I keep reading Democracy

With better results this time. G. John Ikenberry (whose name sounds like it should be a down-home folk song) argues that America is in a "security trap" because it has failed to properly build a role in the international order. Instead, the US - before, and probably after, Bush - has insisted on a unilateral excercise of power without any meaningful constraints on US actions since the fall of the Berlin Wall. So far, so good. But what is this "security trap", you ask? Ikenberry explains:

Because of this, the Bush Administration has run into trouble–as I would put it, the United States has gotten caught in a "security trap." When America tries to solve the nation’s security problems by exercising its power or using force, it tends to produce resistance and backlash that leaves the country bereft of authority, isolated, and ultimately more insecure than it was before it acted.

No no no no no. America has never gotten "in to trouble" because of a use of military force in a legitimate security matter. The Persian Gulf war was a legitimate military matter, and the US solved it using US force. Controversial? No. The Balkans were not a conventional military problem, but the international community accepted that peacekeeping was no longer working, so NATO was allowed to bring Serbia to the table first at Dayton, then later with Kosovo. The attacks of Sept. 11 made the invasion of Afghanistan entirely uncontroversial at the time, to say the least.

(This isn't to say that even the "uncontroversial" examples I cited above were without dissent, only that on balance the international community accepted them at the time, or very shortly after the fact.)

America gets in to problems not when it uses it's power for security problems, but when it uses its power for non-security problems. I want to put this very clearly for Sensible Liberals out there: the price of oil, and the volume of oil available for purchase, is not a military matter. It is a matter for the marketplace to decide, and the Carter Doctrine is therefore a prescription for the illegitimate use of American force. Far, far too many Americans confuse their national interest (which the price of oil arguably is) with a military matter (which it absolutely is not.) Countries all over the world have learned to pursue their national interest without brute displays of power. I'm sure America can learn.

How much easier would American lives be today if there had never been a permanent American presence in Saudi Arabia?

Worse still, the American military demands the widest possible spectrum of violence to prosecute Washington's demands - keeping America out of both the ICC and the land mines treaty. So not only does Washington demand the right to settle non-military matters with military force, they give the military the cover to do so without the restrictions that the rest of the liberal world agrees to. This is why America has gotten in to a security trap - because Washington has insisted on using power for illegitimate ends, and has done so condoning illegitimate means.