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American Foreign Policy: Time for a Change? Part VI
By jbcobb | June 16, 2011
The Effectiveness of the War on Terror
The argument for a great deal of the military adventurism and foreign expenditure in recent years is that it is necessary for America to expend large amounts of wealth and human capital in foreign lands to restructure societies into more liberal democratic regimes to remove the disaffection and hopelessness which makes these failing states breeding grounds for terrorist organizations. But, sometimes those interventions have unintended consequences, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States sought to contain possible terrorists, but the intervention arguably left the borders more unenforceable than before (Elder, 2007, p. 829). But, even Barak Obama, who campaigned on a policy to extract troops from Iraq, has supported increased troop levels in Afghanistan and enjoined a third struggle with a dictatorial Muslim regime, purportedly in support of rebels fighting for greater freedom. As Zalman and Clarke (2009) point out, “liberal commentators are expressing concern – and conservatives expressing satisfaction – that despite his initial moves Obama is basically adhering to Bush-era policies” (p. 102). His methods of foreign involvement might be slightly different, but liberals and conservatives alike seek to use American money, troops, and influence for regime change to quell the spread of an existential threat to the American way of life.
Are terrorist networks a threat on the same order as communism in the 20th century, which can arguably be said to have been miscalculated or oversold? While terrorists infamously murdered more than 3,000 innocent people in coordinated attacks on the United States in 2001, some analysts have made the argument that the few remarkable, and admittedly horrific, events are insufficient reasons for the magnitude of expansion of missions and spending abroad, and the corresponding negative effects on civil liberties at home which have taken place.
To compare the war against al-Qaida to the threat from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the last existential threat to the nation, seems to be quite a stretch of logic. Michael C. Desch (2008), the Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Politics of Texas A&M University, explains that the USSR truly possessed the ability to destroy every living being on earth, while the most reasonable worst-case scenarios are that al-Qaida might acquire one or two crude radiological “dirty bombs”. Moreover, the death toll from the global network of the late Osama bin Ladin has been relatively small compared to other significant conflicts in American history (p. 40). While terrorist organizations are certainly deadly, and their ability to attack American interests and innocent people needs to ameliorated through an effective national security strategy, the threat needs to be realistically assessed. Desch (2008) effectively puts this ongoing struggle into perspective:
Fewer people have been killed since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in the war against al-Qaida as a percentage of the population (0.0009), than the American Civil War (1.78), World War II (0.29), or even Vietnam (0.03). Indeed, terrorism ranks very low as a cause of death among Americans in the period from 1995 to 2005 (3,147), well behind car accidents (254,419), workplace injuries (59,730), influenza (19,415), and even complications from hernias (16,742)”. (p. 40)
While his comparisons may not be persuasive to those who recognize that threats against American interests have only become a significant concern over the last two decades, it is interesting to note the impact that one successful plot had on the entire national security structure and on the domestic civil liberties of the global superpower.
David Gold (2007) claimed that “There have been attempts to identify progress with respect to the effectiveness of specific US actions…These evaluations are necessarily qualitative but it is hard to see how these evaluations would yield a benefit cost ratio greater than one” (p. 8). This would mean a lack of return on investment, which would probably have zero effect in real terms. But, what would the effect of a less intrusive and forceful foreign policy have on the threat to American interests form global terrorist organizations? While Desch (2008, p. 42) does not recommend complete withdrawal of all resources in the present struggle, and maintains that a healthy engagement is necessary, he argues that an approach based on realist international relations theory, as opposed to the liberal approach of neoconservatism and American liberalism, would result in both the reduction of deployed assets and the levels of threat. This assumption is based on the belief that American hegemony, and the imperial impulse to remake the rest of the world in its image, is counter-productive and dangerous. Thomas Walker (2008) explains the Kant-Paine dilemma of liberalism:
All liberals share a broad faith that democracies will remain at peace with one another and free trade will contribute to that peace. Liberals also share a general mistrust of military spending as a means to achieve security. While liberals agree that a democratic world will be a more peaceful world, they disagree over marshalling military force to achieve this end” (p. 465).
Desch (2008) argues that only foreign policy realists, understanding the anarchical structure of international relations, can bring constraint to imperialist overreach, because “They fear that as the United States grasps for the mantle of world domination, it will generate opposition around the world, resulting in greater international tension and conflict” (p. 41).
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