Some, apparently desperate to ward off its association with the policies of the Democratic Party in recent years, have gone to the risible extreme of denying that the word has any meaning at all.
However, it is a simple enough matter to establish that the word does in fact have a distinct meaning, and that its use to describe the conduct of governments and major political parties around the world is reasonable enough. The term refers to a recognizable, distinct political ideology emergent in a particular historical moment (idolization of and calls for a return to Victorian-style classical liberalism, hence the "neo" in the 1940s, in response to the advance of socialism and social democracy in Eurasia and North America), consolidated by figures who did indeed regard themselves as participants in a movement (Friderich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, among others, were all there at Mont Pelerin in 1947). Moreover, the abstract theorizing quickly became manifest in a concrete political program (small governments with light taxes and balanced budgets and no concessions to egalitarianism like welfare states, progressive taxation, labor unions and the like), and was soon promoted by an array of organizations largely founded and funded by an interlinked network of actors including but extending beyond the figures named above, and avowing a common purpose (the economics departments of the universities of Chicago and Virginia, think tanks like the Cato Institute, publications like Reason magazine).
The historian can also trace the increasing implementation of neoliberalism's key ideas by a growing number of governments from the 1970s forward, typically in dramatic fashion and open sympathy for neoliberalism's objectives (the governments of Pinochet, Thatcher, Reagan, Yeltsin marking the turn in their respective countries). Of course, their realization of the program has to date been imperfect (no one quite realizing its ideals, welfare states enduring in reduced form, corporate welfare flourishing), but all the same, the trend is indisputable, and even in its inconsistencies and contradictions, quite recognizable.
It is much more difficult to present any such case in regard to the neoconservatism so much in the news again, even if one concentrates on only its most common usage in American political discussion, its use to refer to the advocates of intensive overseas military interventionism on the part of the United States associated with certain publications (Commentary, The National Interest, The Weekly Standard), statements of principle (like the Project for a New American Century), and figures active in political punditry (Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, and their sons John and William, respectively) and the national security scene (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, convicted Iran-Contra scandal figure Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton).
On close inspection, however, the grouping is rather looser, no Mont Pelerin moment identifiable. That has not stopped some from trying to work out a lineage that will help it make all sense, for instance pointing to '30s-era Marxists who became disenchanted with the ideology after Stalin, like Irving Kristol; to the teachings of philosopher Leo Strauss, whose lectures Paul Wolfowitz attended; to the tutelage of Cold Warriors like Albert Wohlstetter, or Henry Jackson, with both of whom Richard Perle has been closely associated. However, after the search for antecedents in ex-Communists-turned-fanatical-anti-Communists, obscure professors, and the rest, one does not have very much--and may realize that, really, there was far more obvious precedent for them, not least in the long, and broadly mainstream, "Wilsonian" tradition to which a good many have also pointed over the years.
In considering that one has to acknowledge that observers do so on differing grounds and in differing ways, not least because different observers emphasize different aspects of Wilsonianism (some stressing the image of Wilson as "idealist," others his forceful use of American power in support of those ideals), in part because they themselves have different attitudes to the figure.1 For my part, I think it most useful to consider the neoconservatives as simply Wilsonians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Consider the essential attributes of Wilsonianism:
* The championing of the "liberal international order"--a global, capitalist economy founded on a (relatively) free flow of money and goods across borders; and legitimated by its identification with the ideals of self-determination, freedom, and economic efficiency and thus prosperity as understood by classical liberals and their heirs--and a leading role for the U.S. in it as its organizer and protector, following the precedent of nineteenth century Britain.
* To the end of preserving or extending that order, a preparedness to intervene militarily, on a massive scale, not just against acts of aggression by one state against another, but for the sake of "regime change" where a government's conduct has been deemed unsatisfactory--such principle trumping sovereignty and even democracy. ("I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!" Wilson declared, and his penchant for intervention in Latin America makes it clear his declaration was sincere--and the conduct afterward, routine.)
* In line with the above, Wilsonianism tends to take the existence of alternative political ideologies as in themselves threatening, with the most obvious example a tendency to extreme anti-Communism. (While the Cold War is normally regarded as having begun in the 1940s, it is worth remembering that the U.S. was at odds with the Soviet government from the start, Wilson sending tens of thousands of U.S. troops to fight the Bolsheviks as part of the foreign intervention by the Allies after the Russian Revolution.)
* In line with the above, Wilsonianism also displays intense concern for the European and Eurasian balance of power, typically tending toward a partnership with the English-speaking nations, and Atlantic Europe more broadly, against continental states potentially capable of dominating the region. (This was seen in the U.S. joining Britain and France in their war against Germany in 1917, and subsequent preoccupation with the two principal such powers, Germany and Russia.)
Not only is each of these principles part of the neoconservative package, but I would argue that they cover all of the essentials in that package--with the differences relatively minor, matters of means rather than ends. Certainly Wilson's campaigning for the League of Nations is a far cry from the neoconservatives' raging contempt for the United Nations, and even the closest and most longstanding American allies, which neoconservatives openly display (recall Donald Rumsfeld's disdain for "Old Europe?"), and the preference for unilateralism that goes with it. There is their "obsession" with the Middle East.
However, it is worth remembering that, however sincere Wilson may have been, the League of Nations, and the concern for international community more broadly, was a means with which to realize this vision, not an end in itself--and that those of similar vision cannot but act differently in today's very different circumstances.
The same goes for the preoccupation of the neoconservatives with the Middle East. In Wilson's day the region was largely passing into the control of America's ally, Britain, and the United States not overly troubled by the fact. Britain's decline as an imperial power, and the increasing importance of the region's oil and gas production and exports (not least, for the economy of the U.S. itself), meant that the U.S. greatly stepped up its involvement there from the 1940s, and especially the 1970s, on, an involvement which interacted with but survived the end of the Cold War.
Afterward the emphases on "rogue states" and "resource security" (well-described by Michael Klare at the time) meant it remained prominent within rationales for American possession of superpower-level forces. (These were by no means the only factors, of course, but plenty by themselves to assure such a posture.)
Affecting perceptions may also be the fact that Wilson is distant enough that most of us know him and those who surrounded him from court historians equally inclined to glorifying past figures of the kind, while the news coverage of the moment, for all the media's toothlessness, means that the poison and the dirt of contemporary politics are rather harder to miss than the poison and the dirt of politics past. Making it harder to miss, too, is how singularly lacking neoconservatism has been in charismatic and inspiring advocates. (Anyone else recall Richard Perle responding to callers on C-SPAN with crude insults?)
Remembering all this helps us better understand the neoconservatives, but it also helps us better understand American foreign policy more generally. After the invasion of Iraq led to disaster and quagmire rather than the tidy institution of a liberal government in that country, the neoconservatives who had so championed the action were regarded as on the outs in the media and in Washington, even before the end of the second term of the George Bush administration, and certainly after his replacement by Barack Obama. However, there was relatively little change in American policy. Not only did the Obama administration continue to have boots on the ground in Iraq, but it pursued regime change in still more countries--Libya, Syria--with similarly disastrous result. The end of the Obama administration, its succession by that of Donald Trump, saw prominent neoconservatives like William Kristol and Max Boot win plaudits from "establishment" Democrats for their criticism of the new administration, even as some of their colleagues held positions of power and even enjoyed promotions--John Bolton becoming National Security Advisor, while Elliott Abrams became the Special Envoy to Venezuela (regime change was never just for the Middle East, after all), with the same Democrats pleading his case. In a very real sense the neoconservatives had returned to the mainstream--but it is equally true to say that they never actually left, and their departure would scarcely have been noticed if they had, because even if they were cruder about it, and arguably more reckless, in the end their ideas were well within the scope of the longtime orthodoxy of the policymaking establishment.
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