The collapse of the Soviet Union that started in 1988-1989 really upset American neo-cons, believes writer and filmmaker Tom Shachtman, in the sense that their main enemy had disappeared.
“How could you continue to have a neo-con view of the world if the enemy you have been fighting is suddenly disarmed?” questioned Shachtman.
He also said that the theory of “provocative weakness” invented by neo-cons consists of behaving “in a way that seems weak to their opponents which consider it as an opportunity to attack you.”
Tom Shachtman assures that the result of this policy was that neo-con circles of the US believed that the US never attacked another country unless it attacked first. Later on, however, another conception was adopted – the one of pre-emptive war.
“The idea of pre-emptive war goes beyond provocative weakness. It says we cannot let anybody get into a position from where they can realistically threaten us. If they seem to be able to do that sometime in the near future – we have to take them out.”