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A Rigorous Debate

Many defenders of military inaction reach their point of view by way of a skewed cost-benefit calculation that assumes the worst about military action and assumes the best about inaction. Every untoward development that happens or is speculated to happen after military intervention is blamed on the intervener, but every untoward development that happens in […]

Many defenders of military inaction reach their point of view by way of a skewed cost-benefit calculation that assumes the worst about military action and assumes the best about inaction. Every untoward development that happens or is speculated to happen after military intervention is blamed on the intervener, but every untoward development that happens in the absence of military intervention is left out of the calculus entirely. Thus ideologues who bemoan American “militarism” count up all of the casualties in wars the U.S. intervened in and utterly disregard all of the casualties in conflicts the U.S. let fester without acting. ~Peter Feaver

Feaver says that he wants a more “rigorous” debate, by which he seems to mean he wants a debate that is automatically more skewed in favor of taking military action. This passage is one example of that. Non-interventionists don’t assume the best-case for inaction. We usually assume that even in most worst-case scenarios the U.S. has no business involving itself in another country’s civil war, and that even in the worst-case scenario American interests and security are not adversely affected. That has been true in Sudan, Congo, and Zimbabwe. The warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been horrific, and it has claimed millions of lives over the years, but I don’t think anyone seriously believes that the U.S. or central Africa would have been better off had American forces plunged into the middle of the fighting. There might be exceptions to that, but Libya certainly isn’t one of them.

It is incumbent on the proponents of action to justify creating a new foreign policy commitment. The burden of proof is always on the activists, because they are the ones proposing that the U.S. take on new burdens and risks that it has not been expected to take on in the past. Comparing worst-case scenarios of taking action and inaction, the worst-case scenarios that come from taking military action are always going to be worse for the U.S. because those scenarios include significant costs and casualties for the United States. Speaking of skewed cost-benefit analysis, interventionists tend to be extremely flippant about the costs and risks that intervention will involve, but they are very quick to invoke the specter of large-scale massacres and genocide to try to browbeat opponents into supporting action. The weaker their policy argument is, the more heavily they have to lean on that bit of moral blackmail.

We can’t know the counterfactual of what would have happened inside Iraq had the U.S. not invaded in 2003, but it is much more likely that the invasion caused massive, unnecessary displacement, exile, injury, and death to millions of Iraqis (and deteriorating standards of living and unemployment for millions more) that would not have happened otherwise, and there would obviously be thousands of Americans killed and tens of thousands of Americans wounded in the war who would not have been. Most of the time, the “costs of inaction” never materialize, or the costs have little or nothing to do with the U.S. When a government invades another country, dismantles its institutions, and then fails to restore order amid mass bloodletting, it is actually responsible legally and morally for the disorder and insecurity that follow. It is pretty strained reasoning to conclude that a government’s refusal to intervene entails the same responsibility.

We don’t know whether there would have been a massive refugee exodus out of Kosovo in the spring of 1999 had NATO not taken action, but we know that there was a massive refugee exodus out of Kosovo while NATO waged its air war. The war to prevent the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo briefly resulted in precisely that expulsion. Would Kosovo be governed in an even more corrupt and destructive way than it is by KLA thugs now had NATO never intervened and separated the province from Serbia? It is possible, but it is also conceivable that Kosovo is demonstrably worse off because of intervention. A basic understanding of accountability tells us that these things are the responsibility of the governments that intervened and decided the future of these places. In most cases, interventions make the countries they are supposed to be helping worse off.

Does Feaver actually want to apply the standard he’s using? Is the Bush administration in some way responsible for the loss of life and displacement of population in Darfur? I don’t see how anyone could claim that it is, but by Feaver’s standard the U.S. “let” the conflict fester and did not act, despite the fact that the U.S. theoretically could have acted against the militias Bashir was using.

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