Neoconservative empire-building ideas were publicly ridiculed in 1992

Evidence

At the time, the foreign policy establishment critiqued these ideas harshly; the report was a political embarrassment for the elder Bush. Joe Biden called it a prescription for “literally a Pax Americana,” a US empire. Senator Alan Cranston (D-California) likewise ridiculed the document and its authors for wanting the United States to be “the one, the only main honcho on the world block, the global Big Enchilada.” The backlash was so strong that Wolfowitz believed his political career to be over. The document was revised, and a softer version replaced the original. It was not yet the neocons’ time—the 1990s were to be the era of “humanitarian imperialism,” led by Clinton and the liberal imperialists. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 430

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The same doctrines were embraced after 9/11, so this shows how crisis rhetoric, not the ideas themselves, changed their political viability.
• CANDY: Cranston calling Wolfowitz’s plan a bid to be ‘the global Big Enchilada’ is a quotable, amusing insult.

Related

• The DPG report was so radical it embarrassed the elder Bush (similarity 0.79)
• Post-Cold War unipolarity made US elites willing to openly embrace the word empire. (similarity 0.78)