Neo-conservatism 'in shambles,' says one of its architects

How much has the Iraq aggression discredited neo-conservatism? So thoroughly that even a primary architect of the ideology has disavowed it.

Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.

In his new book, Fukuyama wrote:

"The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism," he argues.

"Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally."

He said it, not me.


Update: Fukiyama explains his transformation in this NPR interview. Apparently, he complains that his ideal of neo-conservativism has been over-militarized by its current practioners. While his change of heart is certainly welcome, it was a bit naive of him to have believed otherwise. The use of military force to achieve foreign policy objectives has been a staple of American affairs in the world as far back as the Barbary Wars of the 1790s.