> Could you give a concise definition?
I would define neoconservatism as the repeated attempt to save the Cold War against its set-backs, to expand and intensify it, and to defend it vigorously on moral grounds.
The first generation (Kristol, Glazer, Moynihan, Podhoretz, etc) arose in 1965 to attack the 60s social and anti-war movements as undermining the moral fiber of the nation, and to attack the welfare state as encouraging this "adversary culture." They developed a foreign policy after 1973 (Tucker, Lacquer, Moynihan, Kirkpatrick), and after 1980 it became the foreign policy of the US under Reagan as they gave up en masse on the Democrats and moved to the Republican party.
Having won that first battle, against those who thought the lesson of Vietnam was that the cold war was bad policy, they faced the same problem in a more virulent form in December 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. How could they continue the basic framework of good against evil -- which they considered essential for the maintenance of the sources of everything good in America (like discipline and moral fiber)? Especially against the onslaught of people clamoring for their peace dividend? Their solution from the beginning (in the 1992 DPG, issued the year after the SU was dissolved) was to declare a new enemy in Terrorism, WMD and anyone who would disrupt control over strategic economic resources (of which the prime if not only example was oil). The problem was convincing anyone this required the same degree of mobilization and expenditure, and that it could ever serve as the basis of a moral crusade.
This was the second generation of neoconservatives, whose core group descended either literally (Kristol, Podhoretz, Pipes) or through having served as aides to the first generation (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Wurmser, Libby). Where their parents and mentors had been differented from plain old conservatives by having once been Democrats and liberals, this second generation was always conservative and was Republican from very early on. This is why the term fell into desuetude during the Reagan administration. Once they ascended to power, the term simply became the equivalent of "fierce cold warrior," meaning someone who believed in rollback rather than containment. And someone who believed the cold war was a crusade that was even more important for our national soul than it was for the people we saved. (The original neoconservative leitmotif -- that the original cold war Truman liberals, with whom they identified, had believed the same thing -- was eventually lost as the meaning of the term "liberal" changed. It came to be identified during the 80s with very social movements which had originally been directed against it. Whose legacy neoconservatives, like all conservatives, railed tirelessly against.)
During the Clinton interregnum, this second generation of neoconservatives were those who saw in the absence of the Soviet Union the god-given opportunity to carry the crusade farther than it had ever gone before: to win the crusade once and for all. And to figure out what the heck that could possibly mean. They ended up developed a jury-rigged body of argument designed to prove that this was both conceivable and possible -- and exhilerating, which was important, since it meant it was crusade material. (This distinguished them from other conservatives who, being opposed to Clinton on principle, therefore opposed his alternative route of refounding the cold war crusade on humanitarian intervention, and spent the 90s pointing out its boggy down side. But they all changed their tunes when Clinton was gone. What they were really against was him running it -- and more importantly, against it being claimed by the liberals. Conservatives could not feel confortable with a moral crusade refounded on 60s anti-racism. But as soon it could be rejoined to the original discipilne and moral fiber argument, they felt they had come home.
The last thing neoconservatives developed during their 8 years in the wilderness of catered luncheons was idea the idea that the hegemonic multilateralism of the cold war was not a model but a corset that had always held the crusade back. In this they differed from both Clinton and Bush Sr. And Gulf War I came for all of them to represent the perfect example of a crusade held back.
Just as the first generation of neoconservatives assumed power in 1980 (largely under the influence of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the taking of hostages in Iran, which put Carter-led liberals at a disadvantage) and re-racheted up the Cold War to unheard of levels (which is where they got the idea that trade and fiscal deficits are great for the economy), the second generation assumed power in 2000, and is using 9/11 to launch and institutionalize its now chosen successor, The War On Terror.
Michael