Original Title: The U.S. Army ran away from Afghanistan, and U.S. neo-conservative theory and practice went bankrupt
After more than two decades, spent 2 trillion U.S. dollars and lost thousands of American soldiers’ lives, the United States began to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. It is not so much that the United States takes the initiative to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, it is better to say that withdrawal is a helpless choice for the United States.
When the large-scale U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan ended, the theory of American neoconservatives also went bankrupt in Afghanistan, the last test field.
The Connotation and Essence of American Neo-conservatism
American neo-conservativism (Neo-conservativism) gradually entered the stage of history in the late 1980s, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, neo-conservativism was ready to move, trying to export the American political system to the world, and strive to promote others. The country’s regime change is trying to use the US political system as a template to promote the US system around the world.
After the “September 11” terrorist attack in the United States, neoconservatism seized the opportunity to sell such ideas at home. If the threat to the domestic security of the United States is to be eliminated in the world, the US political system and regime change must be promoted throughout the world. Naturally, it started with being listed as a country supporting terrorism by the Bush Jr. administration.
The groups holding neo-conservative ideas have the following characteristics.
First of all, although this group is small in number, it is an elite group of intellectuals, many of which are Jewish intellectuals. The core members of neoconservatism include Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset (Seymour Martin Lipset), Nathan Glazer (Nathan Glazer) and later leftist intellectuals Irving Howe (Irving Howe) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Daniel) Patrick Moynihan) and so on.
Some people in this group hold faculty positions in prestigious schools, and they write books saying that some people hold important positions in think tanks or magazines. In addition, there are a group of “elites” with neoconservative ideas who serve as senior officials in government departments. For example, Dick Cheney is the Vice President of the Bush Administration, and Donald Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense. , Paul Wolfowitz (Paul Wolfowitz) served as Deputy Minister of Defense. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld played important roles in the policy-making of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War after the “September 11” incident, and became the most influential secretary of defense in the history of the United States. Therefore, this group has great influence.
Second, the ideological profile of this group has the following characteristics. They are New Deal liberals economically, and they agree with the government’s policies to intervene in the economy, redistribute income to a certain degree, and provide certain social benefits. They believe that government is not just a necessary evil, but that government power also has a good side. It was precisely by using the powerful power of the government that the United States defeated Germany and Japan in World War II and brought an ethical end to the Second World War; it was through the use of government power to implement the Western European Renaissance Project that it contained the influence of the Soviet Union. Expansion in Europe.
This group calls themselves liberals politically, partly because of their own experience, their relatively grassroots background, and after hard work, they became the “elite” in the industry they are engaged in, so they have a good impression of the capitalist system. At the same time, they are cultural conservatives. Neo-conservatives especially emphasize the importance of culture. They believe that the economic structure and political system of a society are based on cultural values, and that culture is the foundation of social progress and stability. , Believes that culture provides a behavioral framework for a person’s actions.
Third, neoconservatives are not only cultural conservatives, they are also proud of American traditional cultural values, believing that they are the foundation of American political freedom and economic prosperity. This cultural conservatism of neoconservatives is combined with their own transformation from a pro-Soviet leftist to an active anti-communist rightist. The result is that they become neo-imperialists trying to promote regime change on the international stage. The more you think your own system is superior, the easier it is to “educate” others as your mission. The method is not through voluntary and free communication, but to bestow others in the way they consider effective governance. And realize it”.
Fourth, the fundamental reason why neo-conservatives become a neo-imperialist who promotes political revolutions everywhere lies in their views on the regime. Known as the godfather of neoconservatism, Leo Strauss argued in his article “The Crisis of Modern Natural Rights” that the nature of the political system, that is, the nature of political power, has a decisive influence on social customs and moral concepts. The regime constitutes and reflects a wide range of lifestyles, and regimes that brutally rule their own citizens will not be responsible partners on the international stage. Therefore, the change of regime is undoubtedly the best way to solve the problem of drawing wages from the bottom of the enemy’s situation.
The practical consequences of neo-conservatism
After the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, neo-conservatives were full of confidence in their own theories. Neo-conservative Francis Fukuyama declared in his 1992 book “The End of History and the Last Man” that history will end with American capital. The era of liberalism and democracy has entered a time to change the world according to American tastes. At the same time, other neoconservatives also advocated a “unilateralist” foreign policy.
After the “September 11” terrorist attack in the United States, the neo-conservatives found a testing ground for their theory. The United States used anti-terrorism to initiate the war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaida and the Taliban, and used Iraq’s refusal to hand in chemical weapons as an excuse to take the opportunity to eliminate the anti-US Iraqi regime. In the process of launching the war, the same neo-conservative Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, and Vice President Cheney played a very important role in the formulation of the war strategy of the Bush administration. President Bush himself declared that the purpose of the war was regime change. Bush said naively, “No matter which country you are in, the love for (American) democracy is a common nature of people.” Therefore, he believes that the Taliban and Saskatchewan will be overthrown. After the Dham regime, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq will inevitably appreciate and worship the U.S. military as a liberator.
However, in the nine-year Iraq War, the United States brought far from prosperity to Iraq, but suffering. Various factions in Iraq have plunged into civil war, and new extremist organizations such as the “Islamic State” have emerged in the Middle East. After the U.S. government’s war on terrorism fell into the quagmire, Fukuyama and others began to revise their views. For example, he believed that neo-conservatives had ignored a core concept of conservative thinking, that is, “Ambitious social engineering is dangerous… The introduction of a principle into the field of foreign policy should be cautious in the expectation of political change.” Huntington also concluded, “It is immoral to think that people in non-Western countries should accept Western values, systems, and culture… If non-Western societies are to be shaped by Western culture again, it will inevitably require Western societies to implement their imperialism again. policy”. At the same time, “this kind of proposition is dangerous for the West, because it may lead to wars between civilizations dominated by core countries, and may lead to the failure of the West.”
Whether it is the so-called “color revolution” or the Iraq war, the theoretical and practical results of neoconservative thinking are notorious. However, judging from President Biden’s speech on the eve of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, he seems to have some illusions about the outcome of the neo-conservative policy. At the White House press conference on July 8, Biden denied that the Taliban had the ability to regain power, but the facts slapped the Biden government severely. One of the “fruits” of the Twenty Years’ War, the Afghan government quickly collapsed after the United States began to withdraw its troops. The Taliban entered the capital Kabul on August 15 and began negotiations with the Afghan government on the peaceful transfer of power. The U.S. embassy had to be transferred to the airport. At the same time, the Biden administration had to increase troops to help evacuate personnel.
The Theoretical Fallacy of Neo-conservatism
The practice of neo-conservatism has brought huge disasters to the world. Neo-conservatism itself is also a wrong theory in terms of epistemology.
Michael Polanyi divides human knowledge into tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Practical knowledge that knows how to act is called tacit knowledge, and explicit knowledge is the abstraction and writtenization of tacit knowledge. Practical tacit knowledge is the foundation of all knowledge and provides guidance for people’s behavior. This kind of knowledge is independent of reason and is basically passed on through cultural traditions such as habits and customs. If tacit knowledge is implicit in cultural traditions, because other countries are different from American cultural traditions, the connotations of tacit knowledge guiding the actions of the people of other countries and the actions of Americans must be different. Since the social system is an abstraction of tacit knowledge, the social system abstracted based on Western cultural traditions must be different from the social system abstracted based on the cultural traditions of other countries.
The system, especially the transplantable system, is a system of explicit knowledge. This knowledge system is the textualization, writing and theorizing of tacit knowledge contained in a culture. Such explicit knowledge must be based and supported by tacit knowledge. The success of a system must be based on the cultural tradition corresponding to this system. The system born in a cultural tradition is transplanted to a completely different cultural tradition. This system will inevitably be overthrown because it is lost. Supported by its cultural traditions. American neoconservatives try to transplant the political system born in American cultural tradition to a country completely different from its cultural tradition. From an epistemological point of view, it will inevitably lead to failure and disaster.
The American troops ran away from Afghanistan. In the past two decades, the United States has produced results that are difficult to swallow in its neo-conservative policies in Afghanistan, the largest post-Vietnam War in Afghanistan. Trying to impose one’s own political system on other countries is epistemologically wrong, and the consequences are serious.
(Zhu Hongda, researcher at the Center for American Studies, East China Normal University)
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