Neoconservatism 1.0 was all about invading the Middle East and creating "flourishing democracies" like this one:
It also involved a fair amount of dabbling in Colour Revolutions, mainly at the expense of Russia's much-reduced post-Soviet sphere of influence. You may remember some of them:
Sorry, that is a still from a zombie movie. I meant this one:
But that's old hat.
Neoconservatism, like anything else, needs to constantly update itself in order to survive. Here is a microscopic picture of a Superbug that "updated" itself to survive.
Neoconservatism, like anything else, needs to constantly update itself in order to survive. Here is a microscopic picture of a Superbug that "updated" itself to survive.
For anybody who is currently studying microbiology, this one is Gonorrhoea. So, how is Neoconservatism going to evolve to make its home in the new age?
Some clues were divulged in a recent interview given by Trump's former right-hand man and now media "wing man," Steven Bannon in Bloomberg Businessweek’s October 2017 edition.
Apparently Neocon 2.0 will be all about the "pivot to Asia" and dealing with what Bannon sees as the threat to the US global empire posed by China. I mean look how close they put their borders to our military bases (again):
Apparently Bannon has been consulting "geopolitical genius" Henry Kissinger, who ironically helped set China on the path to greatness by preparing the groundwork for the "Chimerica" relationship that saw China grow into the World's leading industrial nation.
Chinese factory:
American factory:
So, what has Bannon been learning at the feet of "The Master"?
“If we don’t get our situation sorted with China, we’ll be destroyed economically,” Bannon says in the interview. “The forced technology transfer of American innovation to China is the single biggest economic and business issue of our time. Until we sort that out, they will continue to appropriate our innovation to their own system and leave us as a colony—our Jamestown to their Great Britain, a tributary state.”
In this great Neocon re-awakening, Bannon sees his role in terms of the revival of the Committee on the Present Danger. This was a Cold War-era lobbying group that was revived in 1976 and used to push for a more hawkish approach to the Soviet Union in the Carter and Reagan years, against the prevailing mood of détente.
Speaking about the Committee's key role in the 70s and 80s, Bannon says:
“They understood that you couldn’t do it from inside. You had to go outside and, like a fire bell in the night, wake up the American people.”
People in the Trump administration like Goldman Sachs "old boys" Steven Mnuchin (Treasury Secretary) and Gary Cohn (Trump’s top economic adviser) want to go easy on China because of fears of a trade war. Also, Trump is relying on Chinese cooperation to deal with North Korea's new nuclear arsenal.
Bannon sees his role as looking beyond those lesser concerns to the bigger picture of growing Chinese influence in the World.
“We are in advance discussions about having Breitbart sponsor a major security conference in sub-Saharan Africa, the Persian Gulf, central Europe, and East Asia, in early to mid-2018,” he says.
These conferences would be aimed at countering Chinese influence in these regions.
As with Neoconservatism 1.0 there are some plausible half-truths in the new Neoconservative vision. But, having seen how the first version worked out, we'll have to take a rain check on this Bannon-led revamp of Neoconservatism 2.0. After all, what Shakespeare once said about England applies even better to the USA:
