Steven Metz proposes reviving and updating Caspar Weinberger’s principles on the use of force, but he concludes this will succeed only on two conditions:

First, there would have to be at least an informal agreement between both major parties to tone down the partisanship that hinders and even paralyzes American security policy. Whoever is in the White House, be it a Democrat or Republican, must be able to walk away from security commitments without a shrill barrage of indignant criticism. It may be too much to ask that politics stop at the water’s edge, but it is reasonable to expect that national security policy not constantly be used as a partisan cudgel.

Second, there needs to be clarity and agreement on the red lines or triggering events that compel the U.S. to shift from conditional and indirect uses of military force, like drone strikes and security assistance, to the direct application of force designed for a clear win. These should not be defined by the barbarity or rhetoric of opponents, but by the opponent’s capability and clear intent. By this standard, the so-called Islamic State (IS) merits indirect U.S. involvement, but not the direct application of American military power. Were Weinberger alive today, he might argue that IS is a disgusting and benighted organization, but that it has not demonstrated the capability or intent to strike effectively at vital U.S. interests.

Reaching some agreement on the second point would seem to be much easier than the first. Unfortunately, the impulse to defend “credibility” and the willingness to escalate U.S. involvement on behalf of tangential interests are still with us. Metz stated earlier that “[d]oubling down on failure to avoid the appearance of weakness is now widely if not universally seen as a mistake,” but I’m not sure that it is. All of the hawks that have been second-guessing decisions on Libya and Iraq over the last few years have lambasted the U.S. refusal to throw more resources down the drain in futile, unnecessary missions, so we can be fairly sure that some future administrations will want to do just that. The original “all-or-nothing” emphasis has to be retained, since there are simply too many people that will keep trying to turn an indirect and limited involvement in a foreign conflict into a major U.S. undertaking.

More important, most of our politicians and a large number of foreign policy professionals refuse to distinguish between interests that are vitally important to the U.S. and parts of the world where the U.S. has little or nothing at stake. We are supposed to believe that virtually everything is vitally important, all of it requires U.S. “leadership,” and that “leadership” usually requires some kind of direct U.S. involvement. This is the problem created by reciting and believing “indispensable nation” rhetoric: the U.S. doesn’t always have to involve itself directly, but many Americans have convinced themselves that the U.S. obliged to do so even in the absence of any direct threat to our country.

As for toning down partisan attacks, I don’t see how it can happen until members of Congress and presidents break some old habits. Between Congressional abdication and executive overreaching, neither party has much incentive to tone down its attacks on the other over foreign policy and national security. When one party is out of power, it has strong incentives to fault the sitting president for whatever appears to be going wrong in the world, and that all but guarantees that the other party will do the same later on. Members of Congress let the president wage wars on his own authority, but are perfectly happy to carp from the sidelines when something goes wrong and to demand that he “do more” without being forced to vote on anything. They don’t want and aren’t forced to have any stake in the policy. Meanwhile, many of them are only too happy to insert themselves into diplomatic efforts with other governments in order to demonstrate how “tough” they are.

Members of Congress know that they pay no price politically for trying to sabotage diplomacy, because they can always portray their efforts as an attempt to guard against appeasement, but they do see political risk in being perceived as being too “soft” or accommodating to other governments. Perhaps if members of Congress weren’t able to carp about presidential actions without consequences, they would be less inclined to use national security issues to score points. Unfortunately, until at least some of them start losing their seats or begin to receive extremely negative coverage, there isn’t likely to be much change here.