Yes, that's great. And I dutifully applied it, and came up empty (no "neocons" actually exist). You don't have to prove me wrong, if you don't want; I'm happy to leave it at that.
But all that aside, I see you're still having trouble with the definition.
Quite possible :-) Must be all my fault, can't be that the definition makes no sense, is self-contradictory, relies on subjective judgments, or is simply vacuous....
Like I said earlier, they may well say and believe that taking a certain action would in some way or another improve national security. That's not the same as going after a direct threat.
It is if they think it is. (I assume we're talking about them and their motivations, not you and your opinion of their policies.)
You might say, "but they don't think it is". To which I'd have to ask: "Who's 'they'?"
domino theory
But now you're saying that the "domino theory", and the way we fought the Cold War, was a "neocon" thing. Which implies that practically all Republicans in the last 60 years have been "neocons".
You keep bouncing between a vacuous definition of "neocon" (according to which there aren't any) and a redundant one (according to which all non-paleo conservatives qualify). Confusing.
And the fear expressed was that as totalitarianism claims more victims, our position is going to be weaker.
In other words, communism posed a direct threat to our national security, and had to be resisted. What's "neocon" about this position? It involves action against perceived threats - not "to make things better in other countries" or "based on how other governments treat their citizens" (remember these little characterizations of the "neocon"? hmm?)
One post "neocons" are all about philanthropy, the next they just long-term strategizing hawks. One post nobody's a neocon, the next post 99% of conservatives since 1941 are neocons. You're all over the map. You can see that, right?
The only reason it's confusing is that you insist on keeping yourself confused. Very few people are going to fall neatly and entirely into a single category - even one as broad as liberal or conservative. These words don't exist so much as to define people as to define points of view. It's only when a person's ideology is dominantly characterized by a particularly category of viewpoint that we say that he's a [insert whatever noun applicable]. If you don't approach it with that attitude, then everything is going to keep vacillating between "vacuous" and "redundant", and you wouldn't be able to make sense out of anything in life.
So as regards the Cold War, there was a significant neoconservative element to Republican thought, which should come as no surprise, as it was the the original (Xxxxxxxtz) Neoconservatives who did a lot of the heavy lifting to make that a reality.