Neoconservatives in U.s. Foreign Policy Under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush - 9780801895494

"This is an excellent and interesting book. Through extensive use of archival material, Velasco brings to light a number of facts that are not widely known, particularly with regard to the funding apparatus that financed the neocons' political and policy endeavors."ùBenjamin Ginsberg, The Johns Hopkins University

"Professor Velasco provides an impressively comprehensive, clear, and careful account of neoconservatives' rise to power in the late twentieth-century United States. Velasco is particularly good at revealing who constitute the core and peripheral members of the first and second generation of neoconservatives, at uncovering the personal networks and financial ties that connect and support individual neoconservatives, and at tracing the effects of the two generations of neoconservatives on American foreign policy."ùBartholomew Sparrow, University of Texas at Austin

Jes·s Velasco examines the origins and history of the neoconservative political movement so closet identified with the George W. Bush administration's policies of regime change and democratization. Analyzing the movement's intellectual background, institutions, financial supporters, publications, and points of influence, Velasco distinguishes the first generation of neoconservatives, which emerged in the late 1970's, from the generation that rose to power in the 2000's. Velasco's study is based in large part on interviews with such key neoconservative figures as Irving Kristol, Jean Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, Douglass Feith, Eliott Abrams, and William Kristol, and on access to the archives of such organizations as the Committee on the Present Danger and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. This work provides important new insights into how this cadre of intellectualsùonce on the margins of the political sceneùcame to affect U.S. foreign relations so strongly.