You confuse the economic (neoliberalism) with a broader tendency of conservatism (neoconservatism), for which neoliberalism is a moral imperative. Neoconservatism holds that the U.S. political and economic system is the best system for all humans, regardless of history, regardless of culture, and demands that this system be "defended" at any cost, hence a muscular and imperialist foreign policy. Conservatism was the subject of my dissertation, so I do know something of which I speak.