National Security Strategy made clear, the U.S. seeks to ‘defend the peace by fighting
terrorists and tyrants… [and] extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies
on every continent’ (White House 2002). Given the neocons’ lament on China’s
Communist rule, it is not difficult to figure out which side they would put China in this
global moral crusade. While the ‘War on Terror’ has helped overcome some differences
between Beijing and Washington, many neocons believe that this does not alter
America’s fundamental difference from China. Aaron Friedberg (2002: 44), for
example, maintained that the U.S.-China differences ‘are as wide as they were before
September 11 and, in some cases, even wider’. In this sense, it seems only logical for
the neocons to treat China as an adversary rather than a worthy partner in the long run.
To understand how the neocons might envisage the trajectory of U.S.-China relations in
a post-Iraq era, Krauthammer’s observation of the U.S.-Soviet alliance after the Second
World War is instructive. This alliance, he wrote, ‘was a necessary alliance, and a
temporary one: when we were done with Hitler, we turned our attention to Stalin and
his successors’ (Krauthammer 2005: 25). With now the Iraq war going nowhere, it
seems likely that the neocons may turn their attention to China. Dubbed ‘the only Great
Power threat on the horizon’ (Boot 2005b), China can provide a rallying cry for a group
now divided over the Iraq debacle and desperately in search of a new enemy.
To be sure, if the neocons suffer a deficit of credibility in their test case of Iraq, as it
now appears to be the case, their political clout in Washington may well be called into
question (Ikenberry 2004a; Wright 2004: A01; Hadar 2004). Indeed, the neocons have
faced mounting criticisms, some even from within (see Rosen 2005), prompting the
speculation of a split in the neoconservative camp. For example, the high-profile
neoconservative supporter Francis Fukuyama (2006) recently accused neocons of going
down a Leninist path in their promotion of liberty and democracy. Consequently, he
declared that neoconservatism ‘has evolved into something I can no longer support’.
And yet, upon a closer look, it is evident that Fukuyama is not against neoconservatism
per se, but rather against the overly militant version of neoconservatism as advocated by
people like Krauthammer and Kristol. This particular version, he fears, may discredit
the core idealistic principle of neoconservatism, thereby allowing cynical realism and
isolationism to rear their ugly heads. In this sense, Henry R. Nau (2004/05: 23) believes
that such divisions among conservatives are ‘not fatal but actually helpful’. As it turns
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Convention