OPINION: Don’t Be So Anti-Interventionist

The USAF F-117 Nighthawk, one of the key aircraft used in Operation Desert Storm

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues on, Americans generally remain certain that they don’t want to see the US engage in direct conflict with Russia, and that they prefer the harsh sanctions regime that the Biden administration has pursued. In the end, that may be the right move, given the geopolitical situation. 

I believe, however, that this newfound American unwillingness to generally engage militarily with our opponents poses a systemic risk to our national interests and to global security. 

America’s new non-interventionist stance has come about over a number of years, but it was essentially precipitated by the realization that both of the large wars undertaken by the United States in the early 2000s resulted in failure. A consensus has formed that the Iraq War, which not only failed in its original purpose to uncover weapons of mass destruction in the country,  directly resulted in the rise of ISIS. Similarly, the Afghanistan War, after becoming America’s longest war and consuming resources and the lives of service members for 20 years, resulted in nothing but a direct return to Taliban rule and a reversal of all the progress made by US troops. 

It is not difficult to see why Americans would take from these events the lesson that US intervention abroad is a fool’s errand. In 2016, Donald Trump successfully brought even Republicans to this point of view by arguing that we are wasting money and American lives on the fates of other nations, an argument that, while much more self-centered than objections made by liberals, proved to be convincing.

This background brings us to today, where, even as Republicans call for expanded military budgets, neither party is interested in undertaking any more foreign adventures. But I believe that we have taken the wrong lessons from the wars of the 2000s. Simply saying that US interventionism is always bad is the wrong approach. What we learned from these wars are a few concrete lessons, most prominently a warning to not dismantle a state without the willingness, resources, and know-how to rebuild it from the ground up. These are lessons that we should integrate into our approach to the world, and we should not let them discourage us from continuing to engage.

Modern-day isolationists and non-interventionists on both the right and the left often forget the incredibly important role that the United States plays on the world stage. Since World War II, US military prowess can be thanked for maintaining the liberal world order, which in its most important form is what stops larger nations from annexing, stealing from, and destroying smaller ones. 

In addition to preventing the expansion of the USSR, a communist dictatorship that failed to feed even its own people, the US has preserved the existence of dozens of nations against the intentions of their aggressive neighbors, including Kuwait, Taiwan, Kosovo, and most of the Post-Soviet nations. The American Navy, as the foremost force of its kind in the world, defends and maintains global trade, and US special operations have kept terrorist organizations on the run and frequently leaderless no matter where they are. 

For decades, dictators across the globe have thought twice about invading other countries or committing war crimes against their own people for fear of American retaliation, and this situation has materially benefited the lives of millions, if not billions of people–including American citizens. Not only is it highly profitable to have a largely peaceful world engaging in uninterrupted global trade, but by keeping autocratic forces down, the US has largely been able to prevent the rise of hostile nations that could pose a legitimate security threat to us.

However, this liberal world order that we have worked so hard to maintain is beginning to crumble. By constantly raising the bar on when we are willing to act, drawing red lines and then not enforcing them, and failing to defend our allies when they need us, America has lost much of its credibility. A good example of this is in Syria, whereby both allowing our red line on chemical weapons to be crossed without recourse and not supplying proxy forces enough to defeat Assad and Russia, we have lost respect and credibility in the Middle East as well as globally. And unfortunately, the international order maintains itself on the back of American credibility. 

Regarding Ukraine, you can disagree on whether we should intervene now. But, in the weeks leading up to the war, it is likely a small number of American or NATO troops placed in Ukraine would have deterred a Russian incursion. Such a move would have avoided most concerns regarding nuclear strikes, as adding to the defenses of an ally would be incredibly difficult to spin as warranting nuclear escalation, even for Putin. 

Additionally, it is even more obvious now that Biden never should have told Russia it was not going to send troops under any conditions. This statement was clearly said to appease domestic audiences, but it drastically weakened our strategic position. By maintaining this anti-interventionist sentiment at home, by saying that we are not willing to defend Ukraine no matter what the Russians do, we are the ones who have allowed Putin to do what he has done to Ukraine. 

We are telling the world that we are not interested in going to war for any reason, which enables foreign dictators to do as they please. There have even been recent debates about whether the US would actually decide to defend Taiwan if China invaded them, something that had been a foregone conclusion for decades. 

The world is a dark and dangerous place without the United States actively engaged in it; it is a world where might makes right and there is nothing to stop autocrats from taking what they want. I encourage everyone to never allow that to become our world. We have sacrificed too much as a nation to allow the world order that we have built to fall apart now.