Contenu du sommaire : Les néo-conservateurs américains

Indo-U.S. Relations: The Past, Present and Future
The first fifty years or so of India-US relations sadly became the decades of discord. While India's aligning with the USSR locked Indo-US relations into adversarial roles, the US appropriated to itself the right of selective policy formulation and application, especially regarding proliferation of nuclear technology. Paradoxically, the great contentions following the nuclear tests of May 1998 played out as the great catalysts that later totally transformed Indo-US relations. The foundations of a strategic and functioning partnership between these “natural allies” that are India and the United States was laid by the Vajpayee government. Following the recent agreement of July 2005, India and the US now display so much more accord that there is enough to keep moving.

Natural Allies: The Transformation of U.S.-India Relations
The July 2005 nuclear agreement proposed to India by President Bush represents a striking departure in American foreign policy. India is no longer seen in Washington as a persistent non-proliferation problem but as an opportunity. The United States now seeks to intensify collaboration with India on the whole range of issues that currently confront the international community writ large and has a global approach to U.S.-Indian relations, consistent with the rise of India as a world power. President Bush's radical propositions take into account that India's indigenous nuclear capacity and a changing global environment have progressively altered the relevance of the restrictions on international nuclear commerce as far as India is concerned and initiated a new departure to long term strategic relationships between the U.S. and India.

George W. Bush's Decisions to go to War: Afghanistan and Iraq
President Bush took a deliberative approach to the U.S. military response to the attacks of 9/11, consulting with his “war cabinet” in formulating the U.S. response, involving allies in his planning for war and waiting until the conditions were favorable for a large-scale troop entry into Afghanistan. In contrast, decision making on Iraq was much less systematic and deliberative, and that it resulted in a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. From a position of almost universal international support for U.S. policies, the war in Iraq led to a position of almost universal condemnation from the international community.

President and Congress : Practical Accommodations
The Supreme Court often presents a very static and unrealistic picture of the U.S. Constitution, suggesting that the federal government is one of “enumerated powers” that are cleanly and crisply allocated among the three branches. An emphasis on enumerated powers would prohibit the kinds of implied powers that are commonplace in American government. In fact, under the Constitution the Federal Government is one of enumerated and implied powers. It consists of formal and express powers combined with informal and practical accommodations, in other words various types of political compromises that are regularly fashioned even when these arrangements are at odds with express constitutional language.

The U.S. and the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions: A Missed Opportunity
The world's leading cultural power, the United States easily portrays itself as a promoter and a natural home of cultural diversity. However its opposition to the Convention on the diversity of cultural expressions, an international treaty that had no hidden anti-American intention, was as fierce as resolute. Such adamant hostility may be the result of a fundamental misunderstanding stemming from radically contrasting views on cultural goods and policies. Beyond these conceptual differences, power and financial calculations of tremendous importance also were at stake.

Requiem for Neoconservatism?
The conventional wisdom on neoconservatism vastly overestimates the role of neoconservatives within the Bush administration and greatly underestimates the reach of neoconservatism. Originally interested in social sciences, the neoconservatives' natural home was the Democratic Party. As the Reagan experience moved them to the right, they in turn helped reshape the larger conservative movement. “Regime change” has now become the public face of neoconservatism, a theory not shared by everyone of neoconservative persuasion. In fact, it is wrong to say that Iraq is the neoconservatives' war or that they have been less careful than others to “soft power”.

The Conservative Revolution under Bush IIIs the United States a Conservative power? While the GOP remains the chosen party of Conservative America, conservative values also spread across the aisle into the Democratic camp. In the post Cold-war environment, the conservative movement has successfully come to embody the spirit of America. This phenomenon has taken various forms so that no elected official can easily ignore it. Since his re-election President George W. Bush has imposed his own way to redefine Conservatism, relying on an often hardline Congress while adopting a pragmatic policy approach that is the hallmark of his second term.