Shadi Hamid thinks the world needs U.S. military interventions:

If the United States announced tomorrow morning that it would no longer use its military for anything but to defend the borders of the homeland, many would instinctively cheer, perhaps not quite realizing what this would mean in practice. But that is the conundrum the Left is now facing. A world without mass slaughter, of the sort of we are seeing every day in Syria, cannot ever come to be without American power.

It’s very likely that a “world without mass slaughter” won’t be realized at all, but it is very doubtful that it is possible only through American use of force. The real question is whether the frequent, violent interference in the affairs of other countries that Hamid is talking about yields better results than non-interference. The answer to that question depends on the circumstances of each case, but in almost every case from the last half-century the decision to interfere, to fuel conflict, and to take sides in the quarrels of others has needlessly inflicted more harm on the affected countries. This is true of U.S.-led interventions and of the wars waged by U.S. clients with our government’s approval and support. If we’re generous, the number of “successful” U.S. interventions can be counted on a few fingers, and they are severely outnumbered by the failures and disasters. Given that shaky record, there has to be a very compelling reason to make the attempt and it has to be one that is worth taking the risks involved.

Even when an intervention can be said to have “worked” according to some definition, there are always some innocents that pay a severe price because they found themselves on the “wrong” side of the fight or because their country suffered from the adverse effects of intervention in a neighboring land. By taking sides in foreign conflicts, the U.S. is choosing to participate in bringing death and destruction upon people who have usually done nothing to us or our allies to provoke such action. That choice is often made for reasons that have little or nothing to do with concern for the well-being of the people in the country in question, and it is almost always made rashly and before other alternatives have been exhausted. At best, the record of our interference shows that we tend to be cavalier and irresponsible in our use of force in other countries, and at worst we leave those places drastically worse off than they were before we “helped.” That is not what the world or the U.S. needs.

Pointing at the horrors of Syria is not a counter-argument to any of this. Syria is suffering as much as it is because almost every state in the region and quite a few from other parts of the world (including the U.S.) have opted to take sides, to funnel weapons and support to warring parties, and in some cases to intervene directly in the fighting. It takes a very unusual moralist to look at this and conclude that the big problem is that the U.S. hasn’t contributed sufficiently to the carnage and that Syrians would be better off if it did. The lesson we ought to take away from the last fifteen years is that military action takes longer, costs more, and does more unintended damage than all but the most pessimistic people thought possible at the outset. Don’t assume that a bad conflict can’t be made worse by more intervention, because almost any situation can be made worse, and in some cases it can be made much worse.