Intervention is Taxing

Blog Post #2

GVPT 200

Prof. Shirk           

Intervention Is Taxing

            The United States has a incredible track record of intervention.  This record can be seen with how many military bases permanently established all over the world.  I do not agree with the U.S  international intervention strategy.  Intervention in the long run deters possible threats, uplifts a states public to have established rights, and the U.S. has the capability to intervene, so why not.  The intervention that the U.S. conducts may have benefits, but the long term effects causes more damage to the home front.  The U.S. has many problems that need to be addressed.  I understand that U.S. intervention  of the numerous failed states does have a deep interest for needed resources to consume. 

            Why has the U.S. intervened in the many failed states over the many years.  They have the resources and military capability to help other states..  The U.S. becomes interested when a failed state is inhabited by a possible terrorist threat.  As one of the super powers of the world, the U.S. feels obligated to intervene.  But are these enough reasons to intervene.  Is it worth taking the  offense  by attacking a threat in another state rather than defending your country securities.  The what if factor of a possible threat is not enough to intervene in a failed state.  At this point, our asset of military efficiency, economic stability (only as our dollar is the reserve currency), and international rank have come, the U.S. should not intervene solely on possible threats in another country.  To do so makes the U.S. seem like they are looking for a fight rather then preventing one.   The war in Iraq started with George Bush Sr. and was meant to disarm the threat of having nuclear weapons in the Middle East.  Although, there are some positive aspects of U.S. intervention in failed states.  The spread of democracy influences other countries to develop their own democracy.

            According to previous lectures, democratic states do not go to war with each other.  The benefit of U.S. intervention has shown that the U.S. only intervenes once.  After the mission is complete in that specific country, the country becomes self sustainable and any possible threats are extinguished.  The saved country now can develop a dependable government and economy.  U.S intervention easily relates to therapy, you work out all the problems and come out feeling better and relieved.  The joy of sovereignty back in the citizen’s hands is the end all goal.  The saved country or state benefits greatly from U.S. intervention.  But what does the U.S gain?  What is our end goal to intervention?

            Our resources in the U.S. become more depleted after each intervention.  It is actually cheaper to trade with other countries, like China to sustain our needs.  As a result of our intervention, our economy may be better than most countries, yet behind the curtains you can see that our international intervention has caused our national debt and military spending to sky rocket to the point of no return.  To the return of a sound economy.  I believe intervention weakens us more than it helps in the long run for the country.  Not quite as serious as our economy, our military personal sacrifice there lives for an intervention that could have been avoided.  Could you imagine the U.S. without impact of the Vietnam or Iraq war?  There is always a boogie man or threat that has to be stopped.  It seems that are chasing the threat has cause to much damage to our own country.  How can we recover as the super power of the world if we vulnerable at the core. 

            U.S intervention has many benefits for the country being saved.  In addition, there may be a small benefit for the U.S as well, but what is the benefit of the long term goal?  Is it safe to assume a threat is a threat.  Is it the right to broadly justify intervention?  We should take a break from intervention and maintain our home front.  We are not the only country in the world that can take charge. 

Public Opinion on Intervention and the Media

I think that American intervention in other country’s conflicts in an extremely interesting topic to consider. Last semester I took a class that discussed just this, however it focused on the Vietnam War and the impact of the media on the American peoples’ perceptions on intervention. In general, many people know that intervention in Vietnam was not very favorable to the American people at the time. Americans believed that the U.S. army was performing human rights violations, or that they just didn’t have the right to interfere in a country that didn’t want our help. However, I think it is interesting that all of these opinions that Americans form regarding U.S. intervention are based off of the media; since the American people cannot see these events first-hand, I think that this gives the media a lot of power in determining the attitude of the American people regarding intervention.

            One specific aspect of this issue that is important to consider are the actual events on which the media is reporting. In the class that I took we learned about the tension between the U.S government and the media. For example, while multiple human rights violated occurred in Vietnam, many of them were not accurately investigated or reported on because the government and army did not want to disclose all of the information of the event. Many people may look at this in a negative light, claiming that the government should not be hiding things from the media, which is in turn hiding things from the American people. Others would claim that in order for the government and army to do their jobs to the best of their abilities, they cannot disclose everything that happens to insure optimal security for the people involved. While I am not sure which side of this argument I prefer, I do think that this incongruence between the government and the media affects the way the media reports U.S. intervention in other countries. Furthermore this goes on to affect the way the American people view intervention. Going one-step further, the opinions of the American people greatly affect the actions of the government, because of the fact that we live in a system where the government represents the people (and if the elected leaders do not represent the people accurately, the people will elect new leaders). This results in an interesting chain of influences: The media influences the people, the people influence the government, and the government influences the media.

            In addition to looking at the media’s role in Vietnam, we can also look at more recent instances where the U.S. in either considering intervening, or has already intervened in another country. For example, for class we read two very differing opinion on whether or not the U.S. should intervene in Syria. Since these were clearly opinion pieces this allows readers to look at them with a critical lens and still be able to form opinions for themselves. However, reporters can still write informative pieces and include their biased opinions, and this can cause a reader to form an opinion without acknowledging another side. Going back to the chain of influences, if the media is reporting on U.S. intervention in a biased manner, this can influence the people, which can in turn influence the actions of the government. Ultimately, I think that it is interesting to consider how much power the media has in shaping the public’s opinions, and therefore when we discuss U.S. intervention in other countries, we must be critical of the sources we are basing our opinions off of.

Humanitarian Intervention isn't Humanitarian

There is a fine line between human intervention and invasion (like the crusades) sometimes the western powers take it upon themselves to save people who neither feel it necessary nor want their presence. In general I think the US is a little too arrogant it in its involvement for me.

The US is not a global hegemon; it does not have the undeniable power over all other states in this world, which means it is not the herder and responsible for all of them either.

Sometimes, most times, a state wants to be the herder, democracy is something that was chosen by those in America a long time ago, and it did not fully develop until very recently. Democracy then is not democracy now at all. It came about with time and consideration and cultural shift, and, as much as I am sure we would like to make all other countries and democracies like us because it would definitely make IR easier and we also think it would ‘benefit’ them. That is neither our job nor our business.

Humanitarian intervention is tricky for me because I do not think it can ever be truly humanitarian. I do not think the spending of resources, be that man power, money, or time, can ever be given by a state to another state. For those who would bring up allies, that is when states have the most to lose and have the most to gain from proving themselves worthy to an ally. In cases of enmity, it is in best interests to see them crash and burn. I am a little more lenient about this idea of selfless serving when it comes to non-governmental organizations; I have more reason to believe, since they are (theoretically) not tied to political sides, that they do not have political ulterior motives. But I also don’t think that NGOs have or will ever have the expanse of resources to give and help as states do.

In cases like Iraq and Afghanistan, I am aware that there are a myriad of factors, most of which are above my head, however, some of it was that many believed the citizens there were living under severe oppression from the ruling parties. But, when America says something like ‘we will bring you democracy’ others may hear ‘we are bringing you sin’. Democracy cannot and is not the right answer all the time.

It is not a state’s concern to change people, especially if you need to convince them of that change. We cannot be missionaries for democracy. For this reason I feel that humanitarian intervention should be used, at most, sparingly. It should quite normally be avoided. The same way parents stop bailing out their children at a certain point in time, states cannot continually intervene in other states. The same way it is inappropriate for a peer to keep giving test answers to another, it is inappropriate for states to try and build other states governments. Except my example is extremely reductionistic, not only are the test answers old and outdated (from when democracy was first established in America) but there are thousands more variables that are specific to each state which cannot simply fit nicely into  a formula that always has the same answer: democracy.

Overall, my biggest problem is with the name; ‘humanitarian’ intervention. As discussion in class, there are so many factors, economic gain, potential threat, existing investment, peer pressure, that go into the decision that it is unfair to call it humanitarian. At the scale of the state relationships, there can be no truly humanitarian intervention. 

Crisis in Syria

Crisis in Syria

Our current actions in Syria have been the most appropriate actions to take. The United States upheld international norms by getting rid of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons while ultimately letting the Syrian people decide their own destiny. A stronger response to arm the rebels would have only strengthened Islamic State in Iraq and Syria while no response at all would have weakened the international communities’ commitment to ban the use of chemical weapons.  

Many voices in Congress are criticizing President Obama for arming the Syrian rebels to defeat Assad, they claim the conflict would have already been over if we had intervened. Under the guise of humanitarian intervention they say we must act. The problem with this logic is that we would have ultimately been harming the international community more than we would have helping, by arming ISIS. If we look at the current rebel groups in Syria the most powerful by far is ISIS. At the time when we were considering arming the rebels we did not even know how powerful ISIS was. We had no clue who the moderate rebels truly were and we would have armed any group that said they were against Assad. While claims have been made to the contrary that we could have discerned who the moderate rebels were I find this very implausible and still harmful even if it was true. So let’s say we could magically discern who the moderates were there would still be so many terrible consequences. If they were successful in toppling Assad regime ISIS would have an easy power vacuum to take control of most of Syria, if they were unsuccessful these groups would eventually turn to ISIS for help and share the arms we gave them. The only action the U.S could and did take was to stop the Syrian regime’s’ use of chemical weapons.

International norms are only as strong as our ability to enforce them. If we would have let Assad continue to use chemical weapons without repercussions, it would incentives other countries to use chemical weapons because they would know that they would not be punished.. A clear bright line was presented to Assad, if the Syrian military used any chemical weapons the U.S would have to intervene in the conflict. When Assad did not head our warning we enforced our threat and made sure that U.N inspection and dismantling teams could enter Syria and dispose of the chemical weapons. To date Assad’s entire chemical weapons stockpile have been or is on schedule to be dismantled. We have proven that there are consequences to using chemical weapons and that they will not be tolerated.

The U.S was in a tricky position in regards to its policy in Syria. We were/are a war weary country and did not want to start another war but could not allow the human rights abuses that occurred in Syria. We ultimately made the right decision by only dismantling Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons, as any other decision would have led to horrible consequences in the future. We could not know what would happen if we would have armed the Syrian rebels though most likely we would have only made ISIS stronger. While Obama would be criticized for whatever decision he made, in the end he did not collapse to pressure and made the correct call on U.S policy towards Syria.