The Normalization of War

Andrew J. Bacevich offers up an interesting take on the U.S. military adventurism of recent years in this essay, adapted from his new book The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War. In his essay Bacevich essentially argues that the U.S. has grown inured to -- and is even fond -- of war. He notes, for example, that at the same time the U.S.'s operational tempo has picked up pace despite lacking a major adversary in the Cold War's wake.

The brief period extending from 1989's Operation Just Cause (the overthrow of Manuel Noriega) to 2003's Operation Iraqi Freedom (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) featured nine major military interventions. And that count does not include innumerable lesser actions such as Bill Clinton's signature cruise missile attacks against obscure targets in obscure places, the almost daily bombing of Iraq throughout the late 1990s, or the quasi-combat missions that have seen GIs dispatched to Rwanda, Colombia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Altogether, the tempo of U.S. military interventionism has become nothing short of frenetic.

As this roster of incidents lengthened, Americans grew accustomed to -- perhaps even comfortable with -- reading in their morning newspapers the latest reports of U.S. soldiers responding to some crisis somewhere on the other side of the globe. As crisis became a seemingly permanent condition so too did war. The Bush administration has tacitly acknowledged as much in describing the global campaign against terror as a conflict likely to last decades and in promulgating -- and in Iraq implementing -- a doctrine of preventive war.

Bacevich adds that this has disturbing consequences for U.S. diplomacy which he believes has been shortchanged due to an increasingly unhealthy obsession with the use of force.

In former times American policymakers treated (or at least pretended to treat) the use of force as evidence that diplomacy had failed. In our own time they have concluded (in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney) that force "makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems." Policymakers have increasingly come to see coercion as a sort of all-purpose tool. Among American war planners, the assumption has now taken root that whenever and wherever U.S. forces next engage in hostilities, it will be the result of the United States consciously choosing to launch a war. As President Bush has remarked, the big lesson of 9/11 was that "this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense." The American public's ready acceptance of the prospect of war without foreseeable end and of a policy that abandons even the pretense of the United States fighting defensively or viewing war as a last resort shows clearly how far the process of militarization has advanced.

In some respects I am inclined to agree with Bacevich. A country has truly lost itself when war becomes a casual endeavor. As Robert E. Lee said, "It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it."

I am, however, not ready to say that the U.S. has arrived at such a state. While the U.S. certainly has demonstrated a willingness to use force I think that a perception the country is in a state of perpetual war is off-base. While the U.S. certainly has been willing to employ its troops, how many times can it really be said that U.S. troops were sent to war? If we define a war as involving 100 deaths or more then the past 15 years have witnessed 3 wars:

-The Gulf War (148 combat deaths, 145 non-combat)

-Afghanistan (137 as of 4/9/05 )

-Iraq (1,567 as of 4/20/05)

In historical terms, all except the current Iraq War are unremarkable. Indeed, the death toll for all three combined are still less than that of the Spanish-American War (in which the majority of deaths were non-combat). For additional perspective over 5,000 Americans died in 2002 alone in work-related accidents. Indeed, to the extent Bacevich is correct perhaps it is because the use of America's military has become a relatively low-casualty affair that public support has been easier to come by.

In fairness, however, war does not only impact the U.S. Others suffer casualties as well. But as often as not, U.S. forces are employed to halt ongoing blood-letting, not begin a new round. Indeed, U.S. involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo produced an end to the slaughter taking places in those areas. U.S. intervention in Somalia prevented thousands from succumbing to starvation and disease. War in Afghanistan has produced an end to the civil war between the Taliban and Northern Alliance, not to mention the end of draconian Taliban rule. And while Iraqis continue to perish in that country at the hands of Baathist henchmen this is little changed from the time of Saddam Hussein's rule. Now, at least, they have a chance.

The end result, I would submit, is a net plus for the world.

Furthermore, to the extent that U.S. forces are employed so often, it is due to a severe and unhealthy reluctance on the part of Europe and others to held shoulder the global security burden. The reason that it is often left up to the U.S. to take care of problems such as Bosnia or Afghanistan is that we are the only ones with both the means and the willingness to do so.

With regard to Bacevich's charge that this heightened militarism has come at the expense of public diplomacy I would also take exception. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban and others are simply not people you negotiate with. They are congenital liars with whom any diplomatic settlement is hardly worth the paper it is printed on. Let us not forget that the U.S. actually attempted to peacefully persuade each one of them before military action commenced. That it took military action to convince them of their errors of their ways is their fault, not ours.

I often wish that negotiations with the Taliban to prevent their destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan had involved B-52s and some special forces.

To paraphrase Elvis Presley, "A little less negotiation, a little more action, please."