Will Iraq and Afghanistan Curtail Future Military Adventures?
by Ivan Eland | View comments |
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These twin failures, however tragic and painful, will likely usher in a new period of U.S. military restraint, the policy championed by America’s founders.
America’s problems in Afghanistan and Iraq may have one positive effect: They will cause the U.S. public to withhold support for future military interventions that are not absolutely necessary for U.S. security. That’s exactly what has happened in the past and there’s no reason to believe the current failed adventures will be different.
In the Korean War, for example, after back and forth offensives, the front stabilized at the 38th parallel, where the conflict had begun. With casualties mounting and no clear-cut victory in sight, the war lost much of its support. President Harry Truman was so unpopular by this time he decided not to seek re-election. During the subsequent eight years of the Eisenhower administration, the war-weary United States directly intervened militarily just once, in Lebanon in 1958.
Only after this respite was the country ready to elect another hawkish president: John F. Kennedy, an ardent Cold Warrior. The anti-communist Kennedy supported a reckless attempt to eliminate Castro in 1961, the so-called Bay of Pigs invasion, which helped set the stage for the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy also dramatically increased the number of U.S. advisors in Vietnam, setting another stage.
After President Johnson escalated the Vietnam War and President Nixon prolonged it, the public got fed up again and pressured Washington to end the war without victory. Like Truman, LBJ was forced to the political sidelines.
During the post-Vietnam administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter — lasting six-and-a-half years — war weariness again reduced the number of military interventions. Once again, however, the restraint only lasted so long, with Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, intervening in Libya, Grenada, and Lebanon, where the results were disastrous. This was followed by another hiatus, broken by George H.W. Bush’s 1989 invasion of Panama.
War weariness can even result after U.S. victories. In 1846, during the Mexican War, Generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor won great victories against Mexican armies. Yet, even after Mexico City was taken, the war dragged on and the public became restless.
The Spanish American War in 1898 also provides parallels to the current conflicts. After the initial taking of Cuba and the smashing of the Spanish fleet by Admiral Dewey in Manila, the United States refused to grant the Philippines its independence. The U.S. military then had to wage a brutal counterinsurgency war, which killed 200,000 Filipinos and resulted in an anti-colonialist backlash in the United States. This unpleasant experience made subsequent Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, previously a hawk, and William Howard Taft, chary of colonialism and direct foreign intervention.
The United States fought no major wars again until World War I.
Despite the U.S. victory in the Great War, the carnage appalled America, resulting in more than 20 years of reduced interventionism during the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover years and the first two terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor.
Though U.S. casualties were higher in World War II than World War I, the Second World War didn’t produce the usual fatigue. The different outcome resulted from the United States clearly being attacked first and the complete defeat of diabolical despotic regimes: Nazi Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan. The collapse of the fourth totalitarian regime of the 20th century, the Soviet Union, magnified U.S. hubris.
With no nuclear superpower rival with which to contend, the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush went into overdrive, expanding U.S. alliances and “commitments,” acquiring new military bases around the world, and flexing America’s military muscle where it was not really necessary.
Now, U.S. politicians and the public are beginning to realize that the greatest military in history may not be able to defeat a bunch of rag-tag and loosely organized guerillas and militias in Iraq, and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The good news is that these twin failures, however tragic and painful, will likely usher in a new period of U.S. military restraint, the policy championed by America’s founders. The bad news is that proponents of non-interventionism will only have a limited amount of time before the public forgets the pain of unnecessary wars and America’s foreign policy elites begin rattling their sabers again.
ieland@independent.org
http://www.independent.org
Read more articles by Ivan Eland
It always kills me when people cry that "our military can't beat some terrorist insurgents", without realizing that they are the only reason al Quida and the militias are still fighting. Because the anti-war forces will eventually demand our retreat, and the terrorists win.
The underlying assumption that this "is a good thing" is bogus. There's nothing good about refusing to address problems in the world that can lead to us getting attacked again. That's what we did pre-9/11, and it cost us 3000 innocent lives. Those who champion staying in Iraq talk about "the next 9/11" if we leave, but it won't be just one. They'll just keep attacking next time until we surrender into dhimmitude.
Calling for us to voluntarily lose just because we haven't won yet (neither stage is a failure) is very foolish policy indeed.
Comment by WolvenBear | April 18, 2007
Given Mr. Eland's premise, that America's founders and great leaders avoided confrontations, I thought we might revisit the facts since Mr. Eland has posted a kind of listing of wars in a way to prove his point that America goes in and out of war fatigue like a winded runner.
But before we glance at those facts, I thought it might be instructive to examine the thesis Mr. Eland proposes which appears to be that our defeat in Afghanistan and in Iraq will serve as a restraint to adventurism as did our defeat in Vietnam. Thus, Mr. Eland sees a possible good result to our defeat insofar as "war fatigue" or the learning of the lesson at least for now that we should never engage in war making abroad unless we are attacked directly, should be the result as in the past.
But Mr. Eland leaves us in the dark. He mentions WWII as if the attack from the Japanese somehow justified our entry into the European theatre. Many observers like Pat Buchanan who seem to take the same isolationist view as Mr. Eland argue that we really did not have any business engaging Germany in that war since Germany did not pose any immediate threat to the US. He is probably correct on that narrow point.
But then again, the same argument would challenge just about every war we have ever fought, including the Revolutionary War, hardly a "conservative" affair, and the Civil War. Other than the war against Japan, would Mr. Eland have recommended any other war? And indeed, did Japan really pose a threat to the US which required more than a defensive posture? Did we really need to mobilize and sail half-way around the globe to defend ourselves from another attack?
Thus, we might wish to understand what Messrs. Eland and Buchanan consider a sufficient threat to the US to justify war and once we understand that they might explain what kind of response or war making is appropriate in their view. Since neither say explicitly anything on either count, we might ask does this initial threat need to include an actual attack? In other words, must we wait to be attacked before we respond?
Further, once attacked, if the enemy withdraws and does not attempt to invade the Homeland such that there is no immediate threat of yet another attack by the enemy, should we respond with war or first determine if there will be yet further attacks?
Does the threat of a WMD attack suggest to Mr. Eland that we should or should not consider a preemptive war doctrine?
To get at these answers, we might ask Mr. Eland to review in a more in-depth fashion America's prior wars and tell us which ones he considers appropriately waged and why and which ones were not.
Let's review first the major wars:
[1] The Revolutionary War
[2] The American-Indian Wars
[3] The War of 1812
[4] Mexican War
[5] Civil War
[6] Spanish-American War
[7] Philippine-American War
[8] WWI
[9] WWII
[10] Korean War
[11] Vietnam War
[12] Desert Storm
[13] Enduring Freedom
And then the "minor" wars where the US used military intervention as a tool of foreign policy:
[a] Quasi War (Adams)
[b] Barbary Wars (Jefferson & Madison)
[c] Korean Expedition (Grant)
[d] Boxer Rebellion (McKinley)
[e] Mexican Revolution (Wilson)
[f] Occupation of Haiti and the Banana Wars (Wilson)
[g] Northern Russian Expedition (Wilson)
[h] Lebanon Crisis (Eisenhower)
[i] Bay of Pigs (Kennedy)
[j] El Savador Civil War (Carter)
[k] Iran Hostage Crisis (Carter)
[l] Invasion of Grenada (Reagan)
[m] Bombing of Libya (Reagan)
[n] Lebanon Deployment (Reagan)
[o] Persian Gulf Escorts (Reagan)
[p] Invasion of Panama (GH Bush)
[q] Haiti (Clinton)
[r] Bosnia/Kosovo (Clinton)
[s] Somalia (Clinton)
[t] Haiti (GW Bush)
[u] Phillipines vs. Muslim terrorists (GW Bush)
I've asked this question of others at this site who have taken the same kind of position as Mr. Eland and have yet to get an answer. Is that because they have not considered these questions or is it that there answers tend to be cookie-cutter responses because they don’t wish to disclose when and how a nation ought to defend itself?
All the best,
David Yerushalmi
Comment by David Yerushalmi | April 18, 2007
I think Mr. Eland has only actually written a single article in regards to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and he just shuffles some words around each time he wants it published again. Consequently, you can see my comments from his last 4 or 5 articles and assume that they apply here as well. I think the constant repetition is just some sort of personal learning exercise. Or maybe he just needs the assurance to convince himself his words actually mean something.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | April 19, 2007
We all need to cut Mr. Eland some slack. His main premise is essentially correct, once it's stated properly.
Nations that surrender in a time of war (think Germany and Japan) are far less likely to engage in future military exercises, even for their own self-defense. Only the victors continue their military activity.
So when we cut and run from the Middle East, as Mr. Eland proposes, we can count on increased Al Qaeda military action in the face of a declining U.S. response to such threats. That is, until the next big atrocity galvanizes the American public, and we toss out the Democrats (“a situation to be managed, not a war to be fought”) and return the adults to power.
Comment by Phillip Ellis Jackson | April 19, 2007