by Eric Martin
Bernard Finel, riffing on the wrongheaded suggestion from the otherwise intelligent David Axe that the US involve itself militarily in the Congo (because, hey, our military is getting lazy just sitting around doing nothing, and our budget surpluses need to be spent somewhere, and winning other nations' civil wars is something of a specialty for us, etc):
The fundamental problem for the United States is that primacy has become its own justification. Because we are everywhere, threats anywhere engage our interests requiring us… to be everywhere. Foreign interventions — whether military, political, diplomatic, or economic — require no further justification in terms of national interest. They are assumed to be justified by virtue of our global presence. It is the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone.
Because we perceive ourselves as already committed, we then engage in a process of rationalization of our interventionist impulse. Unfortunately this is an easy task. Since the world is messy, it is pretty easy to construct a geopolitical, economic, humanitarian, or reputational justication for acting everywhere and anywhere. Something bad (or potentially bad) is happening everywhere, and something bad happening anywhere is assumed to implicate American interests sufficiently to justify intervention.
As a result, we don’t use our power only where such interventions are required, but we use it instead everywhere except when a compelling argument against intervention exists. American foreign policy begins with the presumption of intervention, and those of us arguing for restraint are required to make an affirmative case for it. And not only must restraint make an affirmative case, it must make a case that is compelling beyond the shadow of a doubt. Successfully advocating restraint often requires, in short, proving a negative — that nothing bad will happens if we fail to act. In Afghanistan, for instance, even the possibility that a terrorist attack might be planned there in the future is justification for an annual expenditure of $100 billion.
As Finel and others point out, advocating for war, any war, is good for your reputation as a foreign policy analyst. It's a career move. [UPDATE: I want to stress that I am not accusing David Axe of pushing this argument for career purposes, just noting the disturbing conventional wisdom that pervades the foreign policy community] Meanwhile, opposition to any such endeavor gets you labeled an "isolationist" – as if an unwillingness to deploy the US military in dubious, murky local conflicts in every distant locale, from Burma and Darfur to Somalia and the Congo, is the equivalent of advocating a complete disengagement from the rest of the world.
If we can't bomb them, let's have nothing to do with them.
On the other hand, maybe those motivated by humanitarian impulses could instead pursue the myriad ways in which we can save and improve lives without, you know, bombing the people we're saving in the process.
honestly, it’s been a while since we started a war. we’re about due.
If Iraq and Afghanistan had ended a couple years back, this would be on the fast track to awesome town.
Hmm, let’s send American troops into a jungle filled with indistinguishable fighters who wear no uniform and are often children to settle a mesh of interrelated local conflicts we don’t understand so that one of the sides who we will pretend is slightly less brutal than the other side wins and is allowed to take over the country to oppress and murder the other sides as we declare victory.
And that’s if it goes well.
Sounds like a great plan to me. Er, you go first though.
@Jacob Davies
I think I’ve heard this plot somewhere before. We can call it “Vietnam 2: Electric Boogaloo”.
so that one of the sides who we will pretend is slightly less brutal than the other side wins and is allowed to take over the country to oppress and murder the other sides as we declare victory
Isn’t there supposed to be something about dominoes in there too? Or maybe it’s checkers. No, definitely dominoes…
Kvetch:
I think the phrase you’re looking for is “”If we hit that bull’s eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.”
Freedom will be, as it were, on the march/African Spring/etc.
Devil’s advocate.
— It’s not “a mesh of interrelated conflicts”. The LRA is the modern equivalent of a Mongol horde. They’re heavily armed nomads who move slowly across central Africa, looting, raping and recruiting as they go. They have no redeeming features; they are entirely parasitic and purely and simply destructive.
— I regret to inform you that not all Africans look alike. Although the LRA recruits as it goes, most LRA members are still Acholi from northern Uganda. Acholi are physically quite distinct from the inhabitants of northern Congo, where the LRA is currently occupied; think a pack of heavily armed Swedes in Turkey or Sicily. Also, most of them don’t speak the local languages. So, in all seriousness, they are not going to be hard to pick out.
— As Axe correctly points out, the LRA could be killed by decapitation. (Whether this would be easy is a separate question. Hold that thought.) They have no ideology and no cause. There’s a semi-religious belief system centered around Kony as a prophet of God and master of spirits; think the Reverend Jim Jones, if he’d been into homicide instead of suicide. Under Kony there are a handful, less than 20, of cadre leaders. Get Kony and that group and it’s entirely plausible that the whole thing falls apart.
— The “promoting war is good for your career” slur is insulting and stupid. David Axe is a war journalist who’s spent much of his adult life in one lethal hellhole after another. He opposed the Iraq War and is, broadly, antiwar in general. He’s proposing a targeted, limited intervention for humanitarian means. You can argue that he’s wrong, that it wouldn’t work, that we can’t afford it, etc. etc. But “oh he’s trying to polish his CV” — whoever says that is being willfully ignorant. Cripes, you can just drop his name into google — this isn’t hard.
— The LRA has killed thousands of people across Africa in the last decade, and mutilated, raped and traumatized thousands more. And if not stopped — by someone — they’re going to keep doing it until Kony drops dead of old age.
Again, you can argue that it’s not worth it, it’s too risky, etc. But you can’t argue that stopping the LRA wouldn’t be pretty much pure good; it’s like eliminating smallpox or polio.
Doug M. — writing from Kinshasa, Congo
And a bit more.
— David Axe has no interest whatsoever in joining a think tank, writing a column for the Washington Post, or appearing on Sunday morning talk shows. He goes to wars and writes about them. That’s what he does.
Here’s the latest from his blog:
“I will travel to DRC in September, for a period of six weeks… It won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap. I estimate the cost at around $10,000. Through the crowdfunding Website Kickstarter, my supporters contributed $1,600 to cover a portion of my air fare. Other big expenses will include internal transportation, lodging, security and interpreters…
“I will begin in Kinshasa, where I will observe a U.S.-led military exercise and interview government leaders and aid workers about Congo’s prospects for peace. Following that, I aim to accompany a band of U.N. peacekeepers into the jungle to see the conflict zone firsthand and speak to war victims…
“Together, we can begin drawing more attention to the Congo conflict and its victims. Please consider donating.”
So the guy who’s travelling to Congo to raise consciousness about the war and its victims — using his own money plus Kickstart contributions — is a warmongering tool of the Man.
Again, ten seconds with google. First post on his blog.
Doug M. — still in Kinshasa
The “promoting war is good for your career” slur is insulting and stupid. David Axe is a war journalist who’s spent much of his adult life in one lethal hellhole after another. He opposed the Iraq War and is, broadly, antiwar in general. He’s proposing a targeted, limited intervention for humanitarian means. You can argue that he’s wrong, that it wouldn’t work, that we can’t afford it, etc. etc. But “oh he’s trying to polish his CV” — whoever says that is being willfully ignorant. Cripes, you can just drop his name into google — this isn’t hard.
As you might have noticed, in such an obscure place as the opening paragraph, I praised Axe’s intelligence.
I raised that issue merely to emphasize the double standard swirling about these days – with Andrew Exum et al labeling those opposed to Afghan escalation/perpetuation “isolationists” (including, but not limited to, Andrew Bacevich), while anyone willing to cheer on more and longer wars preserves the “serious” label.
That said, you are right that it doesn’t apply to Axe generally speaking. Which I should have emphasized.
Again, you can argue that it’s not worth it, it’s too risky, etc. But you can’t argue that stopping the LRA wouldn’t be pretty much pure good; it’s like eliminating smallpox or polio.
Ironically, smallpox and polio are still with us after decades of effort.
Just saying, maybe your analogy was apt.
Larger more important point: Our military is in no position to get involved, nor can our economy handle it. Period.
Again, ten seconds with google. First post on his blog
Doug, please read my response.
I follow the guy on Twitter. I’ve linked to his writings before muyltiple times. I know who David Axe is, and he does good work.
No need for teh google.
Which is why this piece surprised me – just because it seemed like such a risky/costly endeavor at this juncture. Perhaps well intentioned, but we can’t swing it.
Anywa, I updated the post to clear up any confusion.
Eric, I’m sorry, but it did indeed look like you were suggesting that Axe was making a career move. Also, you had half a dozen commenters sniggering and pointing fingers; your response was not to correct them, but to chime in. So I don’t think this was an unreasonable read.
That said, thanks for the correction.
Doug M.
Smallpox exists only in labs. Polio has been reduced from killing millions to killing dozens. Apt? You decide.
“Larger more important point: Our military is in no position to get involved, nor can our economy handle it. Period.”
— Actually our military is, literally, in a position to get involved. AFRICOM is capable of deploying several hundred combat ready troops on remarkably short notice. Whether that would be enough to do the job is a separate question. But we could put quite a few feet on the ground very quickly.
Can our economy handle it? Well, that depends, dunnit. Axe seems to think it would be more like taking down an armed gang. There aren’t that many of them, they aren’t very well armed, they’re easy to spot, and they have no base of support in the region.
I think he makes a prima facie case. It may fall apart upon examination — but I don’t think you (or any other commenter I’ve yet seen) has seriously engaged with it.
One can imagine many ways this could go wrong. The two obvious ones are “the LRA gets lucky and kills a bunch of Americans” and “the LRA leadership escapes and starts over”. But I’m not seeing how this is going to cost any sum that’s relevant to our current federal or defense budgets.
What Axe is arguing for looks more like the Entebbe Raid than the Iraq War. Deployment costs are likely to be in tens or hundreds of millions, not billions. Active operations are likely to last days, not months or years. So the economic argument, while certainly relevant, does not seem all that strong.
You can argue that we might get sucked into a quagmire somehow and end up spending much more. But then you have to, you know, actually /make that argument/.
Doug M.
Also, you had half a dozen commenters sniggering and pointing fingers; your response was not to correct them, but to chime in. So I don’t think this was an unreasonable read.
Actually, I don’t think any of them were talking about Axe’s alleged careerism, and I certainly did not chime in with respect to that.
Smallpox exists only in labs. Polio has been reduced from killing millions to killing dozens. Apt? You decide.
Well, there are a thousand new cases of polio each year, so there’s that. Smallpox, you got a point.
You can argue that we might get sucked into a quagmire somehow and end up spending much more. But then you have to, you know, actually /make that argument
Couple of thoughts:
1. I’m of the opinion that we need to vastly reduce our military expenditures. So even hundreds millions more is hundreds of millions in the wrong direction.
As for AFRICOM, I’d just as soon see that pared back rather than beefed up. Don’t think they’ve done much good in Somalia FWIW.
2. Qaugmires are certainly possible, as are the accidental guerillas that we might inspire – sending troops in, who might and likely will kill innocents in the process, has a track record of inspiring opposition. Opposition could grow, quagmire initiated. Even if not a “quagmire” it could end up just being plain old more money, and time, than expected.
When even the time and money expected are too much of each, that’s bad.
3. Regardless, the point that Finel made is the absoltely essential one: It should NOT, in fact, be incumbent on those opposing a military intervention to make the case that it is a bad idea, but rather the onus is on the advocates to overcome what should be a very significant presumption against.
Axe’s prima facie case does not do that in my reading.
“sniggering”: I reserve the presumptive right to mock any suggestion that a successful limited military engagement can be pulled off – or kept limited – until it’s actually happened. I’m not the one suggesting we send soldiers to shoot a bunch of foreigners to sort out some poorly-specified problem, so I’m not the one who needs to worry about being taken seriously. People calling for foreign military adventures are presumptively morons. It’s up to them to prove otherwise.
Doug M.: It’s not “a mesh of interrelated conflicts”.
I regret to inform you that not all Africans look alike
Oh please. I regret to inform you that foreign soldiers thrown into situations where people are shooting at them tend not to be very good at picking out hostiles by physical features. Foreign soldier encounters an African guy with an AK in the jungle. Is he LRA? Well, gee, before we shoot him – how tall is he? What do his cheekbones look like? What language does he speak?
Because if there’s one thing that soldiers are known for when confronted with armed men, it’s discernment about the fine points of ethnicity and language.
It’s not “a mesh of interrelated conflicts”. The LRA is the modern equivalent of a Mongol horde.
From the Book of Wikipedia (just a convenient source), on the Second Congo War: “The largest war in modern African history, it directly involved eight African nations, as well as about 25 armed groups.” But please, tell me again how this is just about the LRA and once we whack a couple dozen second-in-commands everything will be just great and we’ll totally be able to leave.
And the fighting continues not just with the LRA but with other armed groups in parts of the Congo. But I’m sure US troops would never get involved with any of that. And I’m sure the government will be perfectly stable as all this happens despite being cobbled together from various warring groups. And I’m sure no surrounding states will take advantage of the situation to pursue their own goals.
I would love to hear more from people who are there and know what they’re talking about, so I hope you stick around. But why should anyone act like the “easy in, easy out” scenario is at all plausible?
Have you got yourself an occupation?
As Finel and others point out, advocating for war, any war, is good for your reputation as a foreign policy analyst
I have advocated the invasion of Saudi Arabia for a long time. Drone strikes against domestic gated communities would also be in order (they are easy to find, their area is contiguous, and everybody inside is guilty–what could go wrong?).
Not one phone call, Eric. Not an ‘effing one.
I’m sorry, Jacob, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.
The Second Congo War ended years ago, and that /has nothing to do with the LRA/. The LRA is an opportunistic infection. They’ve wandered from Uganda, to south Sudan, to the Central African Republic, and now into Congo. They’re going wherever the state is weak.
There are a variety of other conflicts across the region, but _the LRA has nothing to do with any of them_.
“Foreign soldier encounters an African guy with an AK in the jungle. Is he LRA?”
Probably. I have to tell you that, contrary to popular belief, most Africans do not walk around “in the jungle” carrying AK-47s.
The tall guys with guns? Probably LRA. The short people who are unarmed and running away from the tall guys with guns? Probably locals.
There could be all sorts of problems with an operation like this. But telling who is LRA? No. They are not going to blend.
Also, FWIW, the LRA’s current theater of operations is not jungle. Not all of Africa is jungle! (I know, I know. So confusing.) That corner of northeast Congo is rugged, but it’s mostly savanna with a bit of scrub forest.
“I’m sure the government will be perfectly stable” — I’m sorry, but that doesn’t even make sense.
FWIW, the Congo’s government is (by African standards) pretty stable. Weak, but stable.
“People calling for foreign military adventures are presumptively morons.” — Dude. I’m the one in the Congo. You’re the one quoting Wikipedia.
Doug M.
The tall guys with guns? Probably LRA. The short people who are unarmed and running away from the tall guys with guns? Probably locals.
Out of curiosity, don’t the LRA use child soldiers?
Also, and I ask because I’m not entirely familiar with the situation, is it really only the Congo govt and the LRA that are armed groups operating in the region? No others?
Axe’s suggestion seems similar to the British Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Palliser). I’m no expert, but that seems to be quite widely regarded as having worked well. Of course it is crucial to compare carefully with other interventions that have not worked well.
Neil,
Not that I disagree, but still, there is the question of available resources/current commitments.
We kind of have a lot on our plates right now.
Um, sorry, but any involvement in the eastern DRC would not only involve the Lord’s Resistance Army, but also some of the extensive network of guerrilla organisations set up by the Ugandan and Rwandan governments during or after their invasion. Sorry, Eric, you may be in Kinshasa, but you’re not in Goma or perhaps you’d have a clearer idea of what the stakes are.
The good news is that the U.S. was almost certainly behind the original Ugandan/Rwandan invasion in 1997 which kicked off the DRC war which killed all those millions of people. Rejoice, Americans! You don’t need to do the Congo! You’ve done it already!
Sorry, Eric, you may be in Kinshasa, but you’re not in Goma or perhaps you’d have a clearer idea of what the stakes are.
I think you mean DougM, as I am in neither locales.
I’m sorry, Jacob, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Not really. But then I’m not the one advocating American military interventions in far-off countries.
There are a variety of other conflicts across the region, but _the LRA has nothing to do with any of them_.
And of course those conflicts will remain conveniently distinct from an American effort against the LRA, and nobody will take advantage of the situation to escalate them, and there will be no temptation whatsoever for Americans to intervene in any of those conflicts “since we’re here already”.
Did you watch what happened in Afghanistan? A quick effort by Special Forces to capture bin Laden and replace the Taliban is now a 9 year occupation with 68,000 troops in-country and regular cross-border incursions and airstrikes in Pakistan, with various warlords and armed groups just waiting for the US to leave so they can get back to killing each other with all the shiny new guns we shipped in.
Dude. I’m the one in the Congo. You’re the one quoting Wikipedia.
Last time I checked it was the poorly-informed skeptics who were right about the advisability and consequences of invading Iraq and the on-the-ground experts calling for invasion who were dead wrong about just about everything.
Stupid ideas are not hard to identify. Stupid ideas with a lot of earnest expert support are still stupid ideas.
I’d be nicer about it, but the number of people who will end up dead as a result of what you are fantasizing about is likely to exceed the total number killed by the LRA by orders of magnitude in short order, and I am not sure at all why I should be polite as opposed to e.g. treating advocates of foreign military adventures as sociopathically indifferent to the number of people that will die if their advocacy catches on.
I don’t know what I’m talking about, which I’m happy to acknowledge it. That’s why I stick to advocating nice safe things like “Let’s put that couple of hundred million dollars into vaccinations and child healthcare and keep the troops handy for helping out in the next natural disaster.”
“the number of people who will end up dead as a result of what you are fantasizing about is likely to exceed the total number killed by the LRA by orders of magnitude in short order”
The LRA’s current death toll is estimated, in round numbers, at on-the-order-of 10,000 people over the last decade. I have a great deal of trouble seeing how a military intervention to shut them down is going to kill “orders of magnitude” more than that.
The LRA will continue to rape, torture, kill and destroy until someone stops them. If there’s “sociopathic indifference” here, I don’t think it’s on my side.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about, which I’m happy to acknowledge it.”
Acknowledge is one thing. Actively taking pride in your ignorance is something else.
It’s not that hard to educate yourself. There are vast amounts of information about the LRA online. You can find everything from accounts of interviews with Kony, to intercepts of his cell phone calls, to the (redacted) indictments against him and his henchmen from the International Court of Justice.
But your attitude seems to be “I don’t need to know facts, because I already know what the answer is.” Think that one through.
Doug M.
“The good news is that the U.S. was almost certainly behind the original Ugandan/Rwandan invasion in 1997”
The United States supported avowed Marxist Laurent Kabila against long-time US ally Mobutu Sese Seko? Really?
A cite for that would be nice.
“extensive network of guerrilla organisations set up by the Ugandan and Rwandan governments during or after their invasion.”
Wrong part of Congo.
Doug M.
The LRA’s current death toll is estimated, in round numbers, at on-the-order-of 10,000 people over the last decade. I have a great deal of trouble seeing how a military intervention to shut them down is going to kill “orders of magnitude” more than that.
The intervention, the opportunistic conflicts that follow, the invasion, the occupation, the cross-border raids, the internment camps, the helicopter-borne death squads… you can get to 100,000 pretty fast with all that.
Nobody ever means for any of that to happen. It’s never in the original plan. It just works out that way.
How many lives could be saved by a couple of hundred million dollars spent on humanitarian and medical interventions? Oh, that doesn’t matter, because the US has all those shiny toy soldiers and you’re oh so eager to play with them.
taking pride in your ignorance is something else.
You’re mistaken if you think that’s what I’m doing. I’m saying I’m not an expert in the DRC, nor attempting to play one, not that I don’t try to understand what is going on there or don’t know anything at all about the situation. You’re taking my earlier flip comments about “jungle” as wholly serious. I’m saying I understand the situation well enough to know that the picture you’re painting is completely unrealistic. The reason the LRA has been able to operate with impunity is that the area it’s in is isolated and ravaged by warfare and not really under the control of any state. The US will not be able to change that, and it will not find the situation as simple as your picture. The only sure thing is that a lot of American soldiers will shoot a lot of Africans, and since I’m not really into that, I think we should skip the whole thing.
@Eric, there are indeed other armed groups in the Congo — including the Congolese army, which is (literally) a collection of militias rather than an army in the western sense.
However, the LRA is operating in a region that does /not/ have any other armed groups right now. To be specific, they’re in northern Haut-Uele province, in the far northeast of the country. Most armed groups are operating in the Kivu provinces, several hundred km to the south, down by Rwanda and Uganda. Haut-Uele was pretty quiet until the LRA moved in last year — which is probably why the LRA went there. They don’t want to be around other armed groups; they just want lots of unarmed civilians to prey on.
Child soldiers: yes, the LRA does make use of child soldiers. However, they’ve been active for ~20 years, so many of their child soldiers are now adults. The average LRA member is not a child.
Also, there’s some evidence that they’re having difficulty recruiting new child soldiers, because they’re in a region that is culturally and linguistically completely different from their point of origin. They abducted a great many children during the Makombo massacre early this year; it’s believed that most of those children are now dead.
Doug M.
The LRA will continue to rape, torture, kill and destroy until someone stops them. If there’s “sociopathic indifference” here, I don’t think it’s on my side.
Yeah, yeah, and all those that opposed the invasion of Iraq objectively supported Saddam/were indifferent to the suffering of the Iraqi people.
I don’t find this argument particularly persuasive.
Haut-Uele was pretty quiet until the LRA moved in last year — which is probably why the LRA went there. They don’t want to be around other armed groups; they just want lots of unarmed civilians to prey on.
So what happens if they do something inconvenient, yet predictable, like move somewhere else? Or disband until the coast is clear?
Presumably, they will not act like good little targets and stick around out in the open.
Given that, what is the exit plan? Will our progress be used as a reason to stay (can’t leave no or the LRA will act up again)? If they disperse, how long to we stay to wait them out? Will setting a timeline for withdrawal be seen as letting the LRA know how long they have to lay low?
Once there, will we be tempted to take on other militant groups?
I just have grave, grave doubts that quick and clean military ops remain so in most circumstances. Especially because the military itself is reluctant to disengage in almost all scenarios.
@Neil,
Operation Palliser, yes. Not only was it entirely successful from a military point of view, but it was cheap, cost no casualties, and led directly to the capture of the monstrous Foday Sankoh and the end of the civil war.
You correctly point out that this should be put in the context of other, less successful interventions. I’ll throw one out: Operation Licorne, the 2003 French intervention in the Ivory Coast. From a military POV, the French won every fight — they whipped Laurent Gbagbo’s military and completely wiped out the Ivorian Air Force at a cost of less than 50 casualties. From a political POV… well, arguably the intervention led to the end of the Ivorian Civil War, which is all to the good; the war had killed over 100,000 civilians, and would surely have killed many more if it had continued. But seven years later the country is still divided and there are still French troops on the ground. So, Operation Licorne ended up being way more complicated — and expensive — than ever anticipated.
An argument that “this would be more like Licorne than like Palliser” would be interesting, and worth having. But I don’t think it’s going to happen on this comment thread, where apparently everything is now exactly like Iraq.
Doug M.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen on this comment thread, where apparently everything is now exactly like Iraq.
Yikes, really? Exactly? In every way?
Come on, if you want to have a nuanced conversation, attacking other people in such ways is not exactly conducive.
Not sure who said, or implied, that, but I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with a cogent argument to support that proposition.
I used an Iraq analogy once, because it was the most recent, but you can replace Iraq with Burman, Darfur, North Korea, Iran and get the same result.
As for my other arguments, I don’t think they have anything to do with Iraq.
Eric,
“Yeah, yeah, and all those that opposed the invasion of Iraq objectively supported Saddam/were indifferent to the suffering of the Iraqi people.
I don’t find this argument particularly persuasive.”
I would argue that this discussion crystalizes an underlying discussion evident in much of our foreign policy debates.
Often the neocon/hawks are accused of not valuing the lives of the people in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan equally with American lives. The flip side of that argument is always this one:
I bring this up only because I think it is a more difficult moral argument than usually described, and the places we don’t take action are as important in defining our view of the value of “their” lives as the places that we do.
IMO, we have made poor choices on both sides of the ledger in this area. However, it is to a great extent why I am often uncomfortable with the cost/benefit analytical view.
What cost is too great to stop genocide? Do we have the same responsibility to protect human life a continent away as we would certainly agree we have at home? Aren’t their lives just as important, despite their distance and difference?
In the end my answers are always, we should do what we can, that will have a positive impact. So, in this case, can we define that positive impact and make a difference?
What cost is too great to stop genocide? Do we have the same responsibility to protect human life a continent away as we would certainly agree we have at home? Aren’t their lives just as important, despite their distance and difference?
Genocide, perhaps.
That is not what is occurring now.
Our intervention in Somalia circa the early 1990s was ostensibly humanitarian, then morphed into more than that, then became unwieldy, and was followed by an ignominious retreat.
In the end my answers are always, we should do what we can, that will have a positive impact. So, in this case, can we define that positive impact and make a difference?
Also: costs. We’re currently unpaving roads, shortening the school year/day and cutting back on vital social safety net protections.
Can we afford to get involved in yet another armed conflict at this time?
Is there a discernible exit plan?
The burden, again, should be on those advocating for armed intervention, and the heavy, heavy presumption should be on not intervening.
“Also: costs. We’re currently unpaving roads, shortening the school year/day and cutting back on vital social safety net protections.”
I’ll trade you two paved roads and starting my SS one year later for a hundred people who are not raped or killed in the Congo. OK?
I’ll trade you two paved roads and starting my SS one year later for a hundred people who are not raped or killed in the Congo. OK?
Couple thoughts:
1. Why don’t we just buy more mosquito nets instead, that will save thousands from malaria related death, and will likely be cheaper, and the outcomes more predictable in terms of good done.
Also: antibiotics. Also: digging wells. Also: [insert hundreds of humanitarian efforts that don’t require live fire]
2. As to the merits of the actual swap, if you could somehow ensure that you would save that amount of people, and that those killed in the process would not bring that number down too much, then it would be interesting.
But, again, the track record doesn’t support such certainty of outcome. War is not only boring, it’s messy.
Digressing, but still on the topics of warfare and defense, I don’t have enough to say about Stuxnet to make a post, but it’s damned interesting, if you ask me.
On second thought, maybe I do have enough.
Can we call it Stuxxor?
Eric, mosquito nets certainly save lives. But they won’t save the lives of the people of northeast Congo.
Them, you’re writing off. Let’s just be clear on that.
Doug M.
Them, you’re writing off. Let’s just be clear on that.
Is that really fair, when discussing the use of limited resources, insufficient to save everyone in need of and deserving saving?
Couple of points.
— Obviously this whole discussion is hypothetical, since the Obama administration is never going to run a humanitarian military intervention in Africa. I like Obama well enough, but that’s just not how he rolls.
— Nobody’s mentioned it yet, but earlier this year Obama signed into law H.R. 2478, the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009.
This is a largely symbolic act that commits the US to working with countries in the region to somehow “resolve” the LRA, and also recommends the appropriation of a modest sum of money to reconstruction, rehabilitation of child soldiers, and the like. It’s much better than nothing — at least it shows that the administration is aware of the problem and mildly interested — but it’s a pretty clear signal that we will not be running a direct military intervention.
— Non-military intervention against the LRA is unlikely to do much. They’re a bunch of armed killers led by a charismatic sociopath. The LRA leadership is under indictment for war crimes in multiple countries and the International Court of Justice; they have zero interest in negotiating a surrender. The LRA will keep going for years to come, killing and torturing and raping, until someone steps in and stops them. It’s very hard to see how that can happen without the use of significant military force.
— If the US won’t do it, there are very few alternatives. The Congolese Army is utterly and profoundly incompetent; as noted upthread, it’s not so much an army as a ragtag collection of warlord militias, bought off and put under a single flag in the rickety peace settlement that ended the Second Congo War.
And even if the Congolese military were far more competent, the LRA have cunningly positioned themselves in the region where Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic come together. In the unlikely event that they’re seriously threatened, they’ll just slip across one border or another until things cool down.
Is there anyone who will ever stop them, then? I can think of three possibilities, but they’re all pretty remote. In increasing order of unlikeliness:
1) a UN peacekeeping force. Possible but unlikely, and very unlikely to do much good. What’s needed is a pursuit force, and that’s not going to happen; the UN has an institutional aversion to offensive peacekeeping. A defensive force could perhaps protect a single province, but unless it’s improbably large, it can’t possibly shut down the LRA over its whole area of operations.
2) an African Union force. Very unlikely, for various African political reasons. (Though if it did happen it might actually work. AU forces have been noticeably friskier than UN blue helmets.)
3) the LRA gets careless, and wanders into Rwanda’s sphere of influence. Rwanda has one of the best armies in Africa — they are, by African standards, disciplined, competent, and very tough. They have a broad array of modern weapons and know how to use them; they’re very good bush fighters; and they are quite remarkably aggressive.
Rwanda views a large chunk of eastern Congo as its “near abroad”. They toyed with the idea of annexing the Kivu provinces a while back, and while they didn’t, they still consider them firmly within a Rwandan sphere of influence, and have repeatedly intervened there with both covert and overt force. So, if the LRA were to wander too far south, into that part of Congo that the Rwandans consider their turf, they might attract the Rwandans’ negative attention. Rwanda has no objection to armed groups of roving killers per se — they’re funding and supporting several of them — but they would not like the LRA; too destabilizing. Also, President Kagame could use some international goodwill. So, *if* the LRA wandered too far south, good chance the Rwandans would take them down.
Unfortunately this is the most unlikely of all, because Joseph Kony is no fool. He knows all about the Rwandans and their ways, and he’s not going to cross into their territory. So while it’s nice to think about, it really isn’t going to happen.
So the LRA will continue along its path of murder and destruction for years to come. Nobody cares enough to step in and stop them; the people they’re torturing and killing are the poorest of the poor, and they’re not in a region of strategic interest to any great power.
I don’t have a lot more to add.
Doug M.
Eric, mosquito nets certainly save lives. But they won’t save the lives of the people of northeast Congo.
Them, you’re writing off. Let’s just be clear on that.
Just as you’re writing off all the North Koreans we’re not invading to save.
This is a mug’s game.
There are limited resources, and we have a limited ability to right the world’s wrongs.
The question is, which should we pursue? I would argue that we should first exhaust the myriad non-violent ways of helping people before turning to the bombs of liberation stuff, since the latter is much harder to control, and much harder to ensure we’re doing good.
I mean, did we help the people of Somalia in the early 1990s? More recently? The people of Iraq? The people of Afghanistan? The people of Panama?
So the LRA will continue along its path of murder and destruction for years to come. Nobody cares enough to step in and stop them; the people they’re torturing and killing are the poorest of the poor, and they’re not in a region of strategic interest to any great power.
Were it that easy. Just step in and save them. Presto. It’s less about “caring enough” and more about “having the confidence that we can, at acceptable costs, given our current commitments and the state of our military budget.” Kind of different.
Non-military intervention against the LRA is unlikely to do much. They’re a bunch of armed killers led by a charismatic sociopath. The LRA leadership is under indictment for war crimes in multiple countries and the International Court of Justice; they have zero interest in negotiating a surrender. The LRA will keep going for years to come, killing and torturing and raping, until someone steps in and stops them. It’s very hard to see how that can happen without the use of significant military force.
I hear you, but can’t the same be said for several other miserable/intractable situations?
Darfur? North Korea?
“Nobody cares enough to step in and stop them; the people they’re torturing and killing are the poorest of the poor, and they’re not in a region of strategic interest to any great power.”
I don’t discount your case; I don’t think these are simple moral decisions.
But as a practical matter, what you say is true of hundreds of places in the world.
The “you don’t care” argument doesn’t work well when it can be applied equally to a sufficient number of conflicts that it’s absolutely clear that we couldn’t, with the greatest of efforts and will, successfully militarily solve all of them.
So then we’re just down to picking cases. Which is a good argument to have. But the generic “people are suffering, and if you do nothing, you obviously don’t care” argument isn’t a sufficient argument or justification for military intervention.
“The “you don’t care” argument doesn’t work well when it can be applied equally to a sufficient number of conflicts that it’s absolutely clear that we couldn’t, with the greatest of efforts and will, successfully militarily solve all of them.”
Good point, might I suggest that it would be a good exercise to take the ratings and rankings of the State Department, who have people knowledgable on all of these conflicts, and publicize the order of atrocity (with an associated cost to intervene) in a significant way.
Perhaps if we focused on the most disadvantaged (plus the best cost to lives saved ratio) we could spend more saving lives and less on building nations on foundations of sand (or sandstone).
the LRA have cunningly positioned themselves in the region where Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic come together. In the unlikely event that they’re seriously threatened, they’ll just slip across one border or another until things cool down.
What prevents them from doing this if the US came in?
So the LRA will continue along its path of murder and destruction for years to come. Nobody cares enough to step in and stop them; the people they’re torturing and killing are the poorest of the poor, and they’re not in a region of strategic interest to any great power.
Yes.
As Eric notes, that doesn’t particularly distinguish them from any number of other groups in the world. It doesn’t even distinguish them in the DRC unless you consider the sheer purposelessness of their killing to be significant, which I don’t – dead is dead whether the guy who shot you is a member of a murderous religious cult, an armed political movement, a rival cultural/ethnic group, or an invading army.
And that’s really the problem. The LRA aren’t really distinguishable in effect from any number of other murderous armed groups in the area, and mission creep, confusion, resistance to foreign soldiers, and opportunistic actions by other parties are likely to extend the conflict beyond an effort to deal with them.
It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the problem. If the LRA could be removed from the Earth tomorrow I would also give up a couple of paved roads and some Social Security for it. But that’s not really the choice on offer.
Could I suggest that Doug M. write a guest post?
I’d also suggest that the invocation of North Korea, a society which has fought a war against the US and is the recipient of an unrelenting barrage of propaganda about the US and US forces might not be the most enlightening example to invoke when arguing about the LRA. I’m not going to go further than that, because my knowledge of the situation is as close to zero as is possible, so I would welcome an opportunity to know more.
LJ: I was really just using that as an example of a people that are suffering immensely (with death tolls that dwarf – by orders of magnitude – the LRA’s on an annual basis), yet if someone came up with the idea of an invasion in favor of regime change, all those opposed would be, by the prevailing argument, writing them off.
Doug: Shoot me an email when you get a chance if you’re in the mood. Thanks.
Eric: that would require me to have your e-mail address!
You can reach me at “vormuir” in the domain men call yahoo.com.
Doug M.
Unfortunately our military isnt going anywhere soon so why dont we use it to actually hold bad leaders around the world accountable to their citizens. There are a lot of evil and unaccountable leaders around the world, allowing their citizens to live in unacceptably bad conditions. I could support using our military as a a police force that puts real pressure, the fear of god type pressure on the many despots roaming the planet. Of course we do need to clean our OWN house as well but lets stop using oil wealth or other mineral wealth as a barometer for whether or not we deploy to an area and instead lets let our armed men stand by as clean water is provided, adequate housing is built and food and health care are delivered to those who need it.
I’d bet we could even motivate a new generation of young people to put their lives on the line for THAT type of intervention.
“Eric: that would require me to have your e-mail address!”
At the top left of the blog, under the kitty, are the words “Email Me” with a link to: obsidianinfo at yahoo dot com
“I’d bet we could even motivate a new generation of young people to put their lives on the line for THAT type of intervention.”
Or first we could try funding the kind of aid and intervention that doesn’t involve shooting and bombing people.
Vormuir? Do you, by any chance, have hundreds of daughters?
Doug’s main mistake is thinking that there can gbe such a thing as a nice clean takedown of one faction in the midst of a nested series of regional conflicts and crises.
Doug fails to consider that the presence of a strong foreign intervening force tends to generate its own consequences.
Even in the event of complete success, the very presence of the intervening force will raise the question of further missions in the area, relief efforts needing protection, and so forth.
Doug, if you feel so strongly about the LRA, then go to Uganda, grab an automatic rifle, and get to work. If that choice was good enough for the likes of George Orwell or Lord Byron, then why not you?