Neoconservatives Are The Intellectual Descendants Of Those Who Thought Reagan Was Soft On Communism

By Kleinheider Posted on June 9, 2008 at 7:01 am

Jonathan Chait points out neoconservatism’s true pedigree:

In fact, during the cold war there were three camps: anti-interventionists on the left, liberal internationalists in the center, and hard-line anti-communists on the right. The left opposed the cold war. The center favored containment. The right deemed coexistence with communism unacceptable and advocated “rollback” of communism.

Lieberman’s foreign policy views are in the tradition of the right, not the center. In the 1990s, he promoted “rogue state rollback,” a neoconservative doctrine that’s the direct lineal descendant of cold war rollback. Right-wing anti-communist hardliners opposed negotiations or arms control agreements with the enemy and, at various points, raged against Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan for their soft line.

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