The Fukuyama connection

Guido Fawkes has an extremely insightful posting on the Cameron speech. He suggests that it owes a big intellectual debt to Francis Fukuyama's After the Neocons. Having read both together last night, I am sure he is right, at least about content if not structure.

Some of Guido's commenters appear to think that revealing Cameron's reading list is a "gotcha" moment. Peter Hitchens (update: it's worth making it clear that this is not the journalist Peter Hitchens) even absurdly links it to an assertion that David Cameron will never be Prime Minister. He may, of course, be right about this, but I doubt the Fukuyama copyright issue will be a big one by the election.

Yet while I can't see anything wrong with getting ideas by reading a book, the Fukuyama connection does raise two important questions.

First, Guido argues that since Fukuyama opposes the Iraq war, Cameron's support for it, having accepted so many other Fukuyama points, is a "dodgy conclusion". Yet Fukuyama's disapproval of the Iraq adventure was not his conclusion. It was his starting point. Cameron's starting point was simply different. Also, being American, Fukuyama does not reflect on one of the main reasons Tony Blair (and British Conservatives) supported the Iraq war - we were asked for our support by an American president and were keen to be good allies.

Nevertheless, Guido's interpretation does leave the question - for all Cameron's Fukuyama type caveats, would the Tory leader, in practice, have acted any differently to Tony Blair?

The second issue raised by the Fukuyama link is whether I was right to argue that Cameron made a neocon speech. After all, Cameron says he is something else and Fukuyama does too. Shouldn't I just take their word for it?

Well, the main themes of a Cameron foreign policy - including promoting freedom round the world and the notable omission of any reference to the national interest or realpolitik - seem to me undeniably neocon. Even his addition of patience and humility chime with the earliest neocon writings on domestic policy.

Fukuyama simply believes that the conduct of the Bush regime has led to the neocon label being tainted, tangled up with, say, Rumsfeld's views about troop deployment (as this Times leader argues). And even though Rumsfeld is not a neocon, Fukuyama decides to leave him with the label and move on. For understandable reasons, Cameron has done the same. But the choice of label doesn't alter the speech's thrust.

Comments

[Guido Fawkes]

Neo-Conservatism is just so last year.

Liberal Conservatism is where it is at now.

[Guy Walters]

NB. As I'm sure you're aware, but others may not be, the 'Peter Hitchens' who regularly comments on Guido, is not THE Peter Hitchens.

[leon]

I think DC's "I'm no Neo Con" statement is very interesting but potentially short lived. We'll see just how brave he is once in power and being lent on by a superpower to follow policy...

[PETER HITCHENS]

How can you state in one breath..
"Peter Hitchens even absurdly links it to an assertion that David Cameron will never be Prime Minister"
Followed immediately by
"He may, of course, be right about this"
You contradict yourself.
If anybody has been "got" It's you Danny (+:
Best Wishes