by Eric Martin
There are many flaws in the rationale employed by liberal hawks in supporting the use of military force for the putative benefit of the underlying populations of various military targets – from Iraq and Iran, to Burma.
For one, military force is a blunt weapon, and military intervention inevitably kills many of the same people that are, in the liberal hawks' view, the ones that stand to benefit from the invasion/armed intervention/military strikes. Not only do innocent civilians inevitably die in large numbers due to actual use of force - referred to euphemistically as "collateral damage" – but the applicable infrastructure is ravaged to a degree that there are many excess deaths that result from the campaign itself, if not directly from live fire.
In Iraq, this accounts for some of the variance in casualty counts: whereas many tallies count only deaths from violent acts, others, such as the Lancet study, measure total excess deaths as a result of conditions brought about by the invasion.
Further, even the "enemy" soldiers and personnel that are killed, which are not counted in civilian casualty tallies, are, nevertheless, citizens of the targeted country. These men and women in uniform, or in the employ of the regime in question, have wives, husbands, children, mothers, fathers, extended families and friends – and they count too. One can say with absolute certainty that the lives of those citizens are not bettered.
Leaving aside the issue of the massive loss of life and maiming physical injuries suffered by the target population, if helping foreign people is a motivating force in informing foreign policy decisions, it is simply much, much easier and cheaper to do so in ways that don't involve using the U.S. military in an aggressive capacity (or at all). Why don't we fully exhaust the myriad opportunities to do so in non-violent ways before we even ponder if and when to bomb a given people for their own good.
For example, malaria kills vastly more people than terrorism (and is particularly malignant for children under 5 years old in Africa), and the weapons needed to combat this disease with a high degree of efficacy (mosquito nets) are cheap and easy to distribute. Yet there is much less "serious" debate and advocacy for taking easy, cheap, safe measures such as distributing nets amongst the liberal hawk set that is, instead, enamored with imagining new and better ways to use military force for the good of the [INSERT HERE] people.
As alluded to above, the added advantage of non-bellicose humanitarian interventions are manifold: For one, they don't involve killing people, but rather saving lives. Second, the local population tends to appreciate the foreign intervention, rather than react with violent blowback. For example, as seen with US humanitarian aid to Indonesia post-tsunami, helping people in ways that don't involve killing their neighbors, surprisingly, yields positive results in terms of generating good will.
Finally, as mentioned above, the costs are lower and, importantly, the outcomes are easier to predict and effectuate, whereas war is the mother of unintended consequences and ephemeral, transient successes – if that. Iraq and Afghanistan combined will likely reach the several trillion dollar mark when all is said and done, and yet the gains will be dubious at best.
At present, there is a massive humanitarian crisis in Pakistan due to catastrophic flooding. Despite the need for rapid and large scale humanitarian assistance, the world response has been tepid overall.
As Pakistan reels from its worst floods in memory, United Nations officials said Monday that 3.5 million children and infants were at a particularly high risk of diseases borne by dirty water.
“Clean water is an urgent need,” said Maurizio Giuliano, a United Nations spokesman, who said the international agencies dealing with children and health were both suffering from shortages of funds. The United Nations, whose secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, flew over flooded areas of Pakistan on Sunday, has appealed for international donations of $460 million, but only one-third of that of that has been provided, Mr. Giuliano said in a telephone interview.
“There was a first wave of deaths caused by the floods themselves,” Mr. Giuliano said. “But if we don’t act soon enough there will be a second wave of deaths caused by a combination of lack of clean water, food shortages and water-borne and vector-borne diseases.”
He said as many as six million people were at risk of diseases including diarrhea-related illnesses and dysentery, typhoid and forms of hepatitis.
“We may be close to seeing this second wave of death,” he said. “The picture is a gruesome one.”
With a shortage of aid funds, relief workers were currently able to provide clean water to only one million of the 6 million people in need, Mr. Giuliano said. Many people had no adequate shelter or proper food, he said, and, as in any crisis, “children are among the most vulnerable.”
The US has been able to contribute to some significant extent, and this should be applauded, but more can and should be done. Not only has the US support thus far engendered goodwill, but where a vacuum exists, groups like the Taliban have filled it, which compounds the setback in terms of winning over the local population. In terms of counterterrorism, and improving our standing in a part of the world that we consider vital to our security interests in many respects,this should be a no-brainer. Not to mention, alleviating suffering is a good in and of itself. Even if we can do so without surges, shock and awe and exciting recycled new military doctrine.
Has the “military intervention for their own good” thing ever actually worked?
For us, or anybody else?
If so, what were the particular conditions that made it effective or worthwhile?
Just asking. Cause off the top of my head, nothing is coming to mind.
Interesting question, and part of the asking gets to one of the vanities of the liberal hawks: interventions are never really undertaken “for their own good” outside of, arguably, the Balkan endeavors under Clinton (I’m saying “arguably” not definitively).
All other interventions have more powerful driving strategic reasons, which makes the liberal hawk position that much weaker. Meaning, for example, that since it was clear that we weren’t invading Iraq to help the Iraqis, shouldn’t that have tempered the belief amongst liberal hawks that the outcome would be such a net benefit to the Iraqi people, at least sufficient to justify a war?
Sure, getting rid of Saddam could help some Iraqis in the long run, but since helping the Iraqi people wasn’t the main goal (and probably even if it was), it was more than likely that the number that would die and/or suffer immensely would make the price too high. Also, make it likely that the US would be willing to settle on a different kind of strong man type regime that was merely more amenable to our interests and prolonged presence.
We were not there for charity, but for oil.
Same with Afghanistan: we’re not there to help women, or the Afghan people. Some of our closest Afghan allies are brutally retrograde with respect to womens’ rights and other human rights. Given that, support for the war on humanitarian grounds is a dubious proposition.
Why don’t we fully exhaust the myriad opportunities to [helping foreign people] in non-violent ways before we even ponder if and when to bomb a given people for their own good.
I quote James Earl Jones’ character at the end of Sneakers when asked for peace on earth and goodwill towards men:
We are the United States Government. We don’t do that sort of thing.
I agree with this post
I think what you’re really uncovering here is the fact that the people who claim to support military intervention in pursuit of peace are kidding themselves, kidding us, or both.
There’s at least a rational argument for military intervention to counteract military aggression against a passive populace – e.g. we could possibly have saved millions of lives by intervening in the second congo war (too bad we didn’t notice it was happening until a few years after it ended).
But surely such rationalizations of our wars of aggression in afghanistan and iraq are just that, post hoc rationalizations that some ‘clever’ people were smart enough to deploy ante hoc.
Yeah, I think some people – like George Packer ie – believed it themselves and were not just making convenient arguments. There are definitely plenty of cynics, but some naive types are in the mix as well.
Has the “military intervention for their own good” thing ever actually worked?
i was wondering the same thing, about ten minutes ago.
local NPR had some congressman on a talk show, going on and on about how we need an Afghan Study Group (modeled after the Iraq Study Group, of which he was a part). he talked about all the smart, important people on the ISG and how if we could only bring the same kind of quality thinking to an Afghanistan Study group (and the, he said, a Afghan/Pakistan Study Group), we could figure out how to “solve” the problems in that region. because, 9/11, yadayadayada.
a) when has the US “solved” another country’s “problems” ? WWII, but that was a completely different situation. anything else ?
b) of all the smart serious people on the ISG, how many of them wanted to end the war, full stop ? and how many such people would be on his Afghan Study Group ? zero’s a number. i guess.
Great post Eric. I wish I had something to add, but you were thorough.
Ugh, I love that movie. Thank you for recalling it.
I think one of the problems with “liberal intervention” is that if you intervene early enough to prevent the problem, you are an invader (since the problem would be debatable), and if you intervene after it is clear, you simply own the problem or made it worse, regardless whether you caused it.
I don’t know whether we could have been effective intervening in Congo or Rwanda, but I think had we intervened, we would be blamed for the problems that occurred after intervention.
Invading and deposing is a serious proposition: Bush 1 should get retrospective credit for his rational restraint. Maybe if we were to applaud him in accepting an unoccupied Kuwait as victory, we will have better decisions in the future.
The Iraq Study Group was roundly ignored by GWB, who went with the “surge” plans concocted by the AEI.
ISG vs AEI
So proudly claiming membership in the ISG, and advocating a similar group for Afghanistan seems rather lame.
Good post, Eric. I think there are broader questions here.
Why are we so bad at disaster response, and why do we view each case as sui generis?
There are, after all, obvious commonalities – need for food, water, shelter, medical supplies – whether we are talking earthquakes, floods, tsunami, whatever. Yet everyone seems to scurry around trying to figure out what to do each time.
Even if we can’t send in personnel, for political reasons, we can surely provide financial support, equipment, and supplies to those who can go in. Disaster response is, to be blunt, cheap. The UN is asking for $460 million? That’s the take-home pay of a handful of top executives. Double it, and allow for five such events a year. You’ve got $5 billion. Peanuts for the US budget. And even ignoring humanitarian considerations, the political goodwill payback has to be worth a multiple of that.
I don’t think this is just “feel-good” stuff. I think it’s an essential part of being “the world’s only superpower.”
Eric, it would seem to follow from your arguments that the “right” approach to intervention with, for example, someone like Saddam, is not military intervention but targeted assassination. That takes out the actual problem individual(s), without also killing or maiming those who are merely in the same geographic area, or just serving (perhaps not even voluntarily) in their country’s military.
If so, that would seem to make the legislation specifically forbidding any and all assassinations not only wrong-headed, but (as written) seriously counterproductive. (And yes, there are cases where the problem is far far more widespread than a small number of identifiable individuals. But one could, presumably, start at the top and work down over time.)
Just wondering if that was where you were headed.
Well, you need to remember that wars are best fought between governments, and (in most cases) the soldiers aren’t part of the government – and, thus, not part of the enemy.
This is where most people muck up when thinking about warfare. What you want is for a powerful, stable government decide that, wow, your oh-so-reasonable requests are *much* better than continuing to fight.
You want power so that they can enforce your oh-so-reasonable requests with their own law enforcement, and stability so that you know who you send your oh-so-reasonable demands to.
The moment you don’t have a powerful, stable government, you have a mess.
I mean, if a nation doesn’t have a powerful, stable government, their citizens are in a messy situation as well. But, if you are at war and the nation you’re fighting doesn’t have a powerful, stable, government, how is your will going to be enforced? Even if you’re willing to kill all who oppose you, unless your army is big enough to cow the entire populace, you won’t have control.
So, yes, people seeking military regime change are usually idiots. The “regime” is evil, or you wouldn’t want regime change. But you can’t install a new, liberal democracy as a government from without. Unless you have strong institutions that have been taken over by an invader or in a coup d’etat, you don’t have that strong, stable government to make demands from.
Yes, not even with “the most powerful military EVAH!”
Life sucks; sometimes you can’t do any good. But isn’t it better to stand back, and wait for an opportunity to help, than to decide nope, you’d rather blow things up and kill people[1]?
[1] This being a good capsule description of what military force can do.
My life is not long! But I will not let my life boring! I will try to do something I love doing things for their own pleasure! Make it a rich and meaningful
[No one should have their life boring, and make it a rich and meaningful – Ed]