I have a number of thoughts about Jeff's and Jacob's points about Reagan, but I first want to respond to Ken because it seems to me that he's glossed over a tremendous number of important distinctions in U.S. foreign policy--indeed, perhaps over the very idea that there are distinctions in U.S. foreign policy.

Ken writes that "conservatism as defined by Peter fits pretty squarely into the broad tradition of American foreign policy as practiced by all ideological camps: namely promoting American economic, military and political power overseas under the guise of do-gooding." That suggests that I defined conservatism simply as an ideology that promotes the national interest and that sugarcoats its self-interested behavior. But that's not how I defined conservatism. I defined it as an ideology that sees the world strictly in binary terms: us-versus-them, good-versus-evil. It's true that that view was prevalent in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it became far less so during the 20th. Sure, conservative ideology fits into a broad tradition of pursuing the national interest--but so does every foreign policy pursued by every country around the world throughout history. The differences lie in how you define and pursue the national interest. My point is that during the Cold War, U.S. policymakers increasingly agreed that you could not see the world in strictly good-versus-evil terms because we needed to coexist and negotiate with the Soviets--in no small part because nuclear weapons rendered coexistence and negotiation a matter of national survival. Conservatives, because of their fealty to Manichaeism, did not. They defined the national interest very differently.

Ken writes that when I'm discussing the conservative approach to nuclear weapons (which I gather he does think are out of the mainstream) I'm "fundamentally talking about fringe elements--or at least not dominant ones--of the 'conservative' movement." But that's simply not true. To be sure, my book argues that the conservative movement grew from being a relatively fringe force to being a major one in U.S. politics--thus there are times when it has had little influence--but Barry Goldwater was the GOP's candidate for president in 1964 and Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 on the basis of his conservatism. For that matter, when Bill Buckley died in February, I think there was a fairly broad consensus that he had been an influential, not a fringe figure--at least if the Newsweek cover story was any indication. This Buckley/Goldwater/Reagan conservatism explicitly rejected mutual assured destruction--the result, I argue, of applying a strictly Manichaean worldview to nuclear strategy--and therefore embraced a nuclear war-fighting posture, via offensive forces, missile defenses, and even civil defenses (i.e., bomb shelters). Both the underlying Manichaeism and its resultant impact on policy (antipathy toward negotiation, distrust of containment, and even a belief in the military utility of nuclear weapons) have been prevalent in the Bush administration as well.

This approach contrasts significantly not only with Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, but also with Nixon and Ford, which is one of the reasons why I don't think you can classify the latter two as conservatives--at least in a foreign policy sense. The notion is sometimes overblown by people who insist that the Bush administration is "revolutionary," but there really was something of a bipartisan foreign policy consensus during the Cold War. That consensus accepted both containment and MAD. This consensus also accepted negotiations with the Soviet Union, particularly to stabilize the nuclear balance. Conservatives--like Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan (until 1984)--rejected this, opposing everything from a ban on nuclear testing in the atmosphere to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Nixon, by contrast, signed a number of arms control agreements and pursued détente with Moscow (and diplomatic relations with China). That's not a matter of what Ken calls the "normal process of compromise"--Nixon initiated the ABM talks, détente, and the opening to China, after all--that's the product a fundamentally different worldview. Which is why conservatives abandoned Nixon and supported Reagan over Ford in 1976.

In short, there were distinctions within the Republican Party that were very significant, and by the 1970s conservatives were a growing force, not a fringe element. Sure, Nixon and Reagan got Senate approval for their arms control agreements, but that doesn't mean that opposing ideas did not carry weight at various times--or that they can't explain the Bush administration's foreign policy today. Not every presidency has been as disastrous as this one, and (to refer back to one of Jeff's earlier posts) I don't think that incompetence alone explains the variance. After all decisions themselves are not "incompetent"; incompetence lies in execution. The decision to invade Iraq was not incompetent; it was simply wrong. The decisions not to engage North Korea and Iran were not incompetent; they were just wrong. Why would an administration make such decisions? Because it adheres to a worldview that skews its understanding of how to best defend the United States--a dualistic worldview that since the 1950s has gone by the name of "conservatism" and has gained increasing influence in American politics, culminating in this administration.