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After recruiting their staff from the most renowned think tanks, the Clinton and Bush administrations succeeded in influencing the public opinion in the US. In this regard, policy advisers from think tanks are not merely viewed as objective scholars who give neutral recommendations to the government, but as policy entrepreneurs who are associated with power blocs, foundations, corporations, and partisan politics. Did the neoconservative Project for a New American Century form an alliance with the Bush Administration?

In the article, the success of the neoconservative think tanks as an advocacy coalition is discussed. For the conservative turn, the alliance of the Christian Right and the neoconservative intellectuals in think tanks (Heritage Foundation and AEI) with the financial elite did not only move the Republican Party to the right, but also tried to manipulate public opinion under the influence of sympathizing media tycoons like Rupert Murdoch (Müller 43-44). Neoconservative papers like the National Journal, the Public Interest, and the American Spectator influence the op-eds of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. Liberal think tanks and their contacts in Congress should be expelled from the government apparatus by losing their donors with the result that the neocons could gain access to the state institutions and leave an imprint on the Clinton administration before the next election (Krugman 182-184).

The Bush Administration

Vice-President Cheney was the key player in the appointment of leading neoconservatives like Abrams, Armitage, Bolton, Wolfowitz, and Perle. Dorrien characterizes Cheney as policy entrepreneur who was highly amenable for neoconservative proposals. Neither Dick Cheney nor Donald Rumsfeld had a neoconservative tenure. Rather, both represented traditional Republican hawks who were receptive to neoconservative views. So both of them had signed the founding charter of the Project for a New American Century. Cheney and Rumsfeld shared its unipolarism and thus were aligned with the neoconservative movement (Dorrien, Imperial Designs 3). Hardline conservatives like Cheney and Rumsfeld would never agree with the balance of power or follow Buchanan in an old-fashioned isolationism. President George W. Bush may be close to the Christian Right and Vice-President Dick Cheney may be considered a fiscal conservative. These two factions rival with the neoconservatives for ideological predominance in the GOP, but both factions are in concord with them in the unilateral foreign policy for the adherence of national interests, increased defense spending, and going it alone.

Though Donald Rumsfeld was no neoconservative, he was closely connected to Paul Wolfowitz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Richard Perle. Indeed, he was a go-between among the neoconservatives, the corporations, and politicians; he partly orchestrated the support of multinationals and arms producers to the neoconservative movement. Big business became the profiteer of neoconservative ideas that legitimized their interests (Velasco 73). Rumsfeld nominated neocons such as Wolfowitz and Feith to senior positions in the DoD (Ibid. 207). The office of the Vice-President, the Pentagon, and the Defense Policy Board were neoconservative strongholds (Dorrien, Imperial Designs 2).

According to Peleg, the assertive hawks Cheney and Rumsfeld influenced George W. Bush’s decisions on foreign policy. In the case of Bush, one can assess that he had the same opinion on neoconservative thinking. In all probability, the President made a decision after consulting his Vice President, while both were increasingly affected by neoconservatives who were incorporated in the Defense and State Departments (Peleg 165). While Bush's speeches often included religious terms, he always stressed his resolve to unilaterally enhance American power. The resolute stance of Bush Jr. was the broadening of his Christian faith based on neoconservatism. The neocons gave him assurance that his failing policies were right, despite the loss of public opinion. In conveying his policies to the electorate, Bush used the neoconservative argumentation that his promotion of liberty and democracy were identical with American interests (Skidmore 209).

The Bush Doctrine, the Neoconservative Concept for Primacy?

In the enforcement of the Pax Americana, neocons were willing to approve tensions in diplomacy and international law: not the entire UN, but its perception as fundament of the 'new world order' would fall. From their perspective, this was a liberal illusion that the UN Security Council could exclusively legitimize the use of force or guarantee peace through international law in cooperation with other organizations (Halper and Clarke 40-47). Moreover, neocons feared that the international institutions might be misused in an absolutely legal and administrative framework to constrain American power by a sovereign world government that strictly followed international law. By implication, neocons are........

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