A critique of US interventionism
- By Zhao Jinglun
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E-mail China.org.cn, January 8, 2014
As the world's sole super power, the United States is a hegemon that has intervened all over the world. In the last decade and more, its wars of intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have turned out to be strategic disasters.
"Washington seems to have an uncanny ability to take a bad situation and make it worse," John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago wrote in his article "America Unhinged" in the Jan. 2, 2014 issue of The National Interest.
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The roof of vehicle is partially destroyed following of a suicide car bomb that detonated outside a central police station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on January 7, 2014, killing two people and wounding some 52 others. The United States said it would speed up its deliveries of missiles and surveillance drones to Iraq as the Baghdad government battles a resurgence of Al-Qaeda linked militants further south in the country. [Xinhua photo] |
![The roof of vehicle is partially destroyed following of a suicide car bomb that detonated outside a central police station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on January 7, 2014, killing two people and wounding some 52 others. The United States said it would speed up its deliveries of missiles and surveillance drones to Iraq as the Baghdad government battles a resurgence of Al-Qaeda linked militants further south in the country. [Xinhua photo]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20140108/001ec949c22b1437519109.jpg "The roof of vehicle is partially destroyed following of a suicide car bomb that detonated outside a central police station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on January 7, 2014, killing two people and wounding some 52 others. The United States said it would speed up its deliveries of missiles and surveillance drones to Iraq as the Baghdad government battles a resurgence of Al-Qaeda linked militants further south in the country. [Xinhua photo]")
In the article, Mearsheimer argued forcefully against U.S. intervention in Syria and Egypt. But the article is not just about those two countries, it is a comprehensive critique of U.S. interventionism.
Washington intervenes everywhere, with the aim of achieving world domination. America's national security elites act on the assumption that every nook and cranny of the globe is of great strategic significance and that there are threats to U.S. interests everywhere. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Congress in February 2012 "we are living in the most dangerous time in my lifetime." Former Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton stated in February 2013 that Americans "live in very complex and dangerous times."
That's not true at all, argued Mearsheimer, "the United States is a remarkably secure country." The American homeland is separated from Asia and Europe by two great oceans. "No great power can mount an amphibious operation across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans." The United States has by far the most powerful military in the world and it has thousands of nuclear weapons, which are the ultimate deterrent.
Both the economic costs and human costs of intervention are huge, as the Afghanistan and Iraq wars more than demonstrated. The two wars probably cost a staggering US$ 4-6 trillion. More than 6,700 soldiers have been killed, and over 50 thousand have been wounded in action. More than 247,000 veterans of the wars have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
According to Mearsheimer, the greatest cost of a strategy of intervention is "the damage it does to the political fabric of American society." The United States has been at war for two out of every three years since the Cold War ended. Its interventionist foreign policy creates situations where presidents and their lieutenants have a powerful incentive to lie, or at least distort the truth – a poisonous culture of dishonesty.
Another consequence of America's policy of global domination is that the government inevitably violates individual rights that are at the core of a liberal society and tramples the rule of law. In the tradeoff between national security and civil liberties, leaders almost always come down on the side of security.
As Americans don't like the idea of another country interfering in their politics, they should realize other peoples feel the same way about U.S. interference in their domestic affairs. "What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander." As the Chinese saying goes, "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you."
In fact, America's interventionist policies are the main cause of its terrorism problem.
Washington may have learned a lesson from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and is reluctant to commit boots on the ground. But it is intensifying its drone war; 95 percent of targeted assassinations are carried out by drones and 5 percent by special forces. Obama has a kill list known as the "disposition matrix," and there is a meeting every Tuesday in the White House called "Terror Tuesday" where the next round of victims is selected. It has gone so far that the notorious Gen. Michael "No Probable Cause" Hayden hinted broadly that Edward Snowden should be put on the president's kill list," a motion that was immediately endorsed by House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers.
Extrajudicial killing, of course, violates U.S. Constitution and international law.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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