More than anything else, the invasion of Iraq and subsequent nation-building project there served to unify these two strains of conservative foreign policy thinking. For neoconservatives, invading Iraq would be a vindication of their theories of hegemony, and a democracy aligned with the United States and Israel against Iran would enhance U.S. power and interests. Conservative nationalists, on the other hand, saw a potentially nuclear-armed Iraq that could give those weapons to terrorists as an intolerable threat-particularly after 9/11.
While they normally find nation-building projects anathema, conservative nationalists supported the post-invasion war out of the fear that terrorists would somehow follow the United States home if it left Iraq. As President Bush put it, "The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad."
President Bush was able to unify these not altogether dissimilar two positions by virtue of being president and therefore being able to definitively set the conservative foreign policy agenda. As conservative foreign policy scholar Colin Dueck writes, "To a remarkable extent, when one party controls the White House, that party's foreign policy is what the president says it is."
While there is no indication President Bush ever really embraced the grand neoconservative theory of benign American hegemony, he did fuse neoconservative rhetoric on freedom and democracy with a broadly conservative nationalist foreign policy.
It should not come as a surprise, then, that conservative foreign policy thinking began to crack up without presidential leadership. Conservative nationalists became more wary of the broad implications of the neoconservative project, while neoconservatives and their conservative nationalist fellow travelers warned of the dangers of retreating from a maximalist conservative nationalist or neoconservative concept of America's world role.
This conservative crack up has come to a head as President Obama made the twin decisions to intervene in Libya and begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. The decision of 87 House Republicans-including presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-MN)-to oppose the war in Libya has caused paroxysms among neoconservatives and maximalist conservative nationalists. The Wall Street Journal editorial board labeled those who voted for a resolution cutting off funds for military operations in Libya "Kucinich Republicans," while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) blasted conservative opponents of the Libya war as "isolationist."
Similarly, expressing doubts over the military mission in Afghanistan has earned the ire of the conservative foreign policy elite. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's highly qualified statement in a recent Republican presidential debate supporting an eventual turnover of security responsibility to Afghan forces led former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen to pen a column decrying "the GOP flirtation with retreat in Afghanistan."
But the intraconservative charge of isolationism stings. Washington Times columnist Tony Blankely defended Romney and other pessimists on Afghanistan against charges of isolationism. Washington Post columnist George Will went on the offensive, charging McCain-and by implication the broader neoconservative and maximalist conservative nationalist foreign policy elite-with advocating endless war.
The internal divisions between conservatives on foreign policy have come into full bloom over the past few months. Conservative foreign policy elites are aggressively policing wayward behavior and statements from conservative elected officials and candidates that do not comport with either the neoconservative or maximalist conservative nationalist line. Given the aggressiveness of the conservative foreign policy establishment in this policing it is likely that conservatives are heading into an even bigger fight over the nature and scope of their ideological coalition's foreign policy as the campaign season heats up.
