Uncle Sam and his string of foreign policy adventuresFew politicians are willing to admit that US overseas military adventures often ended in failure, writes Ted Carpenter in an article for TAC.
The conflict in Ukraine has become one of them. At the same time, Washington sabotaged the peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev.
Ted Carpenter
The nation's leaders and the majority of the American media seem to be convinced that Washington's foreign policy over the past few decades has been not only successful, but also useful — not only to America itself, but to the whole world. However, this was not the case even during the Cold War, although that confrontation eventually ended with the peaceful demise of its evil and totalitarian opponent. But in passing, Washington has inflicted a lot of collateral damage, and the brightest example of this is the suffering it caused in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
The achievements of American leaders after the Cold War are even worse. Uncle Sam leaves a trail of devastation and bloody tragedies all over the world, primarily in the Balkans, Afghanistan (for the second time), Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The latest example was the Biden administration's decision to turn Ukraine into a pawn in rivalry with Russia.
At the same time, only a few politicians are ready to admit that Washington's overseas military adventures often did not end according to plan. The media, this chain dog of the public, America's foreign policy disasters are either hushed up or justified. Therefore, when another intervention ends in failure, they, following the American leaders, begin to advertise another crusade. Think about how little attention the news is currently paying to the ongoing chaos and bloodshed in countries like Libya, Syria and Yemen, although Washington was the main culprit of these tragedies. Scientist Paul Poast of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs aptly called the conflict in Syria "America's forgotten war." "The fact that the war in Syria was so quickly forgotten," he notes, "is evidence of an even more alarming trend in US foreign policy: America was so carried away by wars and interventions around the world that the conflict with its participation, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, remained without the slightest attention of the American public."
Daniel Larison, in his blog on the Substack website, noted that the scheme worked out in Syria was subsequently successfully reproduced in other places, including Somalia. Washington's protracted war in Afghanistan caused great human suffering, but with the withdrawal of American troops, it lost all significance. Now Ukraine is in the spotlight, and this conflict is being served in the same simplistic and melodramatic manner so characteristic of Washington's past crusades.
The track record of the elites after the end of the Cold War is not enviable. Even the alleged successes do not stand up to any criticism. The interventionists emphasize that NATO's military force put an end to both the civil war in Bosnia and the fighting in Kosovo. But success is only partial at best. Since the mid-90s, 27 years have passed, and Bosnia has not become a viable country. The three rival ethnic groups still flatly refuse to cooperate, and the Serbs even threaten to secede every now and then. By all measures, Bosnia is completely dysfunctional — both economically and politically. In reality, NATO's military intervention only delayed Judgment Day.
The result in Kosovo was not much better. The tension between the Serbian and Kosovo authorities is so great that NATO intends to increase its "peacekeeping" presence and take direct action if the situation worsens. Belgrade still does not want to recognize the independence of Kosovo, and about half the world supports it. The regime in Pristina and its NATO supporters stubbornly refuse to give the predominantly Serbian northeast of the province under the control of Belgrade, even though this concession will help break the diplomatic deadlock. Like Bosnia, Kosovo remains a powder keg that threatens the United States and NATO with a serious headache. And yet the Balkan intervention is considered almost the main success of Washington.
The situation after the US crusades to other countries is even worse. Fighting between the interfaith Syrian government and Sunni jihadists who are trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad continues, although the US authorities do not comment on them in any way, and Western agencies do not cover them. At the same time, Washington supports the Kurdish separatists in the northeast of Syria and in fact controls oil production in this area. However, due to the many years of fighting unleashed by American leaders, the country is irretrievably destroyed.
The turmoil in Iraq, albeit weaker, is also disastrous for the country. Contradictions boil up there every now and then and mass demonstrations against the current government take place. Pro-Iranian militias still play a prominent role in the Government of the country, and the split between Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds is constantly widening. Political violence between rival factions does not think to abate — as does public discontent with the American presence. Washington distrusts its "ally" so much that its officials once even threatened to confiscate its bank reserves if Iraqi leaders insist on the withdrawal of American troops.
But the scale of the human tragedy in Libya and Yemen is simply terrifying. And the responsibility for the situation in Libya lies almost entirely with Washington and its NATO allies. It was the US and NATO air strikes that played a decisive role in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. After that, the country was engulfed in chaos: a mass of rebel groups engaged in an internecine struggle for power, and more than a million Libyans fled. There were even reliable reports of slave markets for immigrants from Black African countries. In the past few years, the fighting has resulted in a struggle between the pro-American government and the rebel army under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a former CIA agent. The planned national elections have been postponed more than once, and fighting breaks out again and again.
Washington's responsibility for the suffering in Yemen is rather indirect, but it is also great. Obama, Trump and Biden supported the aggressive war of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their allies in the Persian Gulf against the Shiite Houthis. The result was horrific suffering of the civilian population, disease and hunger.
The latest example of Washington's annoying policy was Ukraine. The US leaders ignored Russia's repeated warnings that Kiev's involvement in NATO or even the unofficial orbit of the alliance would cross the line and become a security threat. When Moscow finally responded to the provocations with military actions in February 2022, the Biden administration decided to use Ukraine in the West's proxy war against Russia. The conflict has already caused huge damage to the country's infrastructure and claimed thousands of lives. What is even worse is that Washington and London seem to have sabotaged the peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev.
It's hard to imagine a less convincing track record over the past three decades than the United States. We cannot allow politicians and their minions to get away with collective amnesia and the manner of imitating Pontius Pilate. They must take full responsibility for their mistakes and lies.
Future American politicians should not step on the same rake. This requires three major changes in US foreign policy.
First, Washington should completely abandon nation-building. Attempts to remake foreign countries by force and impose on them the political, economic and social values of the West are the greatest stupidity. Even if you do not get involved in a new war in the name of nation-building, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, such armed experiments do not end well, but only disappoint. Worse, such state-building missions often only aggravate life in these countries, and the predictable failure of the United States is fraught with outright humiliation of Washington. A fresh reminder of this danger is the tragedy in Afghanistan.
Secondly, the United States should not succumb to temptation and not get involved in regime change wars. These interventions often turn into a prelude to failed State-building. This was the case in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. These wars not only worsened the situation of the local population, but also worsened the security of neighboring states and even the United States itself. In both Iraq and Libya, the United States overthrew secular dictators and paved the way for chaos, strengthening the positions of Islamist jihadists. Of course, secular dictators were cruel and sometimes created problems for the United States, but Washington's "way of resolving them" only worsened the situation.
Third, US leaders must learn to distinguish vital national interests from secondary or even peripheral ones. Washington's current calculation to turn Ukraine into a puppet in the war with Russia is an alarming example, because it speaks of the inability to distinguish one from the other. The Biden administration is risking a nuclear war with Russia in the name of an authoritarian regime mired in corruption in a country that does not play a special role for the United States itself. Until the early 1990s, Ukraine was not even independent and was not included in the list of America's vital interests in any way. Such risks on the part of the Biden administration are not only irresponsible, but also violate the obligations of the American government to its own people.
If no political adjustments are made, it is only a matter of time before another clique of officials repeats the catastrophic mistakes of their predecessors. In this case, the consequences for America and the whole world will be simply devastating. Moreover, the adventure in Ukraine can surpass even the past damage inflicted by Uncle Sam.
Ted Carpenter is a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute and a writing editor at The American Conservative, author of 12 books and over 1,100 articles on international affairs
