There was something else in that underwhelming Dueck/Zakheim article I wanted to address. The authors write:

American national-security policy can and should be based on the premise that U.S. military power does more good than harm in the world.

It is possible that this can be true in certain cases with qualifications, but even then it is something that has to be demonstrated and not simply assumed. Starting from this premise is very likely to lead policymakers into any number of traps and blind alleys, and it has done so many times in the past. The assumption that Dueck and Zakheim want as the foundation for the rest of their argument reflects a complete abdication of the appropriate skepticism and wariness that conservatives should have towards power. Conservatives should never assume that any kind of power “does more good than harm in the world.” That assumption is frequently disproved by experience. Conservatives ought to have a healthy distrust of such power because of the potential for abuse and corruption, but more than that they should always regard power, especially military power, with great wariness because of its enormous destructive potential.

In those places where it has been true that our military power has “done more good than harm” in the past, it may no longer be true. Even when it may be doing “more good than harm” on balance, it is vital to ask whether these deployments are necessary for the security of the United States and whether that role could be taken over by U.S. allies. In most places around the world, the U.S. doesn’t need to have its forces there. The U.S. is also not so “indispensable” to regional security in most parts of the world that its role could not be filled by allies and non-hostile states. As long as the U.S. provides for their security at our expense, other governments will keep letting Washington assume the costs and risks for them. That is needlessly costly and potentially dangerous for the U.S., and it stunts our allies’ abilities to defend themselves, and those are harms that ought to be remedied as soon as possible.