James Traub seemed a little bummed in a Sunday New York Times op-ed (“The End of American Intervention?,” 2/18/10), that military cuts and changing priorities will mean fewer humanitarian interventions in America’s future.
So we must accept, if uneasily, the future which now seems to lie before us: We will do less good in the world, but also less harm.
A leading advocate of “humanitarian intervention,” Traub doesn’t waste many words on the “harm” produced the by two decades of them, but he seems pretty sure about the “good.” For instance, he writes that the post-Cold War period “raised the question of whether and when we would resort to force,” a question he says was answered “when the Clinton administration felt compelled to respond to political chaos in Haiti and mass violence in the Balkans. Force could be used in pursuit of justice.”
Traub doesn’t mention that Clinton’s Haiti intervention promoted anti-democratic forces (Extra! Update, 12/94) and that U.S. interference eventually scuttled that nation’s democracy (Extra!, 7-8/06), bringing more chaos and bloodshed. Or that the bombing in the Balkans resulted in even more deadly recriminations against the people the US/NATO forces were allegedly protecting (Extra!, 1/08).
In fact, a close look at Traub’s record shows he is generally supportive of U.S. military adventures whether they are dressed up with the “‘humanitarian” label or not. From his lofty perches at the New York Times, Foreign Policy and elsewhere, Traub has seldom met an intervention he couldn’t embrace. He supported early on an intervention in Darfur (PBS Frontline interview (11/20/10) and Kyrgyzstan (“Not Too Late to Save Kyrgyzstan,” Foreign Policy, 6/22/10).
But he was willing to scuttle set aside the “humanitarian” qualification to get at Libya, as he wrote in a Foreign Policy piece last year (3/11/11) headlined “Stepping In: Libya Doesn’t Meet Any of the Criteria for a Humanitarian Intervention. We Should Do It Anyway.”
The U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003 was launched over supposed weapons of mass destruction, but in a 2005 book review (New York Times, 10/30/05), Traub tried to argue that the Iraq War was started for humanitarian reasons, that “the case for war did not actually depend on the threat of imminent attack–even if the White House said otherwise.”
But even the premise of Traub’s Times op-ed, that the future will necessarily see fewer U.S. interventions, seems suspect. For instance, he doesn’t mention the U.S.’s expanding use of drone missile strikes, or the increasing number of nations in which U.S. special forces are deployed–while it was 60 nations at end of the Bush administration, according to Nick Turse (Tomdispatch, 8/3/11), “By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120.”
According to Traub, the White House is currently pivoting away from the Middle East to prioritize the Pacific and China. Reflecting on the challenge of China, Traub writes, with no apparent irony:
China is an emerging power, and once having found their footing, emerging powers usually seek to expand at the expense of their neighbors. The world is accustomed to dealing with this kind of problem, which involves persuading the bumptious power that its interests lie in cooperation rather than in confrontation.
But who’s going to persuade a bumptious United States to abandon its policies of constant confrontation?
I wonder what Traub thinks of McCain’s call to arm Syrian rebels.
I mean, it doesn’t cause the rush of blood to the face that seeing US troops and aircraft wreaking havoc on another country would for “humanitarian” imperialists like him.
But perhaps he would be mollified by the assurance that Special Ops forces would certainly accompany such materiel.
I’d have to think he could still get his Jones on for that, don’t you?
Has McCain called for a rush to war in Iran too? You see, the U.S. has an endless supply of money and our sons and daughters are dispensable when it comes to matters of war. The fact that we got our noses bloodied in the last two, rolls right off of his back. The next war will be different–somehow–from the last two.
One of these days we will find ourselves in a brawl that will spiral completely out of control.
Traub needs to sign up for a tour in Afghanistan so he won’t be so bummed out.
Let us not cut off our right arm to pat ourselves on the back with–it is premature to an era of peace.
It would be a little easier to take Traub seriously if he advocated the US follow the law: limiting itself to defensive actions or participating in UN-authorized collective action in support of defensive action against aggression. Instead, Traub seems more interested in growing fig leafs to cover up aggression and he just like to call the humanitarian.
What law Tishado limits us to defensive actions?And what stupidity would ever have our national security be tied to the UN?