Conservatism and nuclear blowback

After reading a brief review of Scoblic's new book U.S. vs. Them: How Half a Century of Conservatism has Undermined America's Security, I must say that he makes some good points, but his desire to toss the prefix "neo" in describing the problem with today's conservatives goes too far, in my opinion.

Scoblic believes that the problem we see with today's conservatives isn't "neo" or "new" at all, but has been with us for the past 50 years since the Cold War began. In part, I believe this is true. The Cold War was the left-overs of what American economists thought was a sure way to avoid economic depression - spend government money on the MIC (military-industrial complex). It seemed to have worked (although Higgs rightly points out that it wasn't until about 1947 that war spending showed any signs of economic uplift, and moreover, that the "goods" and "services" produced during wartime are useless once war is over; after all, in peacetime, who needs bullets and fighter planes?), and at that point I think American conservatism began to wear new stripes. And that's one of the gripes I have with Scobilic. Before the Cold War, conservatism was something different, and that's why the neologism "neo-conservative" was born in the 1980s - because the conservatism had changed and began to embrace government spending within the MIC as a conduit for measurable success. When people today make references to "neo-conservatism," at least in libertarian circles, we're mostly making the distinction between pre-Cold War conservatism and the beltway brand of today. So yes, 50 years of conservatism is the reason for today's train-wreck - I agree with him there. But to drop the "neo" part? No way, because my brand of conservatism is pre-Cold War conservatism (non-interventionist, laissez-faire economics, sound monetary policy, states rights, etc.).

That's not to say that his work is a total waste. The best part of his thesis, and I believe worth reading the entire work to find out, is the idea that the nuclear arms race has created a less secure world because now non-nuclear countries are in serious competition to get themselves nuclear weapons capability in order to repel a potential pre-emptive American invasion, ala Iran and North Korea. All the pre-emptive war and interventionist foreign policy of Reagan/Bush has done is create the need for non-nuclear countries to do whatever they can to acquire these weapons in order to prevent an American occupation/invasion/attack. The threat of counter-attack in a nuclear theater is unrealistic. America is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in wartime, and is now policing the world in neo-colonial fashion in order to bolster its trade routes. Japan could not have defended itself that fateful day, but if it had its own nuclear program, I doubt Truman would have ever dropped those two bombs to begin with. So what conservatism has done, according to Scoblic - and I think he's right - is create the need for non-nuclear countries to go nuclear, which threatens world peace and also generates environmental concerns (decommissioning of nuclear refinement, whether for energy or weapons, is costly).

All this could mean, and I hope it does mean, that the greater global proliferation of nuclear arms means that American conservatives will have to step back and reconsider their position as the "sole global superpower" - a PNAC term - and instead develop diplomatic skills to resolve conflicts.