The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994

Ehrman, who teaches history at George Washington University, offers a lucid account of the postwar rise of neoconservatives and their eventual migration from liberal Democrats to Republicans, despite little ideological shift. He begins by tracing the progressive-liberal feud that led anti-communist liberals such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Arthur Schlesinger to affirm the ``vital center.'' The country's late-1960s political convulsions led (especially Jewish) liberals to fight the New Left and Third Worldism in journals such as Commentary. The author devotes a substantial chapter to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the first neocon to move from academia to politics and an unabashed defender of liberal democracy. Neocons such as Jeane Kirkpatrick moved right during the Carter presidency; they made certain gains under Reagan, such as establishing the National Endowment for Democracy, but split over aid to the Nicaraguan contras and over Soviet liberalization. Ehrman suggests there is now no consistent neoconservative policy; still, he says, their new tendency toward realism and a narrow sense of U.S. interests jibes well with an American public perennially wary of commitments abroad. For informed readers. (Apr.)