“Sir, I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible ... if they (Sunni and Shiite) are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner I would actually clear out. ... At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”
Winston Churchill to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Sept. 1, 1922
Despite the seriousness of the present economic crisis, the greatest danger to the future security of the U.S. is Washington’s inclination to impose political solutions with the use of American military power in many parts of the world where Washington’s solutions are unneeded and unsustainable. President Barack Obama must arrest this tendency by making pragmatic and methodical changes to the goals of American military strategy. The Bush legacy in foreign and defense policy presents Obama with a stark choice: Will we continue to pursue global hegemony with the use of military power to control and shape development inside other societies? Or will we use our military power to maintain our market-oriented English-speaking republic, a republic that upholds the rule of law, respects the cultures and traditions of people different from ourselves, and trades freely with all nations, but protects its sovereignty, its commerce, its vital strategic interests and its citizens? This essay argues for the latter approach; a strategy of conflict avoidance designed to make the U.S. more secure without making the rest of the world less so.
For Americans who’ve lived in a world with only one true military, political and economic center of gravity — the U.S. — changing how America behaves inside the international system is not an easy task. Since 1991, Americans have become so accustomed to the frequent use of American military power against very weak opponents they seem to have lost their fear of even the smallest conflict’s unintended consequences.
But the 21st century is no time for the leaders of the U.S. to make uninformed decisions regarding the use of force or to engage in desperate, end-game, roll-of-the-dice gambles. Recent events in the Caucasus involving Russia and Georgia may simply be a foretaste of what is likely to happen during the 21st century in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the ancient practice of encouraging one ethnic group to dominate others as a means of securing foreign imperial power is breeding new conflicts. These conflicts are likely to resemble the Balkan Wars of the early 20th century, except that fights for regional power and influence will overlap with the competition for energy, water, food, mineral resources and the wealth they create. In nations such as Iran and Turkey, states with proud histories, huge populations under the age of 30 and appetites for more prominence in world affairs, the influx of wealth from the energy sector will also support much more potent militaries and, potentially, more aggressive foreign policies, too.
In this volatile setting, direct American military involvement in conflicts where the U.S. itself is not attacked and its national prosperity is not at risk should be avoided. Otherwise, American military involvement could cause 21st century conflicts to spin out of control and confront Americans with regional alliances designed to contain American military power; alliances that but for American military intervention would not exist. It is vital the U.S. not repeat the mistakes of the British Empire in 1914: overestimate its national power by involving itself in a self-defeating regional war it does not need to fight and precipitate its own economic and military decline.
Avoiding this outcome demands new goals for American military power and a strategic framework that routinely answers the questions of purpose, method and end-state; a strategy in which American military action is short, sharp, decisive and rare. Such a strategy involves knowing when to fight and when to refuse battle.
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