Neoconservatism
Conservative political movement in the United States advocating an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy
Neoconservatism (colloquially neocon) is a political movement that combines features of traditional political and social conservatism with individualism and a qualified endorsement of free markets along with the assertive promotion of democracy and national interest, including through military means.
It began in the United States during the 1970s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the Democratic Party along with the growing New Left and 1960s counterculture.
Many adherents of neoconservatism became politically influential during Republican presidential administrations from the 1960s to the 2000s, peaking in influence during the presidency of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Prominent neoconservatives in the Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Bremer, and Douglas Feith.
Although U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had not self-identified as neoconservatives, they worked closely alongside neoconservative officials in designing key aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy, especially in their support for Israel, promotion of American influence in the Arab world and launching the war on terror. The Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies were heavily influenced by major ideologues affiliated with neoconservatism, such as Bernard Lewis, Lulu Schwartz, Richard and Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, and Robert Kagan.
Critics of neoconservatism have used the term to describe foreign policy war hawks who support aggressive militarism or neocolonialism. Historically speaking, the term neoconservative refers to a group of Trotskyist academics from New York who moved from the anti-Stalinist left to conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s. The movement had its intellectual roots in the magazine Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz, after they spoke out against the moral relativism of the New Left, and in that way helped define the movement.
Terminology
The term neoconservative was first used in an 1883 British periodical reviewing Das Kapital by Karl Marx, which called Lord Beaconsfield a Neoconservative.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Neoconservatism” as conservative political movement in the United States advocating an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q192139. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2003 and 1883.
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