Over at the Atlantic, there’s a fine, yet troubling. essay about America’s war policy, entitled, How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology. James Joyner writes that
The United States has found itself in a seemingly endless series of wars over the past two decades. Despite frequent opposition by the party not controlling the presidency and often that of the American public, the foreign policy elite operates on a consensus that routinely leads to the use of military power to solve international crises….
Neoconservatives of both parties urge war to spread American ideals, seeing it as the duty of a great nation. Liberal interventionists see individuals, not states, as the key global actor and have deemed a Responsibility to Protect those in danger from their own governments, particularly when an international consensus to intervene can be forged.
Traditional Realists, meanwhile, initially reject most interventions but are frequently drawn in by arguments that the national interest will be put at risk if the situation spirals out of control.
Joyner’s right, about a decades-long war policy that’s been wrong and debilitating for America. We are no ordinary power, and should not act as an imperial one. America’s extraordinary strength (of well-trained soldiers and advanced weapons) should be used sparingly, for the specific, brief, decisive defense of our people (and those very few allies vital to our security).
(Finding and killing Bin Laden, by the way, was a legitimate and right use of our power: he was an enemy of our people, and deserved his fate. Every day after 9/11 that Bin Laden lived was a day too many. The president was right to use force; there could be few better uses of American power. I find objections to the strike against Bin Laden — including those of libertarian Ron Paul — to be morally obtuse.)
How long, though, will so many Americans fight wars against insurgents or governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya? How long until we add Syria to that list?
One should have no sympathy for the fanatics and dictators filling that list; yet all these many conflicts take a moral toll on America. Long after the Cold War, we have slowly drifted from peaceful republic — acting only in true emergencies — to a nation at war in more than one place — year after year.
The price of these long, indecisive struggles is a rotting of American principles of peaceful, commercial relations with other peoples, with war only as a last recourse.