[America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy, Francis Fukuyama, Yale University Press, 240 pages]

In January 1998, the Project for a New American Century issued the first of several statements calling for the removal of "Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." Just over five years later, the signers of PNAC's statements got their wish when the United States launched a war to liberate Iraq. It would seem to be a time for celebration, yet one of them is having second thoughts. In America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy, Francis Fukuyama, a signatory not only to three PNAC statements on Iraq but also to the organization's statement of principles, explains his intellectual journey from neoconservative true believer to skeptic. The Iraq war is at the center of this conversion. "It seems very doubtful," writes Fukuyama, "that history will judge the Iraq war kindly."

As a respected scholar of international relations, and the author of the influential book The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama was capable of articulating either a defense or a critique of the impending war with Iraq. "Unlike many other neoconservatives," he now explains in the book, "I was never persuaded of the rationale for the Iraq war." In the year prior to the invasion, Fukuyama studied the problem and concluded that "the war did not make sense."

To the extent that Fukuyama feels at all guilty for not going public with his private misgivings, this book is an effort to set things right. His "attempt to elucidate the neoconservative legacy," and to explore the evolution of the philosophy into something that he can no longer support is a worthwhile and enjoyable read. But while the press is sure to focus on the fact that a member of the neoconservative inner-circle has now turned on his former ideological allies, this important and insightful book is much more than a tell-all memoir of self-discovery. Fukuyama demolishes some of the central tenets of neoconservativism that led to the debacle in Iraq, but he also sets forth an alternative vision, one that he sees as both more consistent with American values and more likely to succeed in an international environment deeply skeptical of American power.

A number of his specific recommendations are commendable, including his call for "a dramatic demilitarization of American foreign policy and reemphasis on other types of policy instruments"; the establishment of "clear criteria for when we believe preventive war is legitimate"; and an end to the "rhetoric about World War IV and the global war on terrorism."

Beyond these specifics, the book is useful in its exploration of the elements of neoconservative thought that led to the Iraq fiasco. Unlike those who see democracy-promotion and regime change as core elements of neoconservativism, Fukuyama sees Iraq as inconsistent with the philosophy espoused by the likes of Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol and therefore emblematic of the "wrong turn" taken by some neoconservatives during the 1990s.

Fukuyama traces this wrong turn to the unexpected collapse of communism, which some took as a validation of the concept of regime change. Drawing on his nuanced understanding of the unique circumstances surrounding the democratization that took place in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Fukuyama dismantles the facile notion "that democracy was a default condition to which societies would revert once liberated from dictators."

Liberal democracy, Fukuyama explains, is a byproduct of the process of modernization documented in his earlier book The End of History. To the extent that liberalism "becomes a universal aspiration," the process takes time. Crucial institutions "must be in place before a society can move from an amorphous longing for freedom to a well-functioning, consolidated political system with a modern economy." He warns, the "democratic contagion can take a society only so far; if certain structural conditions are not met, instability and setbacks are in store."

Some neoconservatives routinely dismiss the notion that democracy can give rise to an illiberal political order, or, worse, that the spread of democracy could pose a threat to the United States. The suggestion seemed to be a practical impossibility, akin to the sun rising in the west. But in a classified report from February 2003, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research expressed doubts that the installation of a new regime in Iraq would foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East and warned that "even if some version of democracy took root ... anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that Iraqi elections in the short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States."

Fukuyama taps this vein. "While there is nothing wrong," he explains, "with being hopeful and open to the possibility of miracles" such as occurred in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet empire, "it is another thing altogether to predicate a foreign policy on the likelihood of multiple near-term democratic transitions." And yet that is precisely what his former fellow travelers have done.

Fukuyama is also effective in revealing the illogic of preventive war more broadly. He correctly notes that preventive war has always been seen as "problematic" because "it depends on being able to accurately predict the future," especially its assumption that an extant threat will become imminent. "Preventive war cannot be ruled out as a component of an American grand strategy. But making it a central feature entails large risks and costs that are all too evident in retrospect."

Fukuyama continues to cling to a few core neocon principles, especially the belief that "American power is often necessary to bring about moral purposes." For that power to be effective, he explains, it must be seen as legitimate. Concern for legitimacy is practically an obsession for Fukuyama, and it distinguishes him dramatically from many of his former ideological allies.

Charles Krauthammer's vision of an enduring "unipolar moment" was based on his belief that the United States would act, and be seen as acting, as the "custodian of the international system." Along these same lines, Fukuyama explains, William Kristol and Robert Kagan in their book Present Dangers "argued explicitly in favor of a policy of benevolent hegemony in which the United States would use its power to create a benign, peaceful, and democratic world order."

These and other advocates of war with Iraq were convinced that American power would be seen as legitimate by anyone who mattered, and they dismissed critics as anti-American and/or pro-terrorist. Fukuyama understands international opposition to the United States as rooted in more than mere mendacity or jealousy. The concept of benevolent hegemony, Fukuyama explains, was based on "a belief in American exceptionalism that most non-Americans simply find not credible."

But while the neoconservatives erred in presuming that American power would always be seen as legitimate, Fukuyama errs in arguing that this power can be made legitimate through various international institutions. Take, for example, his discussion of nation-building. He notes that it is exceptionally difficult to establish the domestic institutions necessary to prevent a nascent democracy from descending into chaos. The process often requires a political solution within the target country, and "in the absence of internal political demand for reform, it may never be possible to get the institutions rights."

What does this say? That we should expect nation-building to fail. Fukuyama practically admits as much: "The record in nation-building is mixed: there are a few successes and a large number of failures; and where the successes occurred, they required an extraordinary level of effort and attention."

And yet Fukuyama clings to the belief that success is possible, perhaps even likely, but for the fact that "the world today does not have enough international institutions that can confer legitimacy on collective action." Accordingly, he explains, "a realistic solution to the problem of international action that is both effective and legitimate will lie in the creation of new institutions and the adaptations of existing ones." Specifically, the United States should seek to "promote a world populated by a large number of overlapping and sometimes competitive international institutions," a system that he calls multi-multilateralism.

The Clinton administration's interventions in Bosnia and later Kosovo provide the model for Fukuyama's strategic vision of realistic Wilsonianism exercised in a multi-multilateral order. This is an exceedingly weak reed on which to base a new theory of international relations. For one, neither intervention was an unmitigated success. Undeterred by this niggling detail, Fukuyama focuses on the extent to which "[t]he NATO alliance . . . provided legitimacy for military intervention in a way that the United Nations could not."

But legitimacy is not a stamp of approval. Besides, there already is a system for affording legitimacy to military intervention: it's known as the national interest. When institutions reflect or convey common interests among nations, the institutions can attain a superficial durability. But this illusion that multilateral institutions can supercede the national interests of sovereign states is shattered the moment that those interests come into conflict. In short, even if the next intervention is sanctioned by some international institution, this does not imply that it will be universally welcomed.

Consider the Kosovo case. NATO's endorsement provided cover for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, but it did not confer international legitimacy on the intervention. The Indians and Chinese took umbrage at what Fukuyama calls "forum shopping," whereby the United States and other powers sought out the international institution that was most likely to endorse the military campaign, but that opposition was limited to strongly worded letters of protest and editorials calling for a restoration in the balance of power to reign in American might. The Russians, on the other hand, reacted in a more "traditional" manner, sending troops to seize the airfield in Pristina, Kosovo. A wider war may have been averted only by a British commander's willingness to openly defy a superior officer. When U.S. General and NATO Commander, Wesley Clark ordered Sir Michael Jackson, commander of the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, to forcibly block the Russian entry into Kosovo, Jackson refused, reportedly telling Clark: "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you."

This case of insubordination revealed the cold, calculating logic that does, and should, govern any military intervention: do the rewards justify the risks? The answer has little to do with what institutions have conferred their stamp of legitimacy upon it.

Fukuyama curiously scorns "respect for traditional sovereignty" as "a realist position" because it is not "compatible with what is in the end a revolutionary American foreign policy agenda." But this is hardly a knock on realism. As the top dog in the international system, the United States should not wish to adopt a revolutionary foreign policy agenda that would overturn the current order.

Meanwhile, when Fukuyama contends that "the most important way that American power can be exercised [is] through the ability of the United States to shape international institutions" it is not at all clear how this can be done in practice, particularly in those institutions from which the United States has been systematically excluded. Lacking the means to barge into such groups, how will those nations who engaged in forum shopping in the late 1990s react when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's confers "legitimacy" upon a Russian-led intervention in Belarus or Ukraine? The limits of Fukuyama's multi-multilateral order are even more starkly revealed by a hypothetical case of ASEAN sanctioning Beijing's re-annexation of Taiwan.

Fukuyama cannot reconcile himself to a form of realism grounded in state sovereignty and national interest, and in this respect he is not that different from traditional Wilsonians. In the end, Fukuyama's realistic Wilsonianism is neither realistic (from the standpoint of efficacy), nor realist (from the standpoint of Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan and Kenneth Waltz).

The chief disappointment with the book is found elsewhere, however. While it is encouraging to see a well-respected scholar assail some of the neoconservatives' most sacred of sacred cows, it is disheartening to learn that Fukuyama had doubts about the Iraq war well before the war was launched, and that he kept these feelings to himself. Having been so strong an advocate of regime change in Iraq in the late 1990s, Fukuyama's relative silence in the fall and winter of 2002 and 2003 implied support for the whole misguided venture. We can only speculate as to what might have happened had he lent his voice to the anti-war effort, and we can only hope that he will not choose to stay on the sidelines the next time around.

Christopher Preble is the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a founding member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

This article originally appeared in the April 24, 2006, issue of The American Conservative, and it is reprinted here by permission of the author.