Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Time for a Little Humility about Military Intervention

I have been watching the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam War with great interest.  One of the themes of the series is that many of the initial decisions to escalate the War were made in good faith, but were disastrous just the same.  One of the lessons of Vietnam is that we need to be much more humble about what military power can achieve.

To be clear, we can point to many successful uses of military power--even when judged many years later.  Our intervention in Kosovo seems to have stabilized the Balkans.  Our defense of Kuwait in the first Gulf War achieved its objective of restoring Kuwait to power.  Heck, even the intervention in Mali to defeat the Islamist forces who took over that nation seems to be a success.

Why were these engagements successful?  Perhaps it was because our political objectives could be satisfied by military lessons, and we did not need to engage in hubris about changing "hearts and minds."  Our other recent interventions, however, have not been as successful.  Indeed, most of been unmitigated disasters that made the world a less safe place.

Robert Kaplan has an interesting post at the National Interest blog about this issues:

The people I know who supported the Iraq War genuinely intended the human-rights situation in Iraq to be improved by the removal of Saddam Hussein, not made worse through war and chaos. The group of policymakers who supported the Libya campaign genuinely thought that by toppling the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi a humanitarian catastrophe in Benghazi would be averted and the country as a whole would benefit. Instead, Libya collapsed into anarchy with many more thousands of casualties the consequence. The people who supported an early intervention to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, or at least limit the suffering in Syria, genuinely thought they were in both the moral and strategic right. And they might actually have been correct. Since there was no intervention in this case, the results of one remain an unknowable.
.  .  .. In all three cases, both sides have had at least some claim on our sympathies, however partial, even if we have disagreed with them. There were the interests of the state and its many limitations on one hand, and the interests of humanity on the other. Of course, the interests of humanity can in quite a few circumstances coincide with the interests of state. But it cannot do so all the time, or else we would be intervening everywhere, and that would not be sustainable. And yet just because you cannot intervene everywhere does not mean you cannot intervene, consistent with your interests, somewhere.
In ancient tragedy, as Hegel notes, the truth always emerges. What, then, is the truth about humanitarian intervention in the Muslim Middle East? The truth is that American power can do many things, but fixing complex and populous Muslim societies on the ground is not one of them: witness Iraq and Libya. But in the case of Syria, where a humanitarian and strategic nightmare has ensued without our intervention, it behooves us to treat each crisis individually, as sui generis. For intervening in one country might be the right thing to do, while it may be the wrong thing in other countries.
Read it all here.  I remain skeptical that intervention in Syria would have been a wise decision, but Kaplan's larger issue rings true--we need to judge each situation individually before using military force.  And in doing so we must be more humble about what military intervention will accomplish.  At the very least, we need to consider what we must do after we win the initial battles.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for that interesting post , such analysis , is , at least to some extent flawed ( morally and factually ) this is because , such military intervention , is not meant necessarily for fixing situation ( fundamentally , actually , from bottom up to the roof ) but rather , to grant the chance for peoples , to take their destiny in their own hands , and try to modify their humanitarian situation , so to live with respect ,freedom , and dignity by all means .

    So , basically it did work !! This is because , they indeed rose against dictatorships and brutal oppression , and have tried to achieve dignity and democracy ( The " Arab spring " indeed ) . And indeed , many of them , have died in battle field , preferring to die over living in shame and oppression . It was their choice finally , and they took it , and did what they did . And by the way , the story , not yet ended really . Game in on yet !!

    So , the chaos , was indeed , the outcome , of their free will ( or at least , for great part of them ) .

    Thanks

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  2. There is one criteria that should always be applied when a decision is made to commit our military forces to combat. Do the American people support the action?

    Our political and military leaders must always make sure they communicate our national interests clearly and in understandable language. In order to be successful we must all be pulling on the same end of the rope as the nation did in World War II.

    I am not a fan of using a humanitarian objective as rationale for use of U.S. military force. Humanitarian crises are often determined by a small group of people viewing the situation through their personal perspectives.


    If the crisis is reaching the situation of another Hitler, Stalin or Mao, then intervention for humanitarian reasons is probably warranted because our national interests will soon be at stake if not already an issue. Short of that I think we should let the local and regional forces sort it out.

    There are also treaty obligations such as NATO and ASEAN that have to be considered. However, under those treaties we need to make sure the other parties are contributing their proportionate share.

    We are not real good at picking winners and losers and our political system does not support long-term commitments necessary to do effective nation building. I am not sure anyone's does.

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