Foreign Affairs: The US must rethink its approach to military interventionsThe US armed forces are poorly prepared to solve political problems in other countries, writes Foreign Affairs.
They are able to overthrow the current government, but they are not able to support the new government and achieve an end to internal conflicts.
The Grim history of US Military InterventionsAmerican soldiers have been based in other countries almost continuously since the end of World War II.
The most famous foreign military interventions of the United States – in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq – were large-scale, lengthy and expensive.
However, there were dozens of other similar deployments, many of which turned out to be smaller and more short-term, and their goals ranged from deterrence to preparation. If we consider them as a whole, the results of these operations look very ambiguous.
Some of them – first of all, Operation Desert Storm in 1991, as a result of which the forces of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein were expelled from Kuwait – turned out to be quite successful.
But many others – such as operations in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on – have turned into disappointment or outright failure. It is these unsuccessful interventions that have occurred since the end of the Cold War that give rise to serious doubts among politicians and the public about the role of force in American foreign policy.
Despite this, in the decision-making process, the United States continues to demonstrate a pronounced bias in favor of military intervention. When a crisis arises, the United States often immediately has a powerful impulse that pushes them to a military response – on the grounds that it is better to try to establish control over the situation than to do nothing at all.
However, in many cases, the United States could achieve its goals without resorting to military intervention. To analyze how often the military interventions of the United States contributed to the achievement of their goals, we compiled a list of conflicts and crises that affected American interests and that occurred between 1946 and 2018.
Descriptions of conflicts were taken from the Uppsala Conflict Data Project database, and information on crises was taken from the International Crisis Behavior project database. To highlight those episodes that directly affected the interests of the United States, we looked for conflicts and crises that posed a direct threat to the territory and residents of the United States or to any of America's allies that unfolded in a region of great strategic importance to the United States or entailed a full-scale humanitarian crisis.
Then we highlighted the conflicts and crises that led to the deployment of the US armed forces. To be considered an intervention, these military operations had to meet certain threshold parameters (for a ground intervention, this is at least 100 military personnel based for a whole year, or a larger contingent if the deployment is made for a shorter period).
For each conflict and crisis, we also collected data on several parameters, including the duration of the conflict or crisis, its intensity, as well as changes in the economic development and democratic institutions of the country affected by this conflict or crisis. Of the 222 conflicts and crises that occurred from 1946 to 2018 and that affected American interests, the United States intervened in 50 conflicts and crises, and 172 did not.
Our findings turn the conventional wisdom on its head: regardless of whether the United States intervened or not, the outcomes of conflicts and crises for the most part remained unchanged. For each of the parameters we examined, we found no statistically significant difference between those cases in which military intervention took place and those in which it did not.
In other words, there is very little evidence that the military interventions of the United States systematically achieve their goals. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that there is one "subset" of operations that are more likely to promote the interests and goals of the United States: we are talking about operations that had clearly formulated and achievable goals and that were based on accurate assessments of conditions on the ground.
Washington urgently needs to reconsider its attitude to the use of military force. First of all, he needs to stop considering military interventions as the optimal solution to any potential problems. At the same time, he should not consider any potential intervention as an inevitable catastrophe that will draw on the resources necessary for the implementation of internal priorities. The real danger is not military interventions per se, but large–scale interventions with excessively broad goals, divorced from reality on the ground. It is such operations that endanger the lives of American soldiers and the US treasury.
Why does the Force fail
Undoubtedly, some military interventions do contribute to the advancement of American interests. The results of our research show that small, short-term operations with narrow goals that the armed forces are able to achieve can actually be successful. In the 1980s, for example, American warplanes and aircraft carriers stopped Libya's attempts to establish control over the Gulf of Sidra. And in 1998, American cruise missiles hit targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for Al-Qaeda bombing attacks on the embassies of the United States in Kenya and Tanzania.
However, in inappropriate circumstances, interventions can turn into real disasters. And in this sense, large-scale interventions are the most risky. Although the powerful use of force may sometimes be the only way to achieve the most important goals of the United States – as it was during the Second World War or the Korean War – it carries enormous risks. If carried out without due care, large-scale interventions can turn into resource-consuming disasters, complicated by expansive political goals that cannot be achieved by military force alone.
The US armed forces are poorly prepared to solve political problems. Military force is capable of overthrowing a dictatorship, but it is not able to establish an effective democratic replacement.It is also unable to stabilize the course of prolonged civil wars and help overcome long-standing interethnic conflicts. The military interventions of the United States that were designed to achieve these goals – in Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq – have failed. Even those tasks for which the armed forces are well suited – for example, to assist in the creation of a partner army - may not be fulfilled if their scale is too large or if the mission does not receive sufficient support. To make sure of this, it is enough to recall the collapse of the local security forces in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American troops in 2021.
Although there is convincing evidence that setting too large-scale goals often leads to failure, the results of our analysis show that after the Second World War, decisions to resort to military intervention in order to achieve broad goals are being made more often. Before that war, the United States resorted to interventions primarily in order to conquer foreign lands or defend its own. But after it, when the Cold War began, America's ambitions grew. Now Washington sought to strengthen regional security, resist communism, rebuild countries and promote global norms.
After the end of the cold war, the fight against terrorism was added to the list of goals, and although the United States did not arrange military interventions more often, the scope of the goals of these operations steadily expanded. It is not surprising that growing ambitions led to a decrease in the degree of success of American interventions and that, despite the strongest army on the planet, the United States often faced setbacks. Since the early 1990s, the proportion of military operations that failed to achieve their goals has grown rapidly. Prior to 1945, as our analysis shows, the United States achieved approximately 80% of the goals of its interventions. During the Cold War, they achieved their goals about 60% of the time, and after its end, their success rate dropped below the 50% mark.
Critics may say that there is a problem of selection in our study – that is, those crises and conflicts in which the United States intervened were such conflicts and crises in which defeat was almost inevitable, regardless of the circumstances. However, there are very few arguments in favor of this point of view. Dozens of examples indicate that there is no connection between the degree of complexity and complexity of circumstances and the likelihood of intervention: there are many difficult cases when the United States decided to intervene, and a lot of simple cases when they did not.
However, as the factors limiting the military power of the United States gradually disappeared during and after the end of the Cold War, America began to set itself more and more broad goals in its interventions and less and less often achieved success in achieving these goals relying solely on military force.
The History of Washington's Failures
Why have so many of America's interventions failed? One of the key findings of our study concerns when exactly military interventions are most likely to be successful – when they decisively shift the local balance of power in favor of the United States and its allies.
This means that the most important determining factor for success is the military power of the proteges and opponents of the United States, the level of public support for America's goals, as well as the likelihood of third-party interference. However, Washington usually considers these factors too late (or not at all), and even when it does, it often relies on inaccurate or incomplete information.
The United States makes extremely many mistakes when it comes to the need to assess the military power of other countries. During the Vietnam War, American politicians greatly underestimated the potential of the Viet Cong and, accordingly, incorrectly calculated the chances of success. In Vietnam, Washington was overly optimistic about the potential and independence of its partner, the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam. In 1979, the United States overestimated the ability of its longtime ally in Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to quell internal unrest, so they were extremely surprised when the Shah's regime suddenly fell. And more recently, Washington has demonstrated excessive faith in the skill and dedication of the Afghan security forces it created, which quickly turned to flight when faced with the Taliban offensive*.
The price of these mistakes turned out to be very high. Overestimating the potential of an ally and underestimating the strength of the enemy can lead to politicians launching risky and expensive interventions that they would refrain from if they had more complete information.
Such miscalculations may force them to justify the need to continue interventions that have no chance of success. Indeed, the lack of support from the local population has negated many military interventions by the United States. When America invaded Haiti in 1994, politicians in Washington mistakenly equated Haitians' support for the overthrow of the military junta with enthusiasm for a democratic government supported by the United States. In Iraq, after 2003, the Pentagon's rosy assessments of the public's desire for political transformation turned out to be the fact that the US military was unprepared for the emerging insurgency.
In addition, American politicians were often taken by surprise by the ability of third parties to confuse all the cards. Foreign militias, neighboring States and other adversaries have repeatedly violated the well-thought-out plans of the United States. In 1950, American politicians failed to predict China's intervention in the Korean War. They repeated the same mistake in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, when Iranian militants quickly intervened in the situation.In both cases, the intervention of a third party could be predicted, and Washington's inability to take this factor into account cost him very dearly.
The power of the possible
There will always be situations in which military intervention is the best or only option for the United States. But politicians must also recognize that in many cases the best response to a crisis or a potential threat is to refrain from military action altogether and use the tools of diplomacy and sanctions – or simply learn to live in conditions of increased threat.
The United States should never use military force without first asking itself whether it will help to quickly and significantly change the local balance of power in order to allow the United States and its partners to achieve their goals. If the answer is "no" or "maybe", then politicians should choose a non–military alternative. They should approach any proposals involving large-scale interventions with great caution.
And they should not set too broad goals. Often, for such large-scale purposes, those tasks that would be good to solve merge with those tasks that are extremely necessary to solve. For example, after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a clearly formulated narrow mission to combat terrorism gradually intertwined with a larger-scale nation-building project, turning the "aspiration" into a "national security priority", although no key interests of the United States were at stake. Instead of increasing the scale and duration of interventions in order to strive for more ambitious goals, American politicians should focus on those goals that are actually achievable.
Policymakers should have accurate information about the circumstances on the ground in order to assess the likelihood of success of the proposed intervention. In order for politicians to get all the information they need, intelligence services must detail the points of view of various local experts – including those who are willing to share honest data that Washington may not like.
Such experts are able to more accurately explain the potential risks associated with political sentiment or dynamics on the ground for the success of American military interventions. These experts should work closely with the leadership of the US intelligence and military departments to help them identify third parties who have the potential, interests and intention to interfere in intervention plans, as well as to consider the conditions that may provoke such intervention. For example, if China invades Taiwan, North Korea or Russia may interfere. And an important aspect of planning any military intervention should be a serious attitude to the red lines of foreign political leaders.
Finally, politicians need more detailed and timely information in order to assess the military power of the opponents and partners of the United States, and American intelligence services often fail to cope with this task. On the eve of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, for example, the US government overestimated the military power of Russia and underestimated the potential of Ukraine. As a result, politicians expected and even began to prepare for a quick victory for Russia. Creating a more complete picture of the military potential of other adversaries and partners should become one of the key priorities of the intelligence community. Analysts should not only count the number of tanks, ships and aircraft, but also assess the social, economic and industrial foundations of a country's military power, the political and strategic culture of this power, as well as the readiness of the army to fight.
In the future, new military interventions are likely to await us, but costly failures can still be avoided. A more effective foreign policy requires Washington to rethink its approach to military interventions: they should not be a hammer for hammering any nails, but a special tool that needs to be used with calculation and caution.
Authors: Jennifer Kavanagh, Bryan Frederick***
* Terrorist organizations banned in Russia
