Liberal hawk

The term liberal hawk refers to a politically liberal person (generally, in the American sense of the term) who supports a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy.

Overview
Past U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson have been described as liberal hawks for their roles in bringing about America's status as the world's premier military power. The Clinton Doctrine can also be considered as consistent with this vision. Today the term is most frequently used to describe liberals and leftists who supported or still support the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, which was authorized by the United States Congress and ordered by president George W. Bush. The war has stirred heated controversy among all political sides of the debate. The American left was divided over the issue of whether going to war in Iraq was the right decision, as some liberals felt that they should support the war, in accordance with their philosophy of liberal internationalism, which had caused them to support military intervention earlier.

One document often cited as promoting a liberal hawkish point of view is Progressive Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Strategy, published by the Progressive Policy Institute in October 2003. Another document related to the philosophy is a letter to President Bush sent by Social Democrats USA in February 2003, which urged the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

In January 2004, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, George Packer, Kenneth Pollack, Jacob Weisberg, Fareed Zakaria, and Fred Kaplan participated in a five-day online forum, Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War, in which they discussed whether they had been correct in advocating military action against Saddam Hussein's regime. Kaplan by that point had renounced his prior support, but the general consensus among the participants was that, despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war had still been justified on humanitarian grounds.

In his book The Good Fight, published in 2006, Peter Beinart renounced his prior support for the Iraq War: "I was too quick to give up on containment, too quick to think time was on Saddam's side."

Opposition to the Sunshine Policy
The Sunshine Policy is the dovish foreign policy with North Korea of South Korean liberals, and Donald Trump or Trumpists have also expressed support, but mainstream American liberals, dubbed the 'Washington establishment', de facto oppose the policy and support hawkish foreign policy toward North Korea, creating a conflict with South Korean liberals.

Despite being a liberal, U.S. President Barack Obama opposed the Sunshine Policy and preferred a hawkish foreign policy toward North Korea called "Strategic Patience Policy".

U.S. liberals' hostile diplomatic approach to North Korea has made South Korea liberals prefer Donald Trump diplomatically to South Korean conservatives. In the 2020 United States presidential election, Hong Joon-pyo, a right-wing populist politician known as a "Korean Trumpist", supported Joe Biden. The current president of South Korea Yoon Suk-yeol, dubbed the "K-Trump" in South Korean media, defended Joe Biden's policy toward North Korea, opposing the Sunshine Policy of Donald Trump and South Korean liberals. In contrast, South Korean liberal Moon Chung-in and Kim Ou-joon supported Donald Trump and Trumpists' Sunshine Policy.

Notable people associated
The list includes people who have been described as liberal hawks.

Politicians

 * Howard Berman – former U.S. Representative from California
 * Joe Biden - U.S. President, elected in 2020
 * Tony Blair – former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
 * Ben Cardin – U.S. Senator from Maryland, former U.S. Representative from Maryland
 * Hillary Clinton – former First Lady of the United States, former U.S. Senator from New York, former US Secretary of State, 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee
 * Joe Donnelly – former U.S. Representative and senator from Indiana
 * Eliot Engel – former U.S. Representative from New York
 * Al Gore – former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, former Vice President of the United States, 2000 Democratic presidential nominee
 * Josh Gottheimer – U.S. Representative from New Jersey
 * Jane Harman – former U.S. Representative from California
 * Michael Ignatieff – former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, former professor at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
 * Henry "Scoop" Jackson – United States Senator who represented Washington State from 1953 to 1983
 * Joe Lieberman (deceased) – former U.S. Senator from Connecticut, 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, 2004 Democratic presidential candidate
 * Tzipi Livni – former vice prime minister of Israel, founder of the Hatnuah party, Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
 * Bob Menendez – U.S. Senator from New Jersey, former U.S. Representative from New Jersey
 * Sam Nunn – former U.S. Senator from Georgia (1972-1997)
 * Kyrsten Sinema – U.S. Senator from Arizona, former U.S. Representative from Arizona

Government officials

 * Jake Sullivan – current U.S. National Security Advisor
 * Madeleine Albright (deceased) – former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, former U.S. Secretary of State
 * Zbigniew Brzezinski (deceased) – former National Security Advisor, political scientist
 * Kenneth Pollack – former Clinton administration advisor and senior fellow at The Brookings Institution

Other

 * Ronald D. Asmus (deceased) – scholar at the German Marshall Fund of the United States
 * Paul Berman – contributing editor to Dissent and The New Republic (described as a 'Philosopher King' of liberal hawks)
 * Jonathan Chait – self-described liberal hawk
 * Larry Diamond – senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
 * Christopher Hitchens (deceased) – British-American journalist, essayist, critic and writer
 * Michael Tomasky – Editor of Guardian America