Sunday, May 22, 2011

Interventionist foreign policy


Last year I wrote an article for the Spokane Libertarian Examiner, critiquing President Obama's foreign policy. I pointed out that when American Presidents first began pursuing interventionist foreign policies at the close of the 19th century, it was ostensibly to make America a safer place. At the time the idea was a simple one: America will be safer if it is bigger and tougher. This was the idea that led America into the Spanish–American War and other wars of territorial expansion.
 
At around the time of Woodrow Wilson, however, a new justification for international war began to emerge. No longer was the goal merely to make America a safer place: the goal was now to make the world a safer place. The result of this paradigm shift is that neither the world or America are actually safer. If anything, the opposite is the case: America’s military internationalism has been putting the American people at a greater risk than ever.

Consider that America’s expensive militaristic policies (financed almost entirely by debt) are threatening to destroy the very economic integrity of the nation – an integrity necessary for America’s safety in the most general sense. More directly, however, America’s interventionist politics have created unprecedented levels of what the CIA calls blowback. Blowback is the violent, unintended consequences for military action directed against the civil population of the aggressor government. The bombings of 9/11 were a classic case of blowback, since they came as a reaction to the long-time presence of the American military in the Middle East. As Philip Giraldi, former counterterrorism expert with the CIA put it,
I think anybody who knows anything about what’s been going on for the last 10 years would realize that cause and effect are operating here – that, essentially, al Qaeda has an agenda which very specifically says what its grievances are. And its grievances are basically that ‘we’re over there.’
Giraldi’s conclusion was confirmed by University of Chicago’s Robert Pape, who collected a database of 462 suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2004. He found that the religious beliefs of suicide terrorists were less of a motivation for the attacks than has commonly been suspected. The primary motivation is a desire “to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland.” Commenting on this in his book The Revolution, Ron Paul points out that
Between 1995 and 2004, the al Qaeda years, tw o-thirds of all attacks came from countries where the United States had troops stationed. While al Qaeda terrorists are twice as likely to hail from a country with a strong Wahhabist (radical Islamic) presence, they are ten times as likely to come from a country in which U.S. troops are stationed. Until the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq had never had a suicide terrorist attack in its entire history. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S. , France and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more attacks. ...the longer and more extensive the occupation of Muslim terri tories, the greater the chance of more 9/11-type attacks on the United States.
This does not, of course, mean that terrorists are justified in their attacks, but it should serve to caution those Americans who assume that an aggressive foreign policy is needed to make the United States or the world a safer place. As an American, I do not sleep easier at night because I know Obama has positioned active missiles next to the border of Russia, provoking our former enemy into an arms race (which you can read more about here). Nor I do not consider myself particularly safer because America is engaged in dozens of undeclared wars in Africa. Neither will I sleep better knowing that America is involved in a proxy arms race (via Taiwan) with China. And I am certainly not safer as a result of the United States’ military being stretched almost to breaking point with bases in 150 different countries across five continents. If anything, such policies are making America and the world less safe. Only time will tell how true this is.

To read more about what's wrong with Obama's foreign policy, see my article "Obama at War.


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3 comments:

Mike said...

I have been following this blog for several months now. I find your knowledge of history informative and your views on politics and religion enlightening. However, on this one occasion, I must challenge several of your assertions. As some Americans are becoming more aware of world affairs and we are paying more attention to political issues; I believe it necessary to discuss both sides of the coin, if you will.
Between the two world wars and especially after the stock market crash of 1929, the US maintained a non interventionist policy. While it took the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 to finally pull the US into WWII; I would hate to think of what would have happened to Britain, the rest of Europe, or the world for that matter if the US had kept a weak military and an isolationist policy considering Hitler “Europe’s problem”.
While you may not feel any safer knowing the US has missiles close to Russia, I ask you to consider the history of communism and especially China’s current ambitions. If our government does not act; China’s navy will soon surpass our own. How does that bode for South Korea, Japan, Australia or the Philippines? Moreover, China recently developed land based missile capable of attacking aircraft carriers long before they come within shooting range of China. If China (who already dominates the Yellow Sea) had the capability to disrupt trade with Japan, South Korea, or any other nation in the Pacific what would we do?
We’ve seen the communist imperialism of both the former USSR and China. We would be naïve to believe it wouldn’t happen again.
Also, I believe our biggest security risk has been our lack of aggression; not as some suggest a so-called “wanton” use of it. (Not that I’m endorsing mindless aggression) McArthur recommended using the atomic bomb to end the Korean War, but for reasons unknown, Truman decided against it. Had Truman gone through with McArthur’s recommendation, we would not have troops sitting along the 38th parallel for more than half a century. The Cold War could have been shortened by decades and we could have avoided Vietnam altogether. How many lives and how much suffering could have been saved if we would have pushed through to victory instead of a “stalemate”?
The truth is; as our nation’s economic interests have grown, so have our defense needs. Our founding fathers recognized this principle with the creation (or rather resurrection) of the US Navy to protect US trading vessels from the Barbary Pirates. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “We ought to begin a naval power if we mean to carry on our commerce” (see Wikipedia US Navy).

Mike said...

(Continued)
Moreover, when you claim America is provoking Russia into an arms race, you sound like one of those people who assert if we get rid of all our weapons there won’t be any more wars. Does anyone really believe if we fold up our nuclear missile production China, North Korea, Iran, Russia and Pakistan will follow suit?
Furthermore, I believe the statement: “al Qaeda’s grievances are basically we’re over there” is a liberal cop-out. (While I understand it’s not your statement but a quotation) First to say “we’re over there?” where exactly? Afghanistan? If you remember they attacked us first. And they would have to have known we would go wherever we needed to track them down. While I for one believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, it came as the aftermath of 9/11 not as a precursor to it. I know Osama bin Laden was angered by US presence in Saudi Arabia. But, we were invited by their government.
Also, Hamas, al Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad have the overarching goal of destroying the Jews first, the Great Satan next, and all other “infidels” after that. By “over there” do you mean Israel? Should the Jews abdicate there ONE AND ONLY homeland? Would that procure peace in the Middle East? You have written much on this site regarding Muslim attempts to dominate Europe? Why do you now suppose American interventionism is a cause for Muslim aggression?
While some of these so-called Muslim martyrs like Muhammad Atta and the would-be “underwear bomber” came from wealthier Middle Eastern and African families and enjoyed a better lifestyle than many other Arabs, they still fell into the Wahabbist view that they had to destroy the Great Satan. Muhammad Atta studied in the West and learned to hate the West by living there. Coincidentally, don’t you find it odd we can have a survey of suicide bombers’ reasons for attacking? How did we collect the data? From what reliable source? The suicide bomber is already dead. So he can’t tell us why he attacked? Did we locate suicide bombers before they attacked and question them? If someone did that and allowed the bomber to go on, they are an accomplice to murder.
In his book, Chechen Jihad, Yosef Bodansky tells that a number of female suicide bombers (dubbed “black widows”) are used against the Russians. These women were poor widows and often thought to be a “burden” on their families or were in some other ways “disgraced”. The jihadist leaders preyed on the psyche of such people who felt a heavy guilt of not being able to live up to the Islamic ideal and they were pressed into becoming a “martyr”. (And to counter the obvious question: From what reliable source does this information come? Several of these black widows were caught before they could detonate, and Russian intelligence found a house for recruiting and training of these black widows. And suicide notes were found by some).The Chechen Jihadist movement had one goal: To turn Chechnya into an Islamic state whether that’s what the Chechens wanted or not. They attacked a school in Beslan and a theater in Moscow. They attacked convenient targets that were designed to have the greatest psychological impact on the populace.
In closing, I would paraphrase FDR by saying that Muslims don’t merely admit but proclaim that there can be no peace between their philosophy of government and our philosophy of government.

I hope I have not come off as boorish in my rebuttal. I merely believed the other side of the “coin” you have presented in this post needs explored.
Regards,

Michael Duty

Unknown said...

Dear Mike,

I have attempted to address your concerns at http://robinphillips.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-promised-that-after-lent-was-over-i.html

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