also be deemed ‘hegemonic’ in the
sense of striving for hegemony, and if so, whether is has been successful in that respect, is a question
largely outside the scope of this research, although we will return to it in our conclusion [pointing
toward the international (potential) hegemony of the concept of the war on terror but also pointing to
its contradictions and limits, cf. Arrighi’s argument]. What in any case is clear that whether hegemonic
or not the neoconservative project as a Project for a New American Century is clearly and overtly an
imperialist project. But this in itself does not make it anything new. At the global level the US has
been an imperialist power at least since 1945. What is new is not the imperialism as such (pace
Ikenberry 2004 a/b and other liberal critics of the Bush administration) but the particular form it takes,
the geopolitical strategy pursued to serve the same basic imperialist objectives.

8
 This of course raises the pertinent question of what form this took before the rise of the
neoconservative project, what the preceding geopolitical strategy and concomitant hegemonic project
was and where the differences with that project lie. Below we will briefly argue that in the 1990s,
under the Clinton presidency, the hegemonic project, including its geopolitical component, was
neoliberal and that indeed the 1990s were the heyday of neoliberal globalization. We thus observe a
shift from neoliberalism to neoconservatism but this shift does not so much constitute a radical break
with the past, the replacement of neoliberalism with something radically different, but rather a limited
transformation of the neoliberal project. Neoconservatism has been growing out of neoliberalism, still
clinging on to much of its essential creed while distancing itself from other aspects and reordering
some its priorities. The neoconservative project is above all, we will argue, a response to the national
and global contradictions of the neoliberal project and the subsequent confrontation with its economic,
social and political limits. The neoconservative project offered an answer to that crucial question
facing the US ruling class: that is, how to prolong US global power, or indeed, hegemony, at a
moment when the answer of the neoliberal project more a decade into the post-cold war era no longer
seemed that compelling anymore, particularly not in a changing geopolitical and geo-economic
context.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR, THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION OFFENSIVE AND
ITS CONTRADICTIONS

We start our story by briefly looking back at the Reagan era during the last phase of the Cold War, as
it is here that neoconservative ideas were for the first time shaping foreign policy to a significant
extent.

Reagan: rise of neoliberalism and neoconservative offensive against ‘communism’

The Reagan administration is generally associated with the rise of global neoliberalism (e.g. Harvey
2005) but this neoliberal project was combined with a geopolitical strategy that involved an aggressive
stance against the Soviet Union, and a conscious attempt to defeat communism and win the Cold War
through both stepping up the arms race and increased (covert and overt) military interventionism in the
Third World. This assertive, militarised foreign policy, involving a huge increase in defence spending
and backed up by the nationally oriented security complex contrasted with both the realism prevailing
during the era of détente (under Nixon) and the ´human rights universalism´ under Carter (Gill 1990,
Van der Pijl 2006). In fact, as we shall see later on, within the Reagan administration we find many of
the (same) neoconservative intellectuals that later came to shape the policy of George W. Bush. In a
sense, the grand strategy of the US during the Second Cold War involved a first run of the
neoconservative project. However, the context here fundamentally differed from the one in which the

9
neoconservative shift under the younger Bush took place after 2001. Whereas the Reagan presidency
coincided with a general transformation towards a neoliberal concept of control away from corporate
liberalism (Van der Pijl 1998), and thus also reflected a transformation of the hegemonic accumulation
strategy, no such change is, as we shall see, yet involved in the recent neoconservative shift. And
whereas Reagan´s geopolitical strategy was aimed at defeating, within the context of a bipolar system,
the ´contender state´ of the Soviet Union (Van der Pijl 2006), and thus enabling the neoliberal project
to be globalized (what was subsequently attempted under President Clinton), the later neoconservative
project was rather about confronting new challenges to what in the meantime had become a unipolar
power position (or at least one in which the US as a great power is superior to any rival) and seeking
to preserve American primacy in new ways as promoting neoliberal globalization alone turned out to
have its own inherent limits. This different context has required a different positioning of the US in the
world and implies a different framing of the threat and of a concomitant security framework. First,
however, we need to turn to how the end of the Cold War first led the US under Clinton towards a
deepening of the neoliberal project accompanied by a ´neoliberal´ foreign policy.

The neoliberal globalization offensive in the post-Cold War context

The Reagan era, as we know, culminated in the widely assumed ‘victory’, signalled by the demise of
the Soviet Union, and while the neoconservatives in part credited themselves for this proclaimed ‘end
of history’ (cf. Fukuyama), they simultaneously lost their focal battle point and compass (in terms of
grand strategy) with the end of the cold war (Podhoretz 1996; Judis 1995) Although some
neoconservative policymakers and advisors had early clear ideas about what strategy to pursue to
maintain US primacy in what was widely regarded as a unique ´unipolar moment´ (Krauthammer
1991) plans to implement such a strategy (e.g. Defense Policy Guidance of 1992 to be discussed
below) were quickly shelved as the time was clearly not ripe for them. In fact, after Bush Sr. we
witness a return to a liberal internationalism under Clinton which was characterized by a by and large
multilateralist offensive to consolidate the apparent triumph of transnational neoliberalism.5
The neoliberal project initiated by Reagan, during Clinton not only consolidated and deepened
but also in terms of foreign policy became accompanied by a strong commitment to a (neo)liberal
internationalism, emphasising the need for so-called humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping
operations, while at the same time implementing neoliberal market regimes and interests in areas
where these did not yet prevail. The spread of the liberalization and deregulation mantra was

5
Although Skidmoore (2005) is right to relativize the multilateralism of previous US administrations
inasmuch as he argues that the US was never fully multilateralist in the sense of itself willing to always play by
the rules it was imposing and maintaining as a hegemony, but it was (until the neoconservative shift, that is)
willing to put up the resources to maintain the various multilateral institutions and be committed to it
ideologically and politically.

10
underpinned by the dictates of western (US ruled) financial institutions as IMF and Worldbank,
imposing fiscal austerity measures on fragile emerging economies (Harvey 2005, Gowan 1999, Van
der Pijl 2006). The position of the US vis-à-vis the rest of the world at that time was relatively
uncontested and unlike some neoconservatives who perceived new ´present dangers´ (Kagan and
Kristol 2000) challenging US primacy, the prevailing mood was one of optimism about the spread of
liberal democracies and free markets through the benign process of globalization and associated
institutions of (neoliberal) global governance (Overbeek 2004). Indeed, arguably together with Tony
Blair, there was no political leader of the West at the time who so much extolled the virtues of
globalization as did President Bill Clinton. Neoliberal globalization was thought to progressively lead
towards a peaceful coexistence of states in a borderless global market. Moreover, the US, as the
primary proponent of neoliberalism, was considered the natural victor and hegemon in this new world
order. There was thus no perceived need, nor would that have been easy to legitimate, for the US to
bolster its military power to underpin US hegemony. This did not imply that the US ceased to
interfere outside its borders, nor gave up its ambitions as a global economic, political and military
hegemon, but at least until the closing years of the 1990s, this strategy was more muted.
It should be noted though that while military and geopolitical strategy somewhat receded to
the background during the Clinton administration, it did not entirely disappear, on the contrary. There
were clearly ‘grand’ geopolitical aspects in it, such as the expansion of the sphere of influence in the
Caspian region by initiating and securing crucial pipeline projects and relocating US bases, the
expansion of NATO and, linked to that, the Kosovo war (on the latter two and how they are linked see
Cafruny forthcoming and Van der Pijl 2006). The Kosovo war was arguably an imperialist war, and
illegal as well because lacking a UN mandate. Yet is was multilateralist in the sense of having secured
the support of the whole of NATO and also being led by it. It was also a war fought in the name of
‘humanitarian intervention’, fitting the neoliberal globalization discourse of the time. It was neither a
‘pre-emptive’ strike not a unilateralist war fought on the basis of an explicit conception of US primacy
and only with the support of a ‘coalition of the willing’. Yet, as it was basically a war of aggression
against a ‘rogue state’ challenging Western interests within Europe’s own borders, aimed at expanding
the US sphere of influence Eastwards (Cafruny forthcoming), the Kosovo war not only showed the
militarist face of neoliberalism but arguably also preluded and anticipated a much more blatant and
more extreme (and unilateralist) militarism of the subsequent neoconservative project.

The contradictions and limits of neoliberal globalization: a hegemonic crisis

In sum, with the benefit of hindsight we can say that the 1990s were heyday of neoliberal
globalization. Those days are now over. Although neoliberal globalization is not (yet?) being reversed,
as a hegemonic project it has arguably entered into a crisis, and it has been in response to that crisis

11
that the neoconservative project has been formulated as an alternative. This alternative, we will argue
is not incompatible with much of neoliberalism, in particular in the economic realm, but it does change
both the general political formula and in particular the geopolitical strategy with which what is
essentially still a neoliberal accumulation strategy is being promoted. This shift, as we shall see in
more detail below, as such also involves a reordering of priorities that may yet create tensions with
respect to a continued commitment to global neoliberalism (for a rather (too) strong version of this
argument see Arrighi 2005a). Here we thus agree with Harvey (2003), Arrighi (2005a), Van der Pijl
(2006) and others who have argued that the structural origins of the neoconservative turn have be
sought in the contradictions and limits into which the neoliberal globalization offensive ran into as the
20th century drew to a close. Partially drawing upon the aforementioned literature (but adding some
more elements) we would in particular point out the following sets of contradictions and the responses
that they have tended to draw.
First, internally, that is, within different national state-society complexes (and thus also
transnationally) neoliberalism produces a social anomie that from a conservative perspective needs to
be checked by a strong state both internally and externally. That is to say, the centrifugal forces
brought about by the neoliberal project need to be contained lest the order upon which it rests itself
disintegrates – even if too explicit an application of state power may be seen to contradict one of the
central tenets of neoliberalism. It is thus that the authoritarian dimension already inherent in the
neoliberal project (Harvey 2005; Van der Pijl 2006) becomes more explicit and more pronounced.
Arguably these effects are strongest in the US that from the start has been one of the most
individualistic and atomistic societies. With the onslaught of neoliberal restructuring these tendencies
have been reinforced to a point where as Harvey (2003: 17) quoting Hannah Arendt puts it, (civil)
society appeared to be ‘in the process of collapsing back into the aimless senseless chaos of private
interests’. As Harvey goes on to explain the rise of the neoconservative project, subsequently ‘[t]he
evil enemy without became the prime force through which to exorcise or tame the devils lurking
within’ (ibid).
Second, and relatedly, the political limits of neoliberalism have not only been manifested
within the US a but also and at the same time globally by transnational social forces resisting the
discipline imposed by the neoliberal globalization process. Both inside and outside what Van der Pijl
(1998; 2006) calls the Lockean heartland what increasingly amounts to a transnational revolt against
neoliberalism is manifesting itself. This resistance takes on many different shapes and identities – e.g.
from Hugo Chavez’ regime to the alter-globalization movement - some clearly more threatening than
others for the imperialist core – but together constituting a variety of social movements that have
revealed the political limits of the neoliberal project in terms of sustaining its hegemony. Yet one
counter-movement here has to be singled out, both because of its revolutionary anti-Western ideology
and the willingness on the part of some elements within it to use violence to achieve its political ends,
that is, the transnational movement or movements of radical political Islam. Obviously there is much

12
to be said for the view that in the ‘war on terror’ much of the new ‘evil enemy without’ has been an
expedient political construction, the creation of subtle and less subtle of government propaganda and
constant fear campaigns within the media. Radical Islam as an enemy is undoubtedly a political and
social construction (and indeed, the ‘war on terror’ is based on such a construction), yet at the same
time it is undeniable that in many regions of the world where neoliberal globalization was perceived to
destroy not only at times people’s livelihoods but also their culture and their identity, and people have
felt most alienated and this process has produced a backlash partly in the form of an Islamist ideology
rejecting perceived Western domination. As such, groups identifying themselves with Al-Qaeda are
definitely anti-imperialist and as such have to be seen as the outcome of the dialectic of neoliberal
globalization of the past two decades. 6 Thus Van der Pijl (2006: 405) is probably right in arguing that
‘[t]he neoliberal programme of the West, run aground across the globe, but tenaciously pursued
nevertheless, has conjured up its own nemesis, which [as it is now mutating into a broader ‘democratic
revolution’] instills fear into ruling classes’. We may add here that the US ruling class in particular has
reason to be the most fearful, as it has the most to lose.
Third, and arguably most critically in relation to the shift in geopolitical strategy entailed by
the neoconservative project, neoliberal globalization also produces new geoeconomic and geopolitical
tensions that entail a threat to those states that promoted the process in the first place inasmuch as the
dynamics of global capital accumulation make the centre of gravity of the global economy shift away
from the Atlantic and towards the Pacific and in particular towards China. This historic shift may be
interpreted in terms of a hegemonic decline of the US as above all related to its deteriorating financial
power – as manifested by the current slide of the Dollar in the context of the twin deficit - after its
commercial and industrial edge have already long dissipated (Arrighi 2005a, 2005b; 2007; 1994). But
it may also be seen as the price of the success of the very project of neoliberal globalization and how it
has spread capitalist growth beyond the capitalist heartland. The global process of endless capital
accumulation, with US capital in the lead, needed to incorporate ever more areas into its sphere of
influence in order to sustain the process. These growth processes, while in first instance serving the
interests of the US, slowly started to turn against US interests. First of all the territorial logic made
itself felt as emerging economies and markets started to grow into serious competitors to US and
Western capital (Perry forthcoming). Another aspect of the economic growth both within and outside
the West is the increased need for, and hence competition over, natural resources. In combination with
the finiteness of those resources and the decreasing reserves within the US itself, this made, as has
6
Manuel Castells describes the Western (and especially US) attitude producing this backlash as follows:
The attitude in general has been: this is a traditional attitude, this [muslim fundamentalism/ Jihad] is
kind of a remnant of traditions that will be superseded by modernity and the practice of technology and
so on. So first we ignore them, if they become necessary we buy them and if we cannot buy them and
they resist and we cannot ignore them because they become bothersome, then we destroy them. ... the
ideal global capitalism (...) would be: let’s connect in the planet everything that is interesting of these
networks of wealth, technology and power. And the rest, we just drop them. I mean, they can go back to
nature (…) It just doesn’t happen this way, because even if we think we don’t touch anything, we do,
we do. This global culture does not integrate people, but disintegrates societies. (M. Castells)

13
been noted above, in particular oil and gas, to become increasingly strategic commodities, and made
the control over its flows, as well as the ability to set conditions of access for others, an increasingly
strategic objective (De Graaff forthcoming). It is thus the uneven development of capitalism itself, and
to the extent the success of the spread of capitalist markets as promoted by the neoliberal programme,
that makes for the rise of new rival centres of accumulation. The growth of these rival centres
externally has been enabled by the global spread of, to use Arrighi’s (1994) and Harvey’s (2003)
terminology again, the non-territorial ‘capitalist logic’, but internally has been enabled and
conditioned by the use of territorial logic of state power applied in the tradition of what Van der Pijl
(2006) calls the Hobbesian contender state. Indeed, China may be viewed in that way (ibid.: ch. 9).
The contradictions arising out of the dynamics and dialectics of neoliberal globalization have
created a hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism and have thus been enabling the formulation of alternative
project inside (and arguably also outside) the US. |But the structural conditions associated with these
contradictions have not determined this outcome. Other kinds of answers to the changing geopolitical
and geoeconomic framework and the inner contradictions of neoliberalism were possible. We argue
that the reason why this particular answer won the ‘war of position’, has crucially depended upon
agency and the active promotion of ideas. Below we will thus analyse the agency that has constructed
the neoconservative project. This analysis will, however, also show how this agency and the ideas it
promoted has been linked to powerful material (capitalist) interests.

ANALYSING THE NEO-CONSERVATIVE PROJECT

Neoliberalism is essentially a project of restoring bourgeois hegemony or capitalist class power

(Overbeek and van der Pijl 1993 and Harvey 2005) by liberating capital from its postwar constraints
through a programme of marketization (van Apeldoorn and Horn 2007) and privatization. In doing so
it appeals to an ideology of ´possessive individualism´ in which the utopia invoked is one of freely
contracting agents within a free market in which all are equal before the law. The thrust is thus
towards a commodification of social relations to the point where, as Margaret Thatcher put it, ´there is
no such thing as society´. As indicated, neoconservatism has much in common with neoliberalism and
in particular is equally aimed at strengthening or preserving capitalist class power through
strengthening the market as the arbiter of social life. Yet, it also goes beyond it in that it in particular
recognizes how there is in fact ´such a thing´ as society and that the price mechanism alone cannot
sufficiently provide order in that society, and that people cannot be held together just through
contractual relations. It is the overriding concern with order, and the willingness to back up that order
through coercion, both domestically and internationally, that distinguishes the neoconservative project
from the neoliberal project. As Harvey writes:

14
 US neoconservatives favour corporate power, private enterprise, and the restoration of class
power. Neoconservatism is therefore entirely consistent with the neoliberal agenda of elite
governance, mistrust of democracy, and the maintenance of market freedoms. But it veers
away from the principles of pure neoliberalism and has reshaped neoliberal practices in two
fundamental respects: first, in its concern for order as an answer to the chaos of individual
interests, and second, in its concern for an overweening morality as the necessary social glue
to keep the body politic secure in the face of internal and external dangers (Harvey 2005: 82).

It is on the perceived external dangers, and how to deal with them, i.e., the neoconservative
geopolitical strategy, that we will focus here, and that arguable also forms its most prominent
component. The neoconservative foreign policy orientation, may be summarized as containing the
following core elements (see, e.g., Hurst 2005:78; Dueck 2004; and see Steltzer 2004 and Kagan and
Kristol 2000 for representative essays of prominent neoconservative intellectuals on these issues):
First, an emphasis on US global primacy as the explicit objective of US foreign policy: a clear and
unequivocal commitment to maintain US'global leadership and neutralize any potential threat to its
supremacy. Second, a strong emphasis on defence and the need for a powerful and (pro-) active
military: the belief that US military supremacy is an essential pillar of its global hegemony. Third, a
rejection of the notion that the US should always, or even preferably resolve problems multilaterally:
the defence of US’ interests should not be constrained by multilateral institutions; there is nothing
wrong with unilateral actions (including military) if US vital interests are at stake. Fourth, and related
to the previous point, what later came to be known as the pre-emptive strike doctrine, or the explicit
claim of the US on the right to make war in order to prevent threats from materialising. Fifth, and in
addition to the instrument of pre-emptive strikes, the perceived necessity of developing a national
missile defence (NMD) system to counter the threat of rogue states armed with weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). Sixth, the dedication to active liberal democracy promotion and intervention
abroad to implement US values and interests, including regime change and nation building (if
necessary by military force and followed by occupation).
It is in particular because of the last element that the neoconservative approach to foreign
policy is often coined ‘Wilsonian’ (see e.g. also Ikenberry 2004a; Layne 2006; Stelzer 2004, but see
e.g. Busby & Monten 2005 for a different interpretation): combining principles of power with moral
principle and adding an '
idealist'dimension to the realist principle of power politics. However, a
crucial difference is that Woodrow Wilson in his drive to model the world after the US democratic
example had a clear preference for multilateral means and institutions whereas neoconservatives prefer
regime change, if necessary by force, and if not supported by flexible coalitions, then by unilateral
action (Stelzer 2004:10). Some authors therefore suggest that while neoconservatives might be
Wilsonian in their ends, they are anti-Wilsonian in their means (ibid.; also Guelke 2003:112; cf.
Ikenberry 2004a).
A similar ambiguity exists with the ‘internationalist’ aspect of neoconservatism, for in spite of
neoconservatives preference for democracy promotion and intervention abroad to implement western

15
(US) '
values'
, the neoconservative take on ‘liberal internationalism’ deviates from the approach that for
instance prevailed during the Clinton presidency. A distinction that is used in the literature in this
respect is between ‘conservative internationalism’ and ‘liberal internationalism’ (e.g. Mayer 1992;
Mandelbaum & Schneider1978; Chanley1999).7 These two distinct foreign policy approaches in fact
crystallized in the mid-70s in the wake of the rift in the Democratic Party over Vietnam and détente
and after 1976, when Carter came into office, the different actors advocating these diverging views
grouped themselves in two rival lobby groups (the conservatives in e.g. the ‘Committee on Present
Danger’, and the liberals in ‘New Directions’ see Mandelbaum & Schneider 1978). Whereas ‘liberal
internationalists’ in general are more supportive of economic aid and multilateral action through
organizations like the UN, neoconservatives put much greater emphasis on the use of military force.
The emphasis on coercion and military confrontation in the 1980s under Reagan took shape as the
preferred means to defeat communism (Chanley 1999:25) whereas now it is expressed as the '
war on
terror'
. Following this, and in light of our earlier analysis of the neoliberal project of the Clinton era,
we can summarize the differences between neoliberal and neoconservative foreign policies as follows:

Table 1: Differences neoliberal and neoconservative foreign policy summarized

Neoliberal foreign policy Neoconservative foreign policy
Type of Liberal Internationalism Conservative internationalism
internationalism
/ extra-regional
engagement
Type of Multilateral cooperation, international Coalitions of the willing, ad hoc, flexible
international regimes or unilateral
cooperation
Position US in US hegemony, consent in the US primacy, coercion more in the
the world foreground foreground (hegemony secondary
objective)

Type of action Multilateral if possible, unilateral Unilateral if necessary, multilateral if not

only if necessary, pro UN and pro
NATO, ‘multilateral gloves’
Rogue states / Regime change from within or by
enemies means of economic sanctions
(pressures) and diplomatic means, use
of force only in last instance and
preferably by NATO / UN
Values in policy Belief in liberal democracy,
unfettered individual and economic
freedom, liberalized markets
detrimental to US interests, not pro-UN,
selectively pro-NATO, ‘unilateral iron
fist out of multilateral gloves’
Pre-emption, if necessary with military
force, if necessary unilateral or with
selected coalition partners; necessity of
developing a developing a national
missile defence (NMD) system to counter
the threat of rogue states armed with
weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
Belief in democracy and free markets
underpinned with moral absolutism and
limited state regulation to protect social
order

7
Some authors instead refer to a ‘cooperative’ vs. ‘militant internationalism’ (Chanley 1999; Wittkopf &
Maggiotto 1983).

16
Having briefly characterized the neoconservative project the remainder of this paper analyses how,
through which networks of influence, and supported by which social forces, it has risen to power.
A Neoconservative Grand Strategy

The approach of this paper is that an analysis of a shift in US grand strategy that seeks not only to
identify but also to explain how and why this grand strategy came about, needs to include into the
analysis the ‘authors’ of the grand strategy; '
the grand strategists'(i.e. policy-advisers). And the ideas
and interests that motivate them. Furthermore, and rather crucially, we will focus on the non-state
channels (i.e. think tanks, policy innovating and planning forums) through which these ideas and
interests were disseminated. These formally non-state, independent platforms, operating in the shelter
of actual policymaking, are often left out of public analyses, although they are increasingly recognized
to have considerable influence on foreign policy making (e.g. Jacobs & Page 2005; Gill 1991). By
extension, this study will focus on a network of these institutions, the ties of which consist of the
individuals connecting the network by means of interlocking memberships. For this purpose we will
employ a social network analysis (SNA).8 The aim of this network analysis is to catch the
characteristics, reach and structure of the network. In order to see whether a more or less cohesive set
of actors, ideas and interests can be identified to have been involved in this network in the period
since the end of the Cold War, and how this might have been of influence on the post-9/11 grand
strategy of the US. The question to be addressed here is: how did the neoconservative movement from
an ‘anachronism’ and collection of ‘scattered individuals’ (cf. Judis 1995) which had seemingly lost
their main cause in foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and had moreover lost their position
in power to a Democratic administration, become such a powerful influence in US foreign policy?
In the mid-90s several rightwing Republican alternatives started to manifest itself (e.g. Newt
Gingrich'
s ‘Contract With America) and it was alongside these various programmes that a distinctive
neoconservative project began to take shape. This project distinguished itself, first of all, from the
isolationist stream in the Republican party, and, secondly, from the ‘prevailing tendency of the 1990s
to “reduce the business of America to business” (Dorrien 2004:134).
As is well known, an important platform from which this project was launched was the Project
for the New American Century (PNAC), founded in 1997 by William Kristol (as an offspring from his
New Citizens Project) and housed in the same building as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one
of the largest and oldest of neoconservative think tanks. Its founding charter advances a set of ‘guiding
principles’ for American foreign and defence policy, urging America to embrace its ‘cause of

8
The distinctive difference of SNA from more traditional sociological (statistical) methods is that it
focuses on relations among actors instead of comparing their attributes (Wasserman & Faust 1994; Hanneman &
Riddle, 2005; Scott 1990). Hence it allows for an analysis of how individual agency is embedded in and at the
same time constructs social structure.

17
American leadership’ and ‘shape a new century favourable to American principles’ (PNAC Statement
of Principles, 1997). The charter also provides some concrete policy proposals which the PNAC itself
coins a ‘Neo-Reaganite’ agenda of ‘military strength and moral clarity’. Whereas the PNAC was
certainly not the most extensive or institutionalized channel of neoconservative thought, nor can be
considered the project'
s most durable platform, we argue that its significance resides in that it came to
serve as a focal point of the neoconservative project, in which previously existing ideas, actors and
influences converged.

A Neoconservative Multileveled network

Since the proposition is that the PNAC served as the focal point of the neoconservative project,
PNAC-membership will be taken as the selection criterion from which a network of actors can be
mapped out. Within our SNA approach, we will in the following employ the concept of an ‘affiliation
network’, which is a network that includes either two sets of actors, or takes one set of ‘actors’ and
one set of what is labelled ‘events’ (such as clubs or voluntary organizations) and studies the relations
among them (i.e. interlocks, co-membership).
As our selection of ‘actors’ we took the most active affiliates with PNAC9 in the period 1997-
2001, which gives an N of 52. Since we want to identify the reach, structure and influence of the
network through its actors and the ideas and interests they promote, we did not start from a prefixed
selection of ‘events’ but proceeded in an exploratory fashion by mapping the affiliations of each of the
52 actors in the selection. Included were affiliations at both the private level and the state level in the
period from the end of the Cold War until 2006 (including, think tanks, policy institutes, ad-hoc
committees, advocacy groups, media and academic affiliations, government positions and corporate
affiliations / connections). 10
First of all it should be assessed whether indeed PNAC affiliation can validly be taken as the
selection criterion on the basis of which a neoconservative project can be identified. If it would turn
out that the rest of the network (affiliated actors and events) is unrelated, or only loosely related, this
would indicate that the proposition of the PNAC as a focal point of the neoconservative project is
flawed. However, it turned out that PNAC affiliation generates a vast, dense, and highly cohesive
network. Graph 1 below gives an overview of the PNAC network’s affiliations to 1) the private
institutional level (neoconservative think tanks, policy institutes, media etc), 2) government (the
Republican administrations of Reagan 1981-1989, Bush 1989-1993, Bush jr 2001-2006), 3)

9
I.e.: Board of Directors, Founding Members, signatories and contributors to several key advocacy
letters and statements regarding grand strategy and the reports Rebuilding America’s Defences and Present
Dangers.
10
Since PNAC affiliation is taken as the selection criterion of the actors, PNAC is not included as an
event in the analyses and graphs.

18
involvement with influential grand strategy formulations; 4) corporate affiliations (board membership,
executive functions, consultancy).

Graph 1: Overview Total of affiliation PNAC Network

Source Data: Who’s Who 2006, International Relations Center 2006, biographies, membership rosters, participant overviews, annual
reports of the affiliations.

This graph gives an unambiguous impression of the connectedness and reach of the PNAC network
across these various levels: there are no isolates (i.e. unconnected actors), and only a very few that
have but one connection. In fact, the graph shows that a substantial part of the network (27 out of our
52 actors) is connected to all four levels.11 The thickness of the ties expresses the total number of
affiliations that each actors has with each dimension separately.12

11
The colours express the number of affiliations that the actors have with these various levels (grey =
affiliation to only one dimension, black = two dimensions, red = affiliations with three dimensions, blue = with
all four).
12
Despite its reach it should be noted that the network is not inclusive; key actors within the Bush
administration that are coined neoconservatives, have not, or barely, been associated with the PNAC and
therefore fall outside the network (e.g. Muravchik, Feith, Hadley). On the other hand there are also actors
included in the network that are not considered typical neoconservatives (e.g. Armitage and Bauer) What is
interesting about the PNAC criterion is that it includes a wide range of actors who – irrespective of being coined
pure neo-cons or not – nonetheless endorsed the neoconservative project of PNAC.

19
 To get more insight into how the PNAC network spans across these various levels, i.e. how
ideas that were formed at the private institutional level and disseminated there (including grand
strategy formulation) did actually reach into government, and how this same political network includes
substantial overlap with the corporate world, by means of revolving door activities of its members we
will address each level separately and analyse them more closely, to start with the private institutional
level.
The Private Institutional Network

The matrix in Table 3 on the next page gives an overview of the private institutional network in which
the number of interlocking memberships each organization shares with each other can be read from the
diagonal.13 Since the focus of this analysis is to assess how and to what extent ideas have been
disseminated throughout, and shared within this network, we will look at measures of its cohesion: i.e.
distance and density. A commonly used measure for connectivity of a network is the geodesic distance
(meaning; the shortest path between two actors / events). The smaller the geodesic distances the faster
information may travel. The smallest geodesic distance is 1, which is equal to one ‘path’. The
measures of the network can be read in Table 2, below:

Table 2: Distance among actors in private institutional network

Frequencies of Geodesic Distances

Average distance (among reachable pairs) = 1.391 Frequenc Proporti
Distance-based cohesion ("Compactness") = 0.745 -------- --------
(range 0 to 1; larger values indicate greater cohesiveness) 1 1506.000 0.615
Distance-weighted fragmentation ("Breadth") = 0.255 2 930.000 0.380
3 14.000 0.006

Social Network Analysis (UCINET): Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman (2002)

In the right column of Table 2 we can see that 61% of all the actors within the private institutional
network have a geodesic distance of only 1, indicating a direct connection; 38% has a distance of 2;
and 0,6% has a distance of 3.14 The left column illustrates that the average distance between the actors
is 1,4 and the overall distance based cohesion (“Compactness”) is 75%. The density of the network,
which similarly gives an indication of the pace/ease at which information can potentially be diffused
among its actors, is 0,949, indicating a very dense network (maximum being 1,0).

13
From the total reach of the network’s private institutional affiliations only those ‘events’ were included
with an interlock of at least 4 that is; those ‘events’ in which at least four of the actors in our selection
participated.
14
A distance of 1 means that there is a shared membership; a distance of 2 means that there is a
connection between two actors (or an actor and an ‘event’) through an intermediate actor/event.

20
Table 3: Private Institutional Affiliations – interlocks

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
AE CL CS FD CF Fr CP CP Am JI Co We Na NE CS Hu Ho RA He US EP Em Co Na Pa
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
1 American Enterprise Institute 1990s - present 18 6 5 3 12 5 2 4 5 4 3 3 4 2 1 2 1 3 0 4 2 2 0 1 4
2 Committee for the Liberation of Iraq 2002-2003 6 10 5 4 6 2 2 5 8 3 3 3 4 0 2 2 0 0 1 4 3 1 2 1 2
3 Center for Security Policy (NSAB) 1988 - 2006 5 5 16 4 10 4 5 6 7 3 6 1 2 2 5 6 2 2 5 2 2 3 2 2 0
4 Foundation for Defense of Democacry 2001-2006 3 4 4 7 3 3 2 4 4 3 2 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 2 1 0 0 0
5 Council on Foreign Relations 1990s-present 12 6 10 3 31 6 4 8 9 4 4 2 5 6 5 4 2 6 5 2 3 2 3 2 4
6 Freedom House 1990s – present 5 2 4 3 6 8 1 3 1 2 2 0 0 3 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 0 1 2
7 Committee on the Present Danger II 80s-90s 2 2 5 2 4 1 6 2 3 2 4 0 0 1 2 1 2 0 3 1 1 1 1 0 0
8 Commitee on the Present Danger III 1990s-present 4 5 6 4 8 3 2 11 6 2 3 0 1 1 3 1 1 1 3 2 1 1 2 0 1
9 American Comm. for Peace in Chechnya 1999 - 2006 5 8 7 4 9 1 3 6 14 2 5 3 4 0 3 4 2 0 3 3 3 0 4 1 2
10 Jewish Inst. for Nat. Security Affairs 1990-pres. 4 3 3 3 4 2 2 2 2 5 2 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0
11 Committee for the Free World 1980s - 1990s 3 3 6 2 4 2 4 3 5 2 8 1 1 0 1 4 3 1 4 1 2 3 3 2 0
12 Weekly Standard 3 3 1 1 2 0 0 0 3 0 1 7 3 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 2 1 0
13 National Interest 4 4 2 0 5 0 0 1 4 0 1 3 7 1 1 1 0 1 1 2 1 0 2 1 2
14 National Endowment for Democracy 1997-2002 2 0 2 1 6 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 6 1 1 0 2 1 1 0 1 0 0 2
15 Centre for Strategic & Intern. Studies 1990-2006 1 2 5 1 5 1 2 3 3 1 1 0 1 1 7 1 1 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0
16 Hudson Institute 1990s - present 2 2 6 1 4 2 1 1 4 1 4 1 1 1 1 10 0 0 2 1 1 1 2 2 0
17 Hoover Institution 1990s – present 1 0 2 0 2 1 2 1 2 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 5 1 2 0 0 1 1 0 0
18 RAND (/2001 Transition Panel) 3 0 2 0 6 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 1 7 1 1 0 1 0 0 2
19 Heritage Foundation 1980 - 2001 0 1 5 1 5 1 3 3 3 0 4 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 7 0 1 1 2 2 0
20 US Comm on NATO/since 2004 Proj.Transitional Dem. 4 4 2 1 2 1 1 2 3 1 1 0 2 1 1 1 0 1 0 5 0 0 0 0 2
21 Ethics and Public Policy Centre 1990s -present 2 3 2 2 3 1 1 1 3 1 2 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 4 1 1 1 0
22 Empower America / since 2004 Freedom Works 2 1 3 1 2 2 1 1 0 1 3 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 4 0 1 0
23 Commentary 0 2 2 0 3 0 1 2 4 0 3 2 2 0 0 2 1 0 2 0 1 0 4 1 0
24 National Review 1 1 2 0 2 1 0 0 1 0 2 1 1 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 1 1 1 3 1
25 Paul H. Nitze SAIS – John Hopkins University 4 2 0 0 4 2 0 1 2 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 1 5

Source: Who’s Who 2006; International Relations Center 2006; biographies, membership rosters, participant overviews, annual reports of the affiliations (see Methodological
Notes, appendix no.1 for explanation on methodology, case- and data selection).
Social Network Analysis (UCINET): Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman (2002)

21
Another way of looking at the structure and cohesion of the network is to look at what is called the
centrality of the actors / events in the network. Actor degree (i.e. the degree of the nodes) tells us how
many ties each actor has with other actors through their memberships in the selected events (in this
case the private institutional organizations).15 The analysis showed that 24 of our actors (almost 50%)
are affiliated to at least four private institutions and only two of the actors have no private institutional
affiliations. This generally high number of institutional ties can be interpreted as providing the actors
with substantial leverage to exert influence within the network and also makes the network as a whole
a potentially influential and strong community. All in all the network analysis indicates that PNAC
affiliation generated a vast, highly connected and dense (private) institutional network. The measures
of cohesion indicate that the capacity for spreading and sharing information, ideas and knowledge is
rather high. Taken that potential the next question is of course, what where these ideas? And do they
reflect the ideas of the neoconservative project as earlier identified? In order to assess these matters we
will move to a more content-related qualitative analysis of the characteristics of the private
institutional network.

Qualitative Characteristics of the Network

The institutional network in its total reach includes both older, mainstream (neo)conservative
institutions (as the AEI, Heritage, Center for Security Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs); more pronouncedly neoconservative advocacy groups/committees (as Empower
America, Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the US Committee on NATO); and quasi-
governmental organizations as National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House. It also
includes advocacy groups from where the neoconservative project originated in the early 70s as the
Committee for the Free World and the Committee on the Present Danger, which represent those.16
Moreover, a group of the most outspoken neoconservative media outlets are included in this
network - most primarily The Weekly Standard (the neoconservative journal par excellence), followed
by The National Interest, The National Review and Commentary. These media outlets have proven to
be indispensable channels for the diffusion of the neoconservative thought, not only to the public but
also to the policy establishment.17 A final important characteristic of the network is the overall high
connection to the academic world. Many of the actors have (held) teaching and / or researching
positions in prominent universities (e.g. Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Naval War College), the most

15
It should be noted that since the selection of affiliations in this study stretches over a longer period,
interlocking memberships do not necessarily imply direct interaction between the actors. Rather it should be
interpreted as a shared involvement with a particular ideational legacy, a set of shared ideas and interests, and a
more general belonging to the broader community with this particular worldview (episteme). Nonetheless there
have been many instances of direct interaction within the network, as we will see later.
16
The high number of interlocks with the very mainstream Council on Foreign Relations is unsurprising, since
its membership lists includes virtually anyone (intellectual or policymaker) involved with US politics.
17
See for an interesting and detailed account of the constant flow of steering criticism and influence
through for example the Weekly Standard by the duo William Kristol and Robert Kagan, Dorrien 2004, ch 4.

22
substantive affiliation is with Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), here
included. This finding confirms its characteristic as an intellectual and an elite project.
A qualitative content analysis of the main characteristics of the organizations within this
(private institutional) network reveals that indeed the same core themes that PNAC advocated - i.e.:
the necessity of global US leadership underpinned with military strength, active regime change with
the aim of democracy promotion and the implementation of free market principles, defence and
preservation of Israel, pressure for an increase in defence budget, and an emphasis on moral principles
and a strong belief in the superiority of US values (and the need to combat those who are not believed
to share these values) - were substantively reproduced, disseminated and further developed within this
wide-ranging network of organizations at the private institutional level. Combining our quantitative
and qualitative analyses we can conclude that indeed there seems to have been a rather cohesive set of
actors and ideas that can be identified as a neoconservative project on the basis of PNAC affiliation.
Moreover this network of actors and ideas had a vast institutional structure at its disposal, providing it
with a dense and highly connected pattern of channels through which these ideas could be diffused and
shared. The crucial question is of course, did these ideas and actors also influence actual policy
making? In other words: did they reach government and how?

Influence of the Network - Governmental affiliations

To assess whether there is an overlap between the private institutional level and the state level, the
actors’ affiliations with US (Republican) administration since the Reagan administration were
mapped. 18 As can be seen in Graph 3 below the overlap turns out to be quite substantive: except for 9
of the 52 actors, each of them participated in at least one of the three administrations, 14 of them
participated in all three Republican administrations.19 Most importantly; many of them occupy (or
have occupied) key positions within the G.W. Bush administration on foreign policy and defence
issues, (see Table 5 in appendix)

18
This timeframe is chosen because the neoconservative foreign policy outlook started to manifest itself most
pronouncedly since the Reagan administration. Since the Clinton administration contained only three interlocks,
which moreover where either positions in ad-hoc commissions or study groups, this connection seemed not
sufficiently significant and was left out. Administrations that lasted two presidential periods where combined to
keep the graphs and tables as orderly as possible, this, of course, implies some lack of accuracy. The Defense
Policy Board (DPB) (2001-2006), which is an independent Pentagon advisory body, drastically reformed under
the chairmanship of Richard Perle, is also included here and analysed separately because of the influential role it
is said to have had in the crafting of post-9/11 US foreign policy (see e.g. Hersh 2003a; Halper & Clarke 2004;
Dorrien 2004).
19
Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, Woolsey, Armitage, Bolton, Khalilzad, Dobriansky, Kirkpatrick, Quayle, Allen,
Rowen, Rodman, Zoellick.

23
Graph 2: Governmental Affiliations Network

24
From these findings can be concluded that the reach of the neoconservative network into government
is extensive and pervasive, providing a plausible and substantive channel of influence. Table 4 below
provides an overview of the total of interlocks.

Table 4: Governmental affiliations - Interlocking memberships

1 2 3 4
Bush jr DPB Bush sr. Reagan
1 Bush jr. (2001-2006) 21 0 12 15
2 DPB (2001- 2006) 0 8 5 6
3 Bush sr. (1989-1993) 12 5 23 19
4 Reagan (1981-1989) 15 6 19 34

The total number of interlocks with Republican administrations ranges from a total of 34 in the
Reagan administration, 23 in the Bush sr. administration, and 29 in the Bush jr administration (incl.
DPB). The latter confirms the suggestion that the project has a longer historical ancestry and makes
the label ‘neo-Reaganite’ seem increasingly appropriate. Looking at quantity only, these figures in fact
seem to indicate a decreasing influence over time. However, taking into account the qualitative aspect
of it reveals that the actors in the G.W. Bush administration in general hold more influential and
powerful positions compared to the Reagan period. On the other hand it tells something about the
relation between agency and structure. First of all, the active and prolonged agency that is needed to
promote certain ideas. Secondly, that whereas the presence of neoconservatives in Republican
administrations has been quite constant, it was the interplay with crucial structural shifts and agency,
ideas and interests that produced the particular shift in US foreign policy that we are analysing here.
Hitherto we have been able to distinguish and visualize a patterned channel of influence from
the level of ideas at the private institutional level to the state level, established and mediated through
agency. In the next section we will look closer at how this patterned channel of influence translated the
neoconservative ideas into official US foreign policy by analysing the route that neoconservative
grand strategy has taken throughout time.

Grand Strategy Route

During the 1990s various ad-hoc ‘projects’ have taken place at both the public and the private level
that foreshadowed post-9/11 grand strategy. These ad-hoc projects generated reports, or advocacy
statements, with the explicit aim to influence US foreign policy. If we want to establish a direct
relation between these formulations of grand strategy and official US post-9/11 grand strategy, there
should be 1) an overlap in content and 2) a plausible connection to the level of official foreign
policymaking. In order to see if both these conditions existed we will identify those actors from our

25
network that participated in a selection of the most significant of these ad-hoc study projects and
analyse their interlocks with the G.W. Bush administration.20 Two of them deserve special attention:
In the early 90s a memorandum was ordered from then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
The report, coined the 1992 ‘Defense Policy Guidance’, was supervised by Wolfowitz (then Deputy
Secretary of Defence); and with most substantial input coming from Lewis Libby (then Cheney’s
Chief of Staff). Its intention was to ‘help “set the nation’s direction for the next century”’ calling for
‘concerted efforts to preserve American global military supremacy and to thwart the emergence of a
rival superpower in Europe, Asia or the former Soviet Union’ (Gellman 1992). The ideas that were
expressed in this document however clearly were ahead of their time (cf Gaddis, Frontline 2003b): an
emphasis on the US as a global leader; the importance of deterring potential competitors; advocating
ad-hoc coalitions under supervision of the US rather than enduring institutionalized co-operations; the
selective addressing of ‘wrongs’ that threaten US interests; a geopolitical focus on the Middle East and
Southwest Asia and the region previously under Soviet influence (i.e. Caucasus, Central Asia) and the
proclaimed goal to retain influence in these regions and preserve access to its energy sources.21 Indeed,
when the Pentagon document leaked to the press it provoked so much controversy that the original
proposal was quickly withdrawn.22
Nearly ten years later, the PNAC report ‘Rebuilding Americas Defenses’, strategically released
in the 2000 election year, states in its introduction to build further upon the shelved DPG 1992 draft
and is intended as ‘a roadmap for the nation’s immediate and future defense plans’ (PNAC 2000: ii,
iii), expecting that it ‘might have a more receptive audience now than in recent years’ (ibid.).The
report proceeds from ‘the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global
leadership by maintaining the pre-eminence of U.S. military forces’, which in turn requires a
substantial increase of the defence budget. The main military missions now should contain the
threefold tasks of: 1) securing and expanding the zones of democratic peace; 2) deter the rise of new
great-power competitors, and; 3) exploit the transformation of war (i.e. technological revolution). The
report also contains a straightforward strategy with respect to Iraq and the Middle East Region: ‘the
need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of
Saddam Hussein’ (ibid:14). Also the new ‘axis of evil’ (i.e. North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria)
is in this report already frequently highlighted.

20
The projects included are: the Rumsfeld 1998 Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the
U.S.; the Center for Peace and Security in the Gulf, which in 1998 which produced an advocacy statement to
overthrow Hussein; the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) team, producing the ‘Study on Rationale and
Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control’ in 2001; the RAND Transition 2001 Panel, which provided
a guide for the next president to lead the country into the coming century; the PNAC volume ‘Present Dangers:
Crisis and Opportunity in American Defense and Foreign Policy’ (2000) a key representative volume of
neoconservative foreign policy thought; the PNAC report: ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences’ (2000); and the
1992 Defense Policy Guidance (DPG).
21
The original memorandum is classified, but The New York Times published some excerpts of the initial draft
of Febr. 18 1992
22
Cheney produced a revised and sanitized version, the ‘1993 Regional Defense Strategy’, see for a comparison
between the two Tyler (1992).

26
 The fact that all of these ideas were later implemented in the grand strategy of the Bush
administration is certainly no coincidence, as is demonstrated by our network analysis. Graph 4,
below, contains what is labelled here a ‘Grand Strategy Route’ which shows a mapping of the
involved actors in the above outlined projects, and their interlocks with the G.W. Bush administration,
the Defense Policy Board (DPB) and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI).23

Graph 3: Grand Strategy Route

To highlight a few examples, we can read from this graph that:

- Of all those involved in at least one of these study projects, twenty-two hold a position in the
Bush administration, many of them on crucial Defence, National Security and Intelligence
positions (see also Table 1 in appendix, p. 7).

- Of the principal actors involved in the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance Draft, all three have
(had) high level positions in the Bush administrations. Two of them were involved in the
drafting of ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’; one of them was also a signatory of the 1998
Center for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG) letter to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and
member of the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission.

- Of those eighteen involved in the PNAC studies ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ and
‘Present Dangers’, eleven are affiliated with the Bush administration; six were affiliated with
the Committee of Liberation of Iraq (CLI); six were signatories of the 1998 CPSG letter to
overthrow Hussein.

- Of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) members, five are affiliated with the Bush
administration, and seven of them were involved in the PNAC reports. And of all the

23
The DPB because of its aforementioned influential role in the formulation of post-9/11 foreign policy
and the CLI because it is the advocacy group most directly dedicated to the post-9/11 policy with respect to Iraq.

27
 signatories of the 1998 Center for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG) advocacy letter,
thirteen interlock with the Bush administration, of which three are seated in the Defence
Policy Board.

This rather complicated web of interlocking relations does give us two important overall suggestions:
(1) it illuminates the extensive amount of direct interaction that has been taking place between a
substantive number of actors within subsets of the network; (2) it does indicate that through these
interactions at the private institutional level, ideas and concrete policy proposals have been
disseminated and can be directly linked to actual foreign policy making.

9/11 A Window of Opportunity

‘We’re at war’ was the first reaction of President Bush to Vice President Cheney on the phone after
the news of the 9/11 attacks had reached him (Woodward 2002:17). In the turmoil that reigned in the
days after, it seems that neoconservatives in- and outside government have done everything within
their power to fill that statement with their preferred content. The process of the tumultuous
developments in the post-9/11 first weeks has been excellently and extensively described by others
and we will therefore refrain from reiterating that here (see e.g. Halper &Clarke 2004 129-131;
Dorrien 2004, ch 4: Woodward 2002, 2004). Indeed, it is by now common wisdom that the
neoconservatives have skilfully used the ‘window of opportunity’ that was provided by the tragic and
shocking events of 9/11, to implement what prior to 9/11 in the eyes of many (also within the
administration) had looked as a rather unrealistic and far too extremist foreign political programme
and forged it into a comprehensive paradigm for US foreign policy within a couple of weeks. The
reverberation of their influence is most explicitly conveyed in the speeches of the president shortly
after 9/11 which were subsequently enshrined in the official US National Security Strategy of 2002
(NSS 2002) to be analysed more closely in the next section. What the above analysis has shown is
how this influence has been facilitated through long-term and recurrent active promotion of these ideas
and a widespread network of institutional and governmental channels, spanning across the American
state-society complex. In addition, we embedded our analysis in a theoretical perspective by
interpreting it as the construction of a hegemonic project by neoconservative agency and ideas.
The remaining question is how this neoconservative hegemonic project relates to an
accumulation strategy. In order to assess this we will below explore whether a link can be established
between the neoconservative network, their grand strategy, and particular corporate interests /
strategies, in terms of: 1) the network’s possible corporate affiliations, 2) the promotion of particular
corporate interests over others as a direct result of the strategy, and 3) support to the strategy in terms
of campaign finance. In other words, we will examine to what extent the neonconservative hegemonic
project is in fact supported by and expressive of a set of dominant capitalist class interests, and to what
extent those interests are similar to that which have usually been associated with neoliberalism.

28
Corporate Affiliations, Corporate Interests?

A mapping of the corporate affiliations of the members of our network revealed that 60 % has (had)
direct corporate affiliations.24 The total of interlocks amounts to 94 (including almost 80 different
corporations). We therefore clustered the affiliated corporations by sector, as can be seen in Graph 6
below. The colour of the nodes expresses the actor’s degree, i.e. their number of ties with the
corporate world compared to the total of corporate interlocks, the thickness of the tie expresses the
strength of each actor’s connection to a particular sector (which can be several). The exact overall
distribution of corporate interlocks is: Defense 28; Finance 20; Technology 14; Lawfirms 14; Energy
7; Media 4; Miscellaneous 3; Non-Profit 4.25

Graph 4: Network of clustered sectors of industry with affiliated actors

24
Included were e.g. positions at Boards of Directors, Advisory Boards, and CEO’s in the period 1989 – to 2003
(some of which extend into the present). The charting of the actors’ corporate affiliations was not based on a
prefixed selection but proceeded in an exploratory fashion. Since there was no opportunity to interview or survey
the actors, only those affiliations could be included which were actually made public, which might make the
selection slightly biased. It seems however reasonable to assume that the corporate affiliations that these actors
have made public give a robust indication of their corporate involvements and allows us to distinguish some
broader trends within the network.
25
Although we don’t think it plausible that narrow interests within for instance the defence industry
solely are the main drive behind the neoconservative projects’ strategy, it remains interesting that the link with
defence is so substantial, a finding that certainly deserves further research.

29
All in all the mapping of corporate affiliations of the network reveals that: 1) the network does display
a substantial overlap with the private corporate level; 2) it reaches out to a broad spectrum of corporate
sectors, of which a substantial part are large corporations, often multinationals;26 3) it also shows that
there are strong connections to powerful players in for example the defence industry. This last point
might indicate what some claim to be a ‘conflict of interest’ between current US politics and corporate
interests.27 But apart from a couple of concrete examples of ‘conflicts of interests’ it remains difficult
to claim a direct causal connection between the interests represented by these sectors of industry (or
individual corporations) and the ideas and policies represented by their involved actors, either at the
institutional private level or at the public level. Most often, actors who take a public position leave
their functions in the private corporate sector precisely to avoid (the impression of) direct conflicts of
interest.
Whereas it would seem unwarranted, on the basis of these data, to conclude that narrow
interests, in for example the defence industry, solely influenced the strategy of the Bush administration
(but see Bichler & Nitzan 2004; 1995; 1996), it is clear that dominant sections of US capital have
formed part of the drive behind the current US strategy: An overview of the reconstruction contracts in
Iraq received from US Department of Defence in 2003-2004 for instance reveals that from the total of
contractors for reconstruction tasks in Iraq the lion share are US based multinational corporations.
Another striking fact is that of those corporations several are directly affiliated to the neoconservative
network we have identified (e.g. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Science Applications
International Corp., Dyncorp International, Halliburton Inc. through Kellogg, Brown and Root).28 The
Center for Public Integrity has estimated the total amount of post-war contracts to US corporations (ca
150) in Iraq and Afghanistan to be around $ 48,7 billion.29 At least in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan,
it seems legitimate to conclude that US corporate interests have benefited considerably from the
regime change. It also illuminates the twin aspects of regime change and implementation of free
market principles and makes clear that it is not only the principles that are implemented but also the
corporate interests themselves.

26
To get a sense of the size of the corporations affiliated to our network, Fortune 500 notations were
included, with as a hallmark the year 2000. It turned out that of the total of affiliated corporations, seventeen had
a Fortune 500 notation, which is almost 20% of the network.
27
There has been controversy, for example, around an asserted conflict of interest with former
Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney (CNN 2003b). And Richard Perle did resign from his function as chairman of the
Defense Policy Board in 2003, due to officially raised accusations of a conflict of interest with respect to one of
his affiliated corporations, Global Crossing Ltc (see e.g. CNN 2003; BBC 2003).
28
The Halliburton case is particular controversial; as the company received a $ 7 billion reconstruction
contract for Iraq that was closed about a week prior to the start of the war, without submission for official bid or
congressional notification. After disclosure of this unethical proceeding the contract was announced to be
replaced. However, at that time Halliburton had already received a $ 1,5 billion (Center for Public Integrity
2006, CNN 2003b).
29
See for overview awarded contracts and grants fiscal years 2003-2004, U.S. Department of State 2006,
http://www.export.gov/iraq/market_ops/contracts.html, for amounts and corporations see Center for Public
Integrity, http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro.

30
 This should also be seen in a broader perspective of the expansion of a particular accumulation
regime. Considering the fundamental work that is being done under the supervision of these
corporations (from education and media activities, the organization of water, electricity and energy
resources, to security and training of the military) it seems that a regime with a thoroughly neoliberal
socio-economic foundation is on its way to be installed in Iraq.
As many critical IPE scholars have pointed out (e.g. Stokes 2005; Woods 2003; Panitch &
Gindin 2005, Harvey 2003); there need not necessarily be a contradiction between US capital and non-
US transnational capital since, taken the predominant position the US (still) inhabits in the world
economy, ensuring and enhancing US capitalist interests at the same time implies the enhancement of
transnational capitalist interests. And although the US in the neoconservative vision is envisaged to
have a pre-eminent place in the global economy (backed up by a strong and decisive military), it does
not seem that the neoconservative strategy is perceived to be anathema to transnational capital
interests. In fact, the Bush administration has received its largest support from the sector of high
finance, a capital fraction that might be considered representing transnationally mobile and global
capital par excellence. Wall Street icons as Morgan Stanley, Merill Lynch, Goldman Sachs,
Pricewaterhouse Coopers were prime contributors to G.W. Bush 2004 campaign and the financial
sector at large supported him with double the amount that was offered to his strongest democratic
contender. If we interpret this financial support in 2004 as a reaction to the Bush II administration’s
grand strategy it indicates that, in general, the support from the corporate / financial world, including
the most powerful of Wall Street'
s firms, for Bush’s post-9/11 political programme has been quite
high. Whereas these data of course cannot tell us which elements in the Bush strategy they supported
and which not, at least they apparently did not see the foreign policy aspect of it as harming their vital
interests either, since the overall programme of the Bush administration seems to have enlisted their
support irrespective of whether they are endorsing his foreign policy strategy or not.
This might actually be an indication of its hegemonic potential, i.e. as having the potential to
obtain a broad consensus of diverse and distinct social groups in society and unite them into a frame of
reference that is perceived as the general interest. In this sense the neoconservative project, in effect,
has been a powerful illustration of how hegemony through consent – that is, at least at the elite level of
US civil and political society, but also supported by a large part of the US electorate, given Bush'
s re-
election- can be established. A rather extreme programme - which initially did not have much
resonance in mainstream politics nor with the wider public - was being implemented and executed
(almost literally) in just a few years time, and obtained widely shared political and electoral support.

Continuity and Change, how successful as a hegemonic project?

Whereas this seems to indicate the neoconservative project’s ‘success’ in terms of establishing a new
geopolitical strategy in combination with a political formula, and thus a hegemonic project at the

31
national level, it does not seem to coincide with a shift in the accumulation strategy, rather it seems to
be a transformation of the hegemonic project around basically the same accumulation strategy.
Moreover it is questionable whether it will be successful in establishing hegemony internationally /
transnationally. At first sight the grand strategy of the neoconservatives with its emphasis on unilateral
action, US primacy, military dominance and pre-emptive strikes seems coercive rather than
consensual. The term ‘hegemony through consent’ hence seems rather counter-intuitive. It should be
stressed though that hegemony through consent is always underpinned with and accompanied by
violence and coercion and indeed the period of ‘benign hegemony’ as liberal scholars tend to portray
the post-war Pax Americana (cf. Ikenberry 2004 a/b), was marked with many instances of US
aggression beyond its borders. But beside that - and while acknowledging that the neoconservative
turn certainly represented a substantial transformation of US foreign policy, at least in emphasis and
degree; '
taking the unilateralist iron fist out of the multilateral velvet gloves'(Stokes 2005:231), or
more theoretically put, reinforcing the territorial logic - we identify certain elements in this grand
strategy which do seem to have a hegemonic potential, at least within US politics but arguably also
beyond it.
Within the overall neoconservative hegemonic project, the concept of the global war on terror
– as under their influence first most clearly laid out in the US National Security Strategy (NSS 2002) -
is arguably the most ‘grand’ strategic and potentially hegemonic concept. It combines several
elements: First of all, the creation of a new global ‘enemy’ and a redefinition of the security
30
environment / threat. That is; the decision to frame the fight against terrorism as a ‘war’, and
moreover; a war ‘of global reach’. The enemy in this framing ‘is not a single political regime or
person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism’ (NSS 2002:5). This makes ‘the enemy’, on
which a war of global reach is waged, at the same time indistinct and comprehensive: it could be
anything, anywhere. It also gives the possibility to depict dissident political elements (both inside and
outside US borders) as inimical (since terrorists) and hence legitimize repressive action against them.
Moreover, such an ‘omnipotent’ enemy also requires ‘omnipotent’ US military strength and
leadership, and thus legitimizes: first of all, US hegemony, secondly, a drastic reformation of the US
military (NSS 2002:30,6).
The concept of the War on Terror also sets the context for new forms of international and
military cooperation, i.e. flexible, ad hoc ‘coalitions of the willing’, emphasising the need for special
forces that can quickly and adequately intervene in whatever will be identified as ‘unstable’ areas,
instead of large armies and slow, cumbersome multilateral processes (see also Krahmann 2005a/b,
2006 for an interesting perspective on this matter).

30
Without intending to downplay the severity of the problem of terrorism; the fact that the magnitude of
the terrorist threat is - if not manipulated - than at least inflated, speaks from the fact that the ‘new’ terrorist
threat is the least dangerous and causes the least victims compared to other ‘new threats’ as e.g. civil conflict and
aids (Krahmann 2005a/b), the latter which are mentioned in the NSS 2002, but certainly have not instigated any
war yet.

32
 Embedded in the war on terror is also the internationalist / interventionist aspect, which in this
variant is coined a ‘distinctly American internationalism’ and framed as a ‘war of ideas’ with a focus
upon the Muslim world: ‘In the war against global terrorism we are ultimately fighting for our
democratic values and way of life’ (NSS 2002:31). This is ‘a battle for the future of the Muslim
world…a struggle of ideas and…an area where America must excel’ (ibid). It thus sets out a concrete
political and military strategy for the implementation of American values in those parts of the world
where these do not yet prevail, i.e. the Muslim world. And it might be argued - as is frequently and
persuasively done - that the objective of regime change in Iraq lay at the heart of that strategic aim (cf.
Gaddis 2002:55). At the same time this strategy facilitates and legitimizes the expansion of global
capital and neoliberal accumulation strategies to previously closed areas, as has been illustrated in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed the NSS 2002 makes an explicit link between foreign policy and
economic policy, underpinned by an unambiguously neoliberal programme: ‘A strong world economy
enhances our national security by advancing prosperity and freedom in the rest of the world’ (NSS
2002:17), and one the main objectives here is to ‘ignite a new era of global economic growth through
free markets and free trade’ (ibid.).31

IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION

Although it seems unwarranted at this point - and on the basis of the evidence that we have presented
here - to draw any definite conclusions, we expect that many of the above identified elements will
remain key to US foreign policy, even if slightly differently articulated. A brief look at the foreign
policy statements of those presidential candidates still in the race at the moment of writing indicates
that it seems unlikely that they are going to set aside the main elements of the geopolitical strategy as
identified above. They all emphasize the need of a strong and pro-active military; they fully subscribe
to the aim of combating terrorism in similar way as outlined by the Bush administration, indeed, if
necessary, by military force and occupation, as in the cases of Afghanistan, but also with respect to
e.g. Pakistan and Iran. And in spite of much popular rhetoric there is no speedy end to the occupation
of Iraq in sight. Moreover, all of them emphasize the need of prolonged global US leadership and
place US interests as a first and foremost priority. In a more general sense it is the increase of the
salience of security issues and perceived threats to these securities, be it from terrorist attacks, scarcity
of resources, increased competition over those resources, or weapons of mass destruction in the hands
of rogue states or terrorist groups, that have been skilfully moulded by the neoconservative project and
incorporated into this new geopolitical strategy. Providing not only a pretext for a strong, extensive

31
This policy was effectively put into practice by the US Coalition Provisional Authority under the leadership of
Paul Bremer, which between 2003-2004 abolished many tariffs on imports, capped corporate and income tax,
and exposed Iraqi firms to free competition which led to general asset-stripping and the closing down of Iraqi
firms.

33
and active military. But also more generally legitimising a return to a stronger and more pronounced
role of the US'
s territorial power in world affairs – a '
territorial logic'not only buttressing a '
capitalist
logic'
, and supporting global capital accumulation above all to the advantage of US capital, but also
tending to shift the capitalist logic more to the background. This, in particular, represents a shift away
from the neoliberal trend of the 90s, which promoted as much rollback of state interference and state
regulation as possible in favour of the panacea of the global market (forces) and the magic and
benevolent regulatory power of the free markets hidden hand. While our focus has been on the re-
emergence of a geopolitical strategy in this respect, it should be noted that this also includes more
national aspects as a stronger role for the state in restoring domestic order and regulating social issues,
impinging on individual privacy for security reasons, etc.
An answer to the question about the future or enduring potential of the neoconservative
project in terms of creating transnational / global hegemony, naturally can only be highly speculative.
But the global war on terror will not likely come to a soon ending and in spite of much public agitation
and initial souring of the transnational relations over Iraq in fact enjoys broad international support.32
Yet, the neoconservative project’s particular (re)formulation of the territorial logic, while inscribing
the logic of capital into its geopolitical strategy (and aligning it with a neoliberal accumulation
strategy, broadly supported by transnational capital fractions) in the longer run might hurt the
underlying capital logic as well. Most explicitly perhaps due to the Iraq war, the prime
neoconservative enterprize, which, unintended, turned out to become their major stumbling bloc:
Politically, in terms of increasing global anti-American sentiments and strained transatlantic relations
and by eliciting mounting domestic popular resistance and criticism, but also economically. The
insurmountable and rapidly escalating costs incurred by the new geopolitical strategy, in combination
with other fiscal measures during the Bush administration: (e.g. massive tax cuts, artificially low
interest rates, lenient mortgage policy), while initially boosting the economy and certainly stimulating
huge profits for particular sectors of the US economy, in the longer run seriously threatens US macro-
economic position and has recently evoked harsh criticism of e.g. Nobel price winning and former
Worldbank economist Joseph Stiglitz (2008; also Stiglitz & Bilmes 2008). This, then, together with
the overall decline of US competitiveness and its increasingly fragile global financial power (Arrighi
2005a; cf. Cafruny forthcoming) may well turn out to be the Achilles heel of neoconservatism as a
hegemonic project.
But to see this project as one that has already collapsed under the weight of its own
contradictions (again Arrighi 2005a; see also Mann 2004) seems premature. As our analysis of the
neoconservative project has shown, its ideological legacy is rather strong and seems embedded in a
broader, bipartisan, consensus that extends way beyond the original '
epistemic community'of the

32
The international coalition on the War against Terrorism in fact counts a total of 65 nations, among which:
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Japan,
Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, Turkey (US Central Command, 2006, Coalition main page).

34
neocons. This might then be one of the longer lasting effects of the agency of the neoconservative
networks, even after they have themselves dissolved or have been forced out of the White House.
Second, the (geo-)political and geo-economic structural conditions – in particular as related to what
we have identified as the contradictions of neoliberal globalization – that have enabled the rise of the
neoconservative project, are still in place. Third, and finally, even if the next President would want to
extract him or herself from the new commitments that the US has taken on out of its new militant
internationalism, it will be very hard to do so in practice (and this includes exiting from Iraq). The
long war, as made by a coherent group of neoconservative intellectuals initially outside the
mainstream of US politics, aided by the hegemonic crisis of the neoliberalism of the 1990s, and
supported by significant sections of US capital equally perceiving the new threats to the order upon
which their power rests, thus seems far from over.

35
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41
 APPENDIX
Table 5: Overview PNAC Network – total affiliations
Affiliation G.W. Bush Administration Institu- Govern- Grand Corpo-
(2001-2006, incl Defense Policy Board) tional mental Strategy rate
Aff Aff. Aff. Aff.
Special ass. President; Sr. Director for M. East &N. African
Abrams, Elliot Affairs; Sr. Dr. Democracy, Human Rights & Intern. Op. 12 2 4 0
Allen, V. Richard Defense Policy Board 7 3 2 2
Armitage, Richard Deputy Secretary of State 2001-2005 1 3 2 1
Bauer, Gary 1 1 0 1
Bennett, William J. 6 2 1 0
Bergner, Jeffrey Ass. Secretary legisl. affairs US Depart of State 2005- 1 1 2 1
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International
Bolton, John R. Security 2001-2005; permanent repr. to UN 2005- 3 2 2 1
Bork, Ellen 1 1 0 0
Bush, Jeb 0 1 0 1
Cheney, Dick Vice-President 3 2 2 1
Cohen, Eliot A. Defense Policy Board 6 2 3 1
Cross, D. Gaffney Defense Policy Board 2 1 2 3
Decter, Midge 8 0 0 0
Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs 2001-2005;
Dobriansky, Paula Under Secr of State for Democracy and Global Affairs 2005- 6 3 2 1
Donnelly, Thomas 3 1 1 2
Eberstadt, Nicholas 3 0 2 0
Forbes, Steve 6 0 0 1
Vice President’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Vice
Friedberg, Aaron President’s Director of Policy Planning 1 1 2 0
Fukuyama, Francis President's Council on Bioethics 2001-2005 5 2 1 0
Gaffney, Frank J. 4 1 1 0
Gedmin, Jeffrey 3 2 2 0
Gerecht, R. Marc 2 0 1 0
Undersecretary of State Democracy and Global Affairs
Gerson, Mark 2001-present 0 2 1 2
Gouré, Daniel Department of Defense Transition Team 2001 3 2 2 3
Hill, Charles 1 1 0 0
Iklé, Fred C. Defense Policy Board 5 2 3 4
Jackson, Bruce P. 9 0 1 3
Kagan, Donald 1 0 1 0
Kagan, Robert 6 1 3 0
National Security Council Senior Director for the Gulf 2001-
2003; Ambassador to Afghanistan 2003; US Ambassador to
Khalilzad, Zalmay Iraq Bagdhad 2005- 2 3 3 1
Kirkpatrick, Jeane U.S. Representative to the UN Human Rights Comm. 2003 12 3 2 0
Kristol, William 6 2 3 2
Lagon, Mark Staffer in Office of Policy and Planning 3 2 2 0
Commissioner: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Lehman, John Upon the U.S 2002-2004 4 1 1 10
Libby, Lewis Vice Presidents Chief of Staff (resigned 2005) 2 3 4 2
McKivergan, Daniel 1 0 0 0
Defense Policy Board (chairman –resigned 2003) Consultant
Perle, Richard to Secretary of Defense 10 2 4 5
Podhoretz, Norman 6 1 0 0
Quayle, Dan Defense Policy Board 2 3 1 6
Rodman, Peter W. Assistant Defense Secretary for International Security 5 3 3 1
Rosen, Stephen P. 1 0 1 0
Rowen, Henry R. Defense Policy Board 2 3 1 0
Rumsfeld, Donald Secretary of Defense 7 1 3 7
Scheunemann, R. Office Secretary of Defense, Consultant on Iraq policy 2001 3 2 2 3
Schmitt, Gary 6 1 3 1
Schneider, William Defense Science Board 4 2 3 4
Weber, John V 3 2 0 0
Weigel, George 3 0 0 0
Deputy Secretary of Defense 2001-2005; President World
Wolfowitz, Paul Bank 2005- 7 3 6 1
Woolsey, James Defense Policy Board 9 3 4 16
Zakheim, Dov S. Department of Defense Comptroller 6 2 4 4
Zoellick, Robert Deputy Secretary of State 2005-2006; US Trade Rep. 2 3 1 3
Executive Office of the President 2001- 2005
Source: Who’s Who 2006, International Relations Center 2006, biographies, membership rosters, participant overviews, annual reports of
the affiliations.

42