To fight or not to fight?

I'm now at a lunch talk by Stephen Carter called "The Tragedy of Just War Theory". The most interesting thing he's pointed out so far is that when Americans say "someone should do something" to stop a conflict somewhere, this is almost tantamount to saying "we should do something", because at a most generous estimate, there are four military forces in the world capable of deploying into a conflict zone and shutting down the war: America, Britain, Australia, and Israel. For diverse reasons, the other three are very unlikely to deploy without our support. We're it. "If you are an American," says Carter, "it is not enough to know what you are against. You must know what you are for."

Perhaps the list of conflicts in which we should intervene is very short--the hard left and the paleo right would say that it is zero. But we have to recognize that if we don't, no one else is going to do it for us--the African Union cannot make peace in Darfur, none of Iraq's neighbors can help it if it erupts into civil war, and so forth.

That means that when we decide not to intervene, we are making a decision that no one should act to halt the conflict. That, says Carter, should be a decision--not something that we simply let slide by default while we murmer that really, something ought to be done.

Comments

The French can, too. They do it a lot in Africa, when it suits them.

That doesn't change the fact that the US is far more capable than anyone else, and that we provide a lot of logistical support for other armies when they do intervene.

Posted by John Lynch | July 5, 2008 2:41 PM

I can see what you're driving at, but we can't actually intervene very often - not if we want to do any good at all. Our economy is in a rather major downturn right now, debt is spiraling, and many of the best people in the U.S. armed forces - or considering joining the armed forces - are punching out rather than get chewed up overseas for no visible benefit. I'll agree that the U.S. has a terrific influence on which wars get fought, but that doesn't mean we can afford to fight them all ourselves.

Posted by Robin Z | July 5, 2008 2:54 PM

Soooo......did he saying anything about the role of the diplomats? Engaging the military solution is too easy for too many people who don't want to think through these problems......just ask those at the State Department who can't find enough volunteers to tend to the diplomatic mission in Baghdad......

Posted by jwh | July 5, 2008 2:58 PM

Yes, but is it a good thing that the US is such a dominant power that not only does nobody else do anything. But many of our allies are dependent upon us for their logistics? That seems to be a very large worldwide issue. If their is only one power that can act, also the backlash against it is already here (intervene too much, not enough). There is no simple answer on these questions regardless of your answer there are qualifications to each perspective.

I personally don't think we can responsibly continue the current path. Whichever man wins the presidency he'll undoubtedly be given a decision to make regarding intervention, or instigation. Now does anyone think its in the US best interest to fight any more wars for another 10 years? I'm not talking about humanitarian plight, or how good the war may be. I'm talking bare bones mathematics on the economy, military equipment and manpower, strain across the nation, and our own problems. Lets not be so busy tending everyones' farm that we neglect our own. Some may cry "selfish, cowardly". I reply, "That is the luxury of being the only entity capable of carrying on a fight, the ability to choose when and where you pick a fight." I don't scream isolationism, I only ask we take some time to straighten our house, lest we exhaust ourselves and be unable to carry on any fight at all.

Posted by ben | July 5, 2008 3:17 PM

To say that military intervention is the only solution is a grotesque simplification of the reasons that conflicts start in the first place. Wars and conflicts in the Middle East often start because of our oil addiction – the proper solution to this is to replace the present distorted incentives that we've created on an ad hoc basis over the last millennium (zoning laws, interstate highway system, eminent domain, US naval patrols of the high seas, perverse energy incentives, etc.) with a market-based system that internalizes the costs of extracting oil and building out the suburbs that the government has taken away. In parts of the world like Burma, North Korea, and Latin America where governments who do evil things derive a lot of their revenues from illegal drug production, the correct response is to end our war on drugs which makes such production and trafficking so profitable. In places like Somalia where the Western notion of the nation-state and the UN has forced the state onto people who before did just fine without it, the proper response is to let up on trying to find one figurehead to govern a territory that exists only because the colonial masters said it ought to exist.

Military intervention is not the only tool we have – all it does is stop the current conflict, without addressing the reasons tensions flared in the first place. Liberalization and a laissez-faire foreign police are the only way to ensure that conflicts don't crop up in the future.

Posted by Rationalitate | July 5, 2008 3:25 PM

"...a laissez-faire foreign police are the only way to ensure that conflicts don't crop up in the future."

Huh? So if we pretend we don't have any national interests in some of these Third World countries, there won't be any conflicts arising that threaten our interests?

Posted by jwh | July 5, 2008 3:51 PM

Huh? So if we pretend we don't have any national interests in some of these Third World countries, there won't be any conflicts arising that threaten our interests?

If individuals' interests abroad are threatened, they internalize the cost of that. If the threat becomes large enough (e.g., the threat of nationalization of oil wells and infrastructure), then private investors will recognize that risk by adjusting upwards their risk premium, raising prices, and compelling the market to find alternatives.

Furthermore, I'd like to question what these interests are, exactly. Recently, it's been oil, but like I said, there are a lot of reasons that have to do with domestic policy for why we're so dependent on oil. Take away these perverse incentives at home and you'll find that foreign oil is a much less important interest. And anyway, why is oil necessarily in the nation's interest? Sure, some people would benefit from foreign oil becoming more available to Americans, but what about those who compete with foreign oil? If foreign oil really is pricey due to the security premium, then don't they have a competitive advantage? Why should they be denied the opportunity to profit from what is a more efficient means of production?

Posted by Rationalitate | July 5, 2008 4:48 PM

"That means that when we decide not to intervene, we are making a decision that no one should act to halt the conflict."

This does not follow. If we decide not to intervene, it means that no one is likely to intervene, but it has no normative component whatsoever (it says nothing about whether someone should or should not). At the most it says that we have determined it is not in our best interests to intervene. Irrespective of that determination, many people might still say that we *should*.

Posted by John Jenkins | July 5, 2008 4:57 PM

If a man is chronically beating his wife, sure, you can go over and politely explain that what he's doing is wrong, you're not going to do business with him until he stops, and that you'll give him a new ox if he stops. And, hey, maybe it'll work.

But if he's still doing it three years later, it's probably past time to stop kidding yourself that talking will work. And if you're the only guy in the village big enough to stop him, well, no, you're not obliged to stop him. But perhaps you should stop talking about how "someone" should do something, and learn to live with her screams.

Posted by FHC | July 5, 2008 6:07 PM

"none of Iraq's neighbors can help it if it erupts into civil war, and so forth. "

Probably a poor choice for an example, as a potential civil war would more or less be mainly due to what America did and not what it didn't do.

Posted by tg | July 5, 2008 6:29 PM

Iraq is also an excellent example of a conflict that wouldn't have happened in the first place had it not been for other countries' machinations earlier. (And I'm talking about pre-invasion Iraq – obviously the current mess is America's fault, but so was Iraq before the most recent invasion.) Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld covered up Saddam's attacks in Halabja during the first Gulf War, and the US supported Saddam throughout the Iran-Iraq war. Furthermore, the main threat to US interests in the region comes from theocratic Iran, which is a regime that might well not have come into existence had the US not overthrown the democratically elected Mosaddeq and replaced him with our lackey, the Shah. And then on an even deeper level, Iraq and Iran matter mainly for their fossil fuel resources (Iraq and its oil, Iran and its natural gas and oil) – and the widespread adoption of fossil fuels that we see today has more to do government policies favoring their adoption rather than genuine market demand.

But god forbid we actually get to the root of the problem – it's much easier to discuss the pathetically limited options that either the Democrats or the Republicans present to us. And I'm a little disappointed in you, Megan, for rarely venturing into the heart of issues like that, and instead giving us your rather conventional opinion on whose plan – McCain's or Obama's – is less absurd.

Posted by Rationalitate | July 5, 2008 7:20 PM

If that's the most interesting thing that he pointed out, it sounds like you had to suffer through a pretty uninteresting talk.

My response to this novel theory? "Like, duh".

If this line of argument can successfully persuade a member of the purported thinking/leadership class to have second thoughts about a non-interventionist stance, it will be a sad statement on just how stupid we've become.

Posted by Staash | July 5, 2008 7:23 PM

As has been said above, your examples understate the abilities of the French, and very much overstate the abilities of Israel - and for that matter, slightly overstate the abilities of Australia. And Japan has the most capable military nobody's ever heard of.

Posted by Kolohe | July 5, 2008 9:19 PM

True, but the principle holds. The US military budget is perhaps an order of magnitude larger than that of anybody else, and it has a much more extensive set of overseas bases etc.

So if a distant power is involved in a war it will probably be the US, simply because it is so much easier for it to do so.

Put another way: if the arguments to intervene are not strong enough to persuade the US, they will almost certainly not persuade anyone else.

And if they do persuade the US, it makes relatively little difference if they persuade anyone else. (Not no difference, but less difference.)

Posted by ad | July 6, 2008 9:39 AM

It has been my observation that most of those who say "someone should do something" do NOT mean that the US should intervene. Explicitly.

What they mean is that someone else should do so. Preferably (in most cases) they want either the UN or some regional organization to intervene. Totally ignoring the fact that almost none of those organizations are interested in (or, mostly, capable of) doing so.

Further, they would strongly prefer that the intervention not involve the military. At most, they would like some police sent in; more usually, they apparently want someone to wave a magic wand to make the world right. If they have actually thought thru what might be done at all -- which mostly they haven't.

I've talked with a lot of them over the years, and the pattern has not changed:
- the situation is terrible,
- but military force is simply unacceptable,
- and almost anything directly done by the US is, by definition, terrible,
- so "somebody [else] should do something"

Posted by wj | July 6, 2008 11:18 AM