Conservatives dodged a bullet on November 2. Squabbling bitterly over Iraq, they contributed to the possible unseating of an incumbent conservative president in wartime. Realists or traditional conservatives attacked neoconservatives for splitting the NATO alliance and chasing after democratic rainbows in the barren sands of the Middle East. Neoconservatives attacked each other--including in the pages of this magazine--exchanging salvos about whether terrorist threats are existential and legitimacy requires broader coalitions. Nationalists deplored the crippling Cold War reflex to fight wars far away from home and give other nations a free ride.

Conservative wars over foreign policy of course are not new. Conservatives split after the Vietnam War. At that time, neoconservatives, led by Ronald Reagan, attacked Nixonian policies of d‚tente and called for the end--not containment--of Soviet communism. Conservatives quarreled again after the Gulf War. Neoconservatives faulted realists for failing to march to Baghdad and eliminate Saddam Hussein. During both periods--in 1976 and in 1992--liberals exploited conservative divisions to take the White House. That did not happen this time. But conservatives are tempting fate if they continue these intramural squabbles. Internecine wars are not only self-destructive, they are unnecessary. Conservatives need each other. Here's why.

Root Principles

It is useful to remind conservatives what they have in common, especially compared to liberals. A conservative strategy for American foreign policy is based on four general principles. These principles encompass all conservatives--neoconservatives, conservative realists and nationalists--and reflect the different choices that conservatives and liberals make when they face tradeoffs in real world situations. In these situations, conservatives generally take the following positions: Individual and national liberty (freedom) count more than collective and universal equality; competition is a better engine of change and protector of liberty than institutional cooperation; military power takes precedence over economic, diplomatic or soft power because without military power, other forms of power are impotent; and legitimacy derives more from commitments to democracy than from universal participation in international institutions many of whose members are not democratic.

From these principles, several strategic guidelines follow for conservative foreign policy. First, a balance of power in international affairs preserves the independence and freedom of individual states. As long as many states are not democratic, the balance of power is to be preferred over a collective security system or reliance on international institutions, especially if the result is to empower a non-democratic majority in international institutions. International institutions are not objectives in themselves but are useful only if they support, as the president's 2002 National Security Strategy document stated, "a balance of power that favors human freedom."

Second, a global marketplace fosters competition and indirectly supports independence while advancing growth and development. Open markets are the principal engines of change that respect independence and freedom. Some institutional framework is necessary to establish market rules (for example, to lower trade barriers, establish currency relationships and so on), but this framework should be limited and have the principal objective of fostering equality of opportunity, not equality of results (for example, through some sort of international redistribution of wealth). History demonstrates that markets, as long as they are competitive, spread rather than concentrate wealth.

Third, military power is not a last but a pervasive resort, and it makes credible all other sources of power. Soft power is deception if it is not backed up by a nation's willingness to defend and assert its political convictions by force when necessary. Market power is an illusion if there is no military power to safeguard the marketplace. And, as Frederick the Great once memorably remarked, "negotiations without arms are like music without instruments." Military power not only defends national security and freedom, it underwrites the stability that a prosperous global economy requires, and validates a national and international diplomacy without which there could be no serious international negotiations.

Based on these principles, conservative foreign policy differs from liberal foreign policy in two key respects. First, it emphasizes national ideals and interests and self-reliance. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, a country incapable of governing itself is also incapable of governing others. If nations deny their own citizens certain basic human and political rights, what right do they have to run the affairs of free nations through international institutions? Conservatives seek to get the best out of every individual and nation before they turn to national or international programs of assistance. Second, conservatism is more comfortable with competition both in the economic arena and, as a basis for balance and safety, in the military realm as well. Conservatives are more skeptical of cooperation and international institutions because they fear the dilution of liberty through compromise with non-democratic states more than they fear the loss of legitimacy through exclusion of such states.

The key question, then, is how to apply these principles to define a grand strategy for American foreign policy that integrates conservative views and avoids new conservative foreign policy wars.

The War on Terror

In the minds of conservatives, threats arise from disparities in power, especially when countries that do not pursue or support freedom in their own societies wield such power. Henry Kissinger, a classical realist, recognizes that free countries do not threaten one another even if they possess unequal power. Only a few structural realists, who may or may not be conservative, define threats purely in terms of relative power. Threats arise because not-free countries deprive their own citizens of basic political rights and civil liberties. While these domestic practices do not create direct conflict between states, they breed suspicions. Not-free countries, such as North Korea under Kim Jong-il, fear freedom because it means the loss of domestic power. Free countries, like the United States, fear oppression because it means the loss of domestic freedom. As President Reagan used to say: "If authoritarian states treat their own people in oppressive ways, how are they likely to treat us if they get the chance?" These are the suspicions and fears that interpret geopolitical realities and cause international conflicts. They are rooted in security perceptions generated by conflicting principles, as well as security dilemmas generated by competing power.

So it is not just the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that is at stake. France has nuclear weapons, but no one is concerned. It is the nature of the societies that seek such weapons. Not-free, fundamentalist societies and groups reject modern civilization. They pose a threat that is not local or distant but global and immanent. This threat does not bristle at the border of central Europe with tanks and artillery and missiles, capable of attacking in a specific spot within the hour (an imminent threat). It hovers in the entire fabric of contemporary international affairs, capable of striking in any spot at any hour (an immanent threat). While fundamentalist forces are small compared to those of the former Soviet Union, weapons of mass destruction even the scales. In this sense, fundamentalist Islam is a direct military threat to the United States and for that matter any other Westernized country. And this threat offers less of a visible presence or warning before it strikes than the intercontinental missiles that defined the Cold War.

In addition, fundamentalist Islam poses a new universalistic alternative to democracy and free markets, just as communism did under the former Soviet Union. History has not ended. Fundamentalist societies seek a global dominion of the faithful. True, the vision of fundamentalism they espouse is unattractive in the West, unlike fascism and communism, which had legions of Western supporters. But we would be wrong to underestimate its appeal to others. No doubt a good many Muslims, oppressed, poor and aggrieved, could live with this apocalyptic vision, just as many who were not initial supporters acquiesced under fascism and communism.

Many in the West minimize these challenges and assume they can be overcome by diplomacy and development. Conservatives do not ignore the important role diplomacy and development can play in mitigating the fundamentalist threat at the margins (such as making progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute or combatting poverty and illiteracy). But diplomatic efforts and poverty are not the principal causes of, or solutions to, fundamentalism. Middle East diplomacy made its greatest progress ever in the 1990s with the Oslo Accords, but fundamentalism nevertheless intensified. Its causes lie in deeper, independent worldviews that are hostile to freedom. And solutions involve defeat (World Wars I and II) or transformation (the Cold War) of these adversarial views. In the case of the Islamic world, which is largely undeveloped and undemocratic, transformation may take generations. For the War on Terror is first and foremost a war inside Islam. If it took the West roughly 500 years from the time of the Reformation and Enlightenment to the secular and democratic world of today, it will take Islam at least one hundred years, if such a transformation happens at all.

Conservatives have disagreed over how to prosecute the war that began--in the minds of Americans--on September 11, 2001. Neoconservatives opted for a muscular strategy that ignored allies and divided countries into those that are "with us" and those that are "against us." They advocated flexible "coalitions of the willing" in Afghanistan and Iraq. Realists preferred to act through existing alliances and patiently reorganize them to deal with new threats. And nationalists expected other countries to do more and sought a speedy victory and an early return to America's protected shores. They heeded the siren song to come back to America's "delightful spot", as nationalist Walter McDougall calls it, an America that is still separated by two broad oceans with no great power (like Russia or China) or conflict (like the Middle East) challenging calm within our own hemisphere.

Few American conservatives aspire to global imperialism, a fact that often frustrates British observers like Niall Ferguson, who cannot understand why Americans refuse to act like imperialists. Yet many conservatives know that power will be exercised by someone and see a unique opportunity to preserve America's "sole superpower" status. Hence the injunction, also contained in the President's 1992 National Security Strategy document, to act in such a way as to discourage other nations from challenging American power. Again, not all conservatives agree. Realists observe from history that hegemons come and go. Preserving hegemony is unlikely. A balancing process ensures that hegemons, after they climb to the top of the heap, will be challenged and counterbalanced by rising powers. It is better to anticipate these challenges and aim for a world balance that is stable and functions on the basis of predictable alliances. Nationalists believe that such balancing will be automatic and does not require U.S. intervention and standing alliances. America can stay in its own hemisphere and let others do the balancing until the situation directly threatens America.

All conservatives agree that the terrorist threat must be more broadly defined than liberals have been willing to do--it is not simply a "criminal matter." Moreover, conservatives rate much higher than liberals the likelihood that authoritarian or totalitarian states (such as North Korea) and failed states (such as Afghanistan under the Taliban) may assist terrorists in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Waiting until one has proof suitable for a domestic jury is unacceptable for most conservatives. Admittedly, intelligence needs to be better, as Iraq suggests. But it can never be good enough. A terrorist war requires pre-emption; and pre-emption, because it is speculative, can never entail foolproof evidence.

Pre-emption, however, is not a license to invade everywhere. Iraq qualified for many reasons--supporting terrorists in the same region from which Al-Qaeda originates; contacts with Al-Qaeda, although no proof of collaboration or, it should be added, of the absence of collaboration; recent aggression against its neighbors in a region that is critical for world oil supply; acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) based on the historical record and the best intelligence at the time; a leader who invaded neighbors even at the risk of survival; and long-term defiance of the UN. North Korea and Iran do not yet meet all of these conditions. Nevertheless, the strategy is to stalk the adversary abroad and, together with homeland security, keep the conflict as far away from the U.S. mainland as possible.

Nationalists argue that Iraq was not a sufficient threat to warrant attack. They prefer to concentrate on homeland defense and let allies in Europe and Asia assume greater responsibility for Iraq and North Korea. Until America is attacked directly, they opt to keep their powder dry. Some realists (for example, Brent Scowcroft, George H. W. Bush's national security advisor) also worried that intervention would increase instability in the Middle East (and now argue that they were right) and preferred to continue containment. Acting without NATO's consent, as they saw it, undermined the chances of containment. They were willing to give containment more time, even though the inspection regime required the maintenance of 200,000 troops in the Persian Gulf and the record of containment of Iraq in the 1990s was hardly encouraging. And now the scandal of UN management of the Oil for Food program suggests that the sanctions were falling apart just before the invasion.

As desirable as it might be, however, what if NATO cannot act or sanctions have no effect (as in the case of Iraq)? Conservatives must have a fall-back position. "Coalitions of the willing" may be a preferred alternative for neoconservatives, but it is a fall-back position for all conservatives. The ideal strategy would be to use such coalitions to restructure existing alliances, not create new ones. Why throw away the investments made over decades in NATO? True, restructuring can be frustrating and time consuming. But a more mobile, flexible NATO could become for the hot war against terror outside Europe what the more static, deterrence-oriented NATO was for the Cold War inside Europe. If the War on Terror is serious and long term, as conservatives believe, does not America need alliances that are more than temporary marriages of convenience? Can we imagine fighting World War II or the Cold War without permanent (that is to say, for the course of the conflict) allies? Would Spain have withdrawn so easily from the Iraq coalition if this coalition had been increasingly circumscribed by a NATO role?

Nationalists underestimate the threat if they assume the United States can build an air-tight homeland defense and keep the terrorists at bay in this hemisphere. This is just a delaying strategy, not a decisive one. Terrorism is not going away. If you cannot depend on allies to fight terrorists with you, how can you depend on them to fight terrorists without you? Nationalists temper neoconservative enthusiasm to seek out and destroy enemies everywhere. In that sense, neocons and nationalists need one another. But oceans and missile defenses alone cannot protect us from this threat.

These divisions among conservatives, therefore, are not fatal but actually helpful. In the War on Terror, they have produced a very sensible strategy of international institutions a la carte. "Coalitions of the willing" fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; NATO (and perhaps eventually the EU, as it is doing in the Balkans) provides stabilizing forces for economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and eventually perhaps in Iraq (where NATO currently advises the Polish brigade and provides training for Iraqi forces); and the UN promotes political reconciliation and human services in Afghanistan and for forthcoming elections in Iraq. No conservative group, it should be noted, gives the United Nations a leading role. The UN is simply not a reliable institution to defend freedom. With major not-free powers exercising vetoes in the Security Council and majorities of not-free societies dominating the General Assembly, the UN is hardly an institution, let alone the only one, that can decide when it is legitimate to use force. Here a sharp dividing line exists between conservative and liberal grand strategies.

Coping with Globalization

Relatively free markets at home and abroad ensure competition, innovation, growth and, over time, equality. But markets require safety, and so, like Adam Smith, conservatives expect governments (not markets) to provide for defense. In that sense, security precedes markets, and stability is a prerequisite of trade. Neoconservatives and realists acknowledge this need for forward security. Some nationalists or libertarians reject it. They assume that countries will trade peacefully without security structures because it is in their mutual interests to do so. But it is also in their interests to secure the best terms possible for trade. Thus, why wouldn't some countries be tempted, at least sometimes, to set the terms of trade at gunpoint? Then mutually beneficial trade ceases, right? If markets function without safety, why do we have contracts and courts and ultimately police to supervise domestic markets? Some degree of world stability is essential for trade and investment, especially at the levels of contemporary economic interdependence.

Beyond the basic protections of property (including intellectual property), political freedom, and competition, however, all conservatives are skeptical of international economic institutions (just as they are of centralized domestic institutions). They prefer institutions that facilitate negotiations among governments, such as the GATT and WTO, over those that regulate governments, such as UN specialized agencies; redistribute resources, such as the IMF and World Bank; or act directly as state entities, such as OPEC.

Most conservatives are avid free traders. After all, economic freedom is an essential building block of political freedom. If citizens cannot accumulate and control economic resources, how can they exercise and protect their political freedom? But protectionism appeals to authoritarian states and offers short-term benefits to non-competitive workers. Leadership is necessary to secure the political and competitive advantages of freer trade. To its credit, the current Bush Administration has provided such leadership. Its trade representative, Robert Zoellick, saw immediately the relevance of trade to security and argued after September 11, 2001 that a new multilateral round of trade negotiations was now more important than ever. In the midst of a crippling recession and stock market crash, the administration secured trade promotion authority (TPA), where the Clinton Administration failed twice and withdrew the legislation a third time. Though Bush acquiesced to steel and agricultural protectionism in order to secure agreement from Congress, TPA will result in a net gain for free trade if used boldly. Furthermore, the launching of the Doha Round, again where the Clinton Administration failed in Seattle in 1999, and the proposals the Bush Administration tabled in Geneva that effectively eliminate steel and agricultural subsidies, reveal Bush's true purposes. The world has a good chance, now that Bush has been re-elected, to conclude a significant new trade agreement, one that centrally addresses for the first time freer trade in products that benefit developing countries and thereby helps to fight the War on Terror.

It was also gutsy, at the time of a still jobless recovery, for the administration to warn that outsourcing was on balance a benefit for the American economy. Outsourcing is a two-way street. Prevent American firms from outsourcing factories to other countries when market conditions warrant it, and other countries will prevent their firms from outsourcing to the United States. More than six million jobs from such outsourcing by foreign companies (or from the U.S. perspective, insourcing) in the United States would be lost.

Nevertheless, conservatives get little credit for free trade. Why is that? Part of the answer is that conservatives do it largely for security reasons, and trade initiatives such as the Doha Round get lost in the controversy over security issues. A second reason is that some conservatives are not free traders. Jacksonian (in contrast to Jeffersonian) nationalists care more about protecting American workers and limiting immigration than opening foreign markets. They fear foreign competition from low wages and resent multinational corporations and banks that finance foreign investments.

This protectionist element in the conservative camp becomes particularly strong in bad economic times, such as the recession of 1990-91. Just as security nationalists resist neocon adventures to intervene in too many places, economic nationalists check attempts to open markets in too many places too quickly. The division is not devastating but actually results in a more measured conservative policy toward liberalization, albeit always in the direction of freer trade.

Conservatives are more reluctant to coordinate international economic policies beyond trade (monetary and exchange-rate policies), especially with Europe. They blame the more centralized domestic and international institutions of Europe for the chronically lower rate of growth (about half the level in the United States) and higher level of unemployment (roughly twice the level in the United States) and for dragging down global growth and deflecting current account deficits onto the United States.

Moreover, attempts at coordinated stimulus among G-7 countries in both the late 1970s and late 1980s had bad consequences. The first fueled stagflation, and the second contributed to a U.S. recession and a Japanese bubble. Conservatives prefer to let national policies compete in an open marketplace. The EU's experiment with the euro, which locks everyone into a one-size-fits-all monetary policy, is exactly what conservatives seek to avoid in the G-7.

Accordingly, conservatives are not as concerned as others about U.S. current account and fiscal imbalances. What is important is growth. The world economy experienced a synchronized recession in 2001-02. To revive growth, economic policies, especially fiscal policies, were stimulative, not only in the United States, but in Europe and Asia as well. Such policies were appropriate and succeeded. The global economy is now recovering. The IMF recently forecast world growth of 5 percent in 2004, well above the annual average of the past two decades. Before the United States applies the brakes by raising taxes or interest rates (as the IMF calls for), Europe and Japan need to accelerate domestic demand through long-delayed structural reforms (more flexible labor and capital markets). China also plays a key role and needs to reform its banking sector and gradually revalue its currency to avoid a financial crisis such as that endured by other Asian tigers in the late 1990s.

Thus, a conservative economic strategy embraces globalization and does not concede ground to domestic labor and environmental groups. Ultimately, global markets are the best way to spread economic growth, finance environmental improvements, and inspire political freedom around the world. Thus, a conservative grand strategy supports the integration of China, Russia and India into the world economy. It builds on the unprecedented success of Asian and now Latin American "tigers" (such as Mexico) and holds out the prospect that Middle Eastern and South Asian "tigers" (such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) may follow in the future. Pie in the sky? They said the same about Asia after World War II. Yes, it is long term and uncertain--but it is possible.

Diplomacy: Flexible Not Formal

A conservative grand strategy does not eschew diplomacy, but advocates a highly flexible diplomacy that puts more emphasis on voluntary cooperation (such as coalitions of the willing) and mutual interests (for example, the 2002 strategic arms agreement with Russia) than compulsory international laws, treaties, institutions, norms and courts.

Conservatives suspect international law that is administered by international institutions in which a majority of members are non-democratic. Law has to be subject to democratic political accountability. None of the institutions that liberals support to deal with international crime (International Criminal Court), the environment (Kyoto Protocol) and arms control (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) operates on the basis of democratic majorities or is accountable to democratic institutions and constituencies. Global initiatives are not absent from a conservative grand strategy, but they often take the form of missions, such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, rather than institutions.

Hence, for most conservatives, diplomacy starts with domestic values and accountability, and builds up toward regional and perhaps international institutions. The legitimacy behind all diplomacy is not military power or multilateral institutions. It is the moral convictions that motivate and discipline the use of power and institutions. In this sense American diplomacy is legitimated by the nature and appeal of democracy. Conservatives at the more nationalist end of the spectrum believe that American democracy is unique and not applicable to many other societies. They are not eager to engage in nation-building. Conservatives at the other, primacist end of the spectrum believe that democracy is universal. They consider nation-building a moral obligation. Interestingly, President Bush seems to have migrated from the former to the latter end of the spectrum. Skeptical of nation-building and calling for a more humble policy before 9/11, he now advocates freedom for all, especially Muslim, societies. Whether this is a matter of conviction or a consequence of war and the need to reconstruct defeated societies can be debated. Most likely, Bush is making the best of a war that ended quickly and victoriously.

Normally, however, most conservatives are skeptical about direct nation-building and democracy-promotion. They expect freedom to emerge from indigenous struggle and competitive markets. Traditional conservatives (realists) are satisfied with political stability. In the wake of war, however, conservatives of all stripes have made common cause historically with liberal internationalists to rebuild defeated powers in America's image. The commitment is logical. What else is one to do after victory? Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by withdrawing quickly and permitting old adversaries to return?

Whether nation-building is appropriate in the Islamic world and the Middle East is much debated, even among conservatives. And well it should be. Iraq is not Germany, which had a democratic tradition, or Japan, which was a highly modernized society. If it took fifty years to develop democracy in those countries, it might take one hundred in Iraq. Nevertheless, the objective of democracy, however distant, is important. One cannot base a policy of reconstructing defeated adversaries on cynicism, especially if one expects the effort to take one hundred years. A stable, more open and tolerant Iraq, like Afghanistan, may be enough. In the meantime, all conservatives share a commitment to freedom with Israel and thus resist European pressure to negotiate with and reward Palestinian extremism.

The Way Ahead

Conservatives have too much in common to wage war over foreign policy and cripple the Bush Administration's second term. All conservatives understand that the War on Terror is a major one. None see it, as Clinton liberals did in the 1990s and Kerry Democrats more recently, as largely a criminal activity to be dealt with by international consensus and law. Neocons want to fight the war aggressively, that is, as far away from America's shores as possible. Nationalists want to fight it defensively, that is, as close to home as possible. The two groups ultimately temper one another and generate a conservative engagement strategy that is more selective. This strategy combines geopolitics and support for democracy, advocating U.S. intervention when the situation is strategic and when a change in the political direction of a state or region toward democracy might be decisive.

Still, realists are not thereby the winners. While they have always argued that American foreign policy should be grounded in survival or vital national interests, that stance can only take you so far. As Charles Krauthammer writes,

"Realists are right that to protect your interests you often have to go around the world bashing bad guys over the head. But that technique . . . has its limits. At some point, you have to implant something, something organic and self-developing. And that something is democracy, . . . The spread of democracy is . . . an indispensable means for securing American interests. The reason is simple. Democracies are inherently more friendly to the United States, less belligerent to their neighbors, and generally more inclined to peace."

So realists need neocons. The impulse to drive neocons out of the conservative camp is ill advised. Ronald Reagan, a neocon par excellence (and hence initially alien to realists such as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger), transformed conservatism from a "remnant" into a majority by insisting that foreign policy was more than geopolitics or stability. Modern conservatism is about the future of freedom enriched but not eclipsed by the treasure of tradition. The surest way for conservatives to become a minority again is to forget this Reagan legacy.

But neocons also need realists and nationalists. Foreign policy is still on a daily basis the art of the possible, not the desirable. We cannot impose democracy in every cultural situation. We can urge it, and, most importantly, we can offer the example of our own democracy. But if democracy means anything, it means home-grown. We have to take the risk that it may be rejected. After all, that is the same risk we run daily in our own democracy. Citizens are free to reject it. We rely, as Jefferson reminded us, on the public square to root out the anti-democratic zealots. Other countries cannot be so tolerant. Germany bans Nazi groups. Authoritarian Islamic states may require some time before free elections can bring to power groups other than the fundamentalist extremists.

Even if we could succeed in encouraging democracy in almost any country, we would most certainly need allies to do it. What is most puzzling about neocons is not that they believe democracy is possible anywhere (Fukuyama's complaint), but that they would undertake the democracy project without our existing democratic allies. They seek to create new, weak democracies in places like Iraq while turning their noses up at old, strong democracies in Europe. But what is the use of spreading democracy if we cannot get along with existing democracies? Of course, France is a pain and, in Iraq, probably awash in corruption. But France plays a role that does not have to destroy the democratic alliance unless we let it. Despite France withdrawing from NATO's command structure, the alliance still fulfilled its historic role. And France was always there at crucial moments, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the deployment of NATO missiles in 1983. So while we have to act at times without some allies, we do not have to enjoy it or celebrate it. We can agree to disagree and continue to try to bring them on board, while we accommodate their absence.

All of these differences among democratic allies and among conservative foreign policy advocates are understandable and bearable. What is not bearable is that we succumb to indifference, as nationalists are prone to do, or to intolerance, as neocons are prone to do, or to cynicism, as realists are prone to do. Conservatives need each other in foreign policy, especially when they consider the liberal alternative. The successful prosecution of U.S. foreign policy in the second Bush Administration depends on conservatives recognizing the complementarity of their respective contributions.

Henry R. Nau is professor of political science at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and author, most recently, of At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Polity (2002). Nau served in the Ford (1975-77) and Reagan (1981-83) administrations.