Warmongering

Atrios writes:

I really don't know how we excise this "wants to invade lots of countries" attitude from elite opinion in Washington. It's very entrenched, very wrong, and very frightening.

Referring to Matthew Yglesias here:

And, of course, I certainly do desire a leader with command of the national security issue. Personally, I wouldn't define "command of the issue" as equivalent to "wants to invade lots of countries,"

Matt was talking about McCain specifically, but Washington generally: the belief that "seriousness" in national security means "willing - nay, eager - to invade lots of countries."

I'm not sure I could say when it happened that the US Military became the Swiss Army Knife of US foreign policy - whatever you need, the USAF can bomb it in to submission! My bet is probably Reagan's various campaigns against Latin American Communist Superpowers such as Grenada and Nicaragua. But whenever it began, the process continued more-or-less uninterrupted though Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Probably the biggest boon to the miltarization of foreign policy has been the US War on Drugs, with the attending use of soldiers in places like Colombia. Like the War on Terror, the question we've never really grappled with is: Is the military the proper tool for our objective?

As Chalmers Johnson has written, the US military is now the foreign policy instrument of the United States government, with the State Department about as useful as an appendix. When Musharraf took power in Pakistan, his first call was to Anthony Zinni, CENTCOM, not Madeleine Albright.

Again, this predates Bush II and Iraq by some time. Bush inherited a state aparatus that was predisposed to blowing shit up, whether or not that was a particularly useful response.

It's really weird, because as with so many things the shift in attitude seems to be the Reagan-era, post-Vietnam cynicism. But Vietnam showed how ineffective the military could be - even in it's own environment! - yet somehow the idea of substantial humanitarian assistance is seen by the US elite as unnecessary. The military was rehabilitated post-Vietnam, but foreign aid as a tool of foreign policy never was. See yesterdays's post about the meager US aid to Ukraine post-Orange Revolution, for example.

If the American people want to avoid another Iraq-style disaster, it requires more than just a rethinking of US national security. It requires a major rethinking of what kind of country the US wants to be in the world. So long as the US wants to be a global power, able to use military force around the planet, I would say Iraq, Vietnam, or their successor disasters are going to be likely, if not inevitable. However, if the US were willing to build institutions of true global governance - the ICC, a rapid reaction force for the UN, adherence to the will of the UN General Assembly (gasp!) - while downsizing it's own ambitions, then there's a chance that future calamities can be avoided.