They Invade The Desert And Call It Peace
Posted on June 18th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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On the main blog, Dan has made an argument for non-interventionism as the best, indeed only, way to pursue a prudent foreign policy that will avoid such blunders as the war in Iraq or the deployment to Somalia. While restating his confidence in the virtues of Pax Americana, Ross rejects “stringent non-interventionism” but essentially agrees with Dan’s following point:
If you want a prudent foreign policy that keeps America out of unwinnable wars in places like Iraq and Somalia, you should support noninterventionism. Neither neoconservatism nor liberal interventionism nor old-fashioned Cold War conservatism will ever be cautious enough to avoid such entanglements.
Ross makes it very clear that he doesn’t embrace a thoroughgoing non-interventionism, and he thinks that the costs from any of the blunders we might care to name are more than made up for by the (exaggerated) benefits of Pax Americana, but he allows that the blunders are simply part of upholding this order. On this point, Ross says:
I think my disagreement with the non-interventionist point of view comes down to the question of whether the benefits that flow from the Pax Americana that’s been created by America’s quasi-imperial role in the world are worth the blunders that more-or-less inevitably accompany it.
Given that these inevitable blunders will happen, there is the possibility of relatively greater prudence (e.g., Eisenhower’s administration), but he admits that future blunders will be part of any attempt to serve as the guarantor of world order (which is what admirers of Pax Americana think has been happening). So Ross has ceded Dan’s main point quoted above, and it is therefore crucial to Ross’ position that the benefits of Pax Americana are as great for America and the world as he claims. However, the incidence of cross-border warfare does not seem to have been less since 1991, especially considering that the U.S. and our allies have launched a number of invasions or attacks on sovereign states in the last 17 years. Wars with massive casualties have been fewer, but it’s questionable how much of this can be attributed to our “quasi-imperial role.”
Having armed and deputised the Ethiopians to invade Somalia, Washington can take credit for at least one other invasion in this decade besides Iraq. While Colombia recently had reason to launch a cross-border raid into Ecuador and Washington supported the action, this act violated the OAS Charter (to which the U.S. is a signatory and which is supposedly part of the architecture of international order that we uphold). The people of Lebanon two years ago seem to have missed out on the benefits of the peace, and Washington could not have been more supportive of the war against Lebanon. More recently, as we all know, Turkey has launched attacks across the border into Iraqi Kurdistan with Washington’s grudging permission. The assumption that you must make about Pax Americana to think that it is working to stop cross-border warfare is that in the absence of U.S. hegemony there would be many more instances of this and the wars would be longer and bloodier than they have been. This is doubtful.
Meanwhile, the most dangerous borders in the world between Pakistan and India are precisely those where the U.S. has been most ineffective in discouraging cross-border attacks by Pakistan-backed militants. The Kargil war and the heightened tensions in earlier part of this decade following the attack on the Indian Parliament were kept from escalating largely thanks to India’s deterrent and cooler heads prevailing on both sides. As it was, whatever beneficial influence Washington had in easing tensions during these episodes was minimal, and to the extent that Washington has favoured Pakistan for decades, armed its military and raised it to non-NATO ally status the guarantor of the peace has been facilitating the violation of the peace. Obviously, the Congo wars that have killed millions and at one time involved as many as seven central and southern African nations are not even on the radar if we are going to pretend that there has been a significant decrease in major cross-border warfare. Relative to what?
The point in listing all of these interruptions of the peace is not say that Washington needs to do more and try harder to enforce the unenforceable peace, but that a hegemonic role can also fuel instability and even the hegemon has little to do with preventing India and Pakistan from going to war (and indeed, in the 1971 war, we modestly aided the Pakistanis). Given the limited resources of any nation, there will not and cannot be a meaningful Pax Americana or its equivalent that extends to the whole world. By and large, what people are referring to is the peaceful development of Europe and Japan while they have been under American protection. This has been impressive, but if that is where most of the benefits are our presence is no longer required.
Also, most of the postwar benefits that are attributed to Pax Americana were the product of the freezing of many conflicts by the Cold War. (This general freeze did not, of course, stop multiple major international wars on the Subcontinent that killed and displaced millions, nor did it stop the Iraqi invasion of Iran or the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, to cite a few prominent examples.) Once the USSR disappeared as a global player, the peace began unraveling in many parts of the world because the relative peace was not a product of our superpower position or our entanglements around the world, but to the extent that it existed was a product of the highly unusual superpower rivalry that ended almost two decades ago. The benefits are considerably less obvious than they might have once seemed, and if we restricted our attention to the benefit to the United States it is even less clear that Americans benefit from a Pax Americana that inevitably (as Ross says) involves colossal blunders that require the deployment of a huge part of our land forces for many years, trillions of dollars spent and tens of thousands dead and wounded.
Update: James joins the conversation and offers a conclusion that I find fairly acceptable:
To make this work, we badly need to restore Europe and Japan to security independence, and we need to continue to advance the interests of India, and we need maybe above all not to make enemies of the Russians. If Europe remains weak, if Japan remains toothless, if India falters, and if Russia is demonized, we lose — and we lose because our unnatural position of globally hegemonic intervention cannot, and should not, be maintained, much less intensified.
This is more or less what I and several others here and elsewhere have been urging for years. Dr. Trifkovic in particular has been making the case for a “Northern Alliance” with the Russians and has correctly seen the current administration’s efforts to develop a better relationship with India as one of its few at least partial successes, and it has become a standard refrain among non-interventionists and sympathetic realists that Europe, Japan, South Korea (and, yes, even Taiwan) can provide for their own defense now and really should be providing for their own defense.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
7 Responses to “They Invade The Desert And Call It Peace”
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http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/ud/kampanjer/refleks/innspill/engasjement/prio.html?id=492941
The number of ongoing conflicts has declined since shortly after the end of the Cold War and the severity of armed conflict has generally declied since World War II. This fact sharply contradicts many pessimistic perspectives bolstered by media headlines from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur. Research conducted by the Centre for the Study of Civil War at PRIO, using the most recently updated data collected in collaboration with the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University, indicates a more complex situation, with both reassuring and disturbing trends.
After a period of steady decline in the number of armed conflicts in the world, the downward trend has ended. Data from PRIO and Uppsala University indicates that the number of active conflicts is no longer sinking, but has held steady at 32 for three years in a row. Secondly, we are now in the longest period since World War II without interstate war (those fought between two or more countries). Moreover, we register no new conflicts of any type over the previous two years; this is the first time in the postwar period in which two years have passed with no new conflicts having broken out.
This report serves as a background paper for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ programme, Refleks,Globalisation and national interests. We focus here on global trends in armed conflict with special emphasis on civil conflict, since it is the most common form of armed conflict.
I’ve always had a problem with the fact that advocates of US global hegemony never seem to want to articulate the particular benefits of our neo-imperial posture. It’s very irritating how they are so accustomed and comfortable with the un-challenged deployment of euphamisms like “national/strategic/regional interests”, without ever being compelled to explain what they mean, and why what they mean is worth Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s taxdollars and the lives of their children.
In addition to questioning how “ruling the world” actually benefits Americans besides swelling nationalist pride as a vicarious substitute for self-esteem, It’s also important to note the possible opportunity costs of being the world’s policeman, not only against the national security implications of NOT being the world’s policeman, but against how all those resources sucked into the Military Industrial Complex might be put to more productive use–use which may do far more to benefit Americans and humankind.
Arguments for American hegemony always come down to zero-sum arguments against other country’s potential hegemony. “If we don’t dominate them, they’ll dominate us!” Its the Cold War mindset, and is unlikely to dissapear at least as long as the Cold Warriors still run the show. Personally, I’d favor a USA that acted more like Switzerland–let China or Russia undertake the enormous self-destructive burden of empire. They’re unlikely to be more successful than us at “stablizing” the world at tremendous cost to their economies and political systems.
Finally, there should be some cosmic dictate that demands all advocates of interventionism sacrifice half their earned income and their first born child to the front lines of whatever violent cause they support. Leave the rest of us the hell alone.
“Given the limited resources of any nation, there will not and cannot be a meaningful Pax Americana or its equivalent that extends to the whole world.”
Especially limited, given the 9+ trillion national debt, the $400 billion fiscal defecit, and the current trade deficit. Our “resources” to uphold this erstwhile Pax Americana are funded by foreign countries and investors.
“. It’s very irritating how they are so accustomed and comfortable with the un-challenged deployment of euphamisms like “national/strategic/regional interests”, without ever being compelled to explain what they mean, and why what they mean is worth Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s taxdollars and the lives of their children.”
That is put as perfectly as I have ever seen it. The alleged benefits of this hegemony are simply assumed, never articulated.
What do you think would start to happen to Taiwan the day after a US president announces that America will no longer lift a finger in its defense?
Defending the liberty of millions of Taiwanese hasn’t cost many American lives and has delivered very good value for very little money. It’s probably even more than paid for itself in trade.
The same story is true of many (admittedly not all) US commitments elsewhere in the world. The danger lies with rigid dogmatism (both imperialist and isolationist) which stubbornly diverges from prudential reality.
“Ongoing conflicts” can and probably do refer to civil wars and insurgencies as well as international wars. If the relevant measure for determining the effects of Pax Americana is maintaining international stability or limiting cross-border warfare, I’m not sure that the incidence of the latter has decreased significantly in the last 20 years. If we are in a relative lull, that’s good to know, but it remains doubtful that this is a function of the “quasi-imperial role.”
What would happen to Taiwan? The Chinese might try to take it over, and according to what I understand that our Navy says about the Chinese Navy they wouldn’t be able to pull it off, which makes it unlikely that they would attempt it. A majority of Taiwanese favor eventual, peaceful reunification in some form, so to have Taiwan again Beijing need merely wait and negotiate the terms. There is also nothing written that not defending Taiwan means not being willing to sell them arms if that would help them in their own defense. That wouldn’t be strict neutrality, I suppose, but contrary to the “rigid dogmatism” charge I am willing to flexible up to a point.
The quasi-guarantee to Taiwan is a perfect example of the sort of unnecessary role I’m opposing. Of course the President need not make any announcement that the U.S. will not lift a finger. You don’t have to give away strategic ambiguity with respect to important trading partners to stop maintaining an outdated military presence in the rest of East Asia. This is not a case of dogmatism, but of stressing the American interest first and foremost.
There’d be no need for the announcement retraction. Occasional Chinese poking and prodding would reveal the change in our stance. Past that point once the continuing growth in the Chinese capacity reached the point where they were convinced they could “pull it off,” there’d be hot war or slow strangulation until the Taiwanese realized that they’d reached a most opportune moment to reunite.
Obviously, no one else in the world could suppose that we’d exert ourselves to maintain the level international stability established in the Post WWII era in areas of the world. We’d abandoned our ally from the Second World War, a vibrant democracy, a country with which we shared extensive commercial, cultural, and familial ties.
It is necessary for our well-being to prevent the arms races,, the pre-emptive warring, and the pretenders to regional dominance that would spring up immediately? Plainly.