« Liberation Theology: What Happened in Latin America? Part VI | Home | Liberation Theology: What Happened in Latin America? Part VII »

American Foreign Policy: Time for a Change? Part VII

By jbcobb | June 30, 2011

Nation Building and Spreading Democracy

One of the most effective and oft used arguments for American intervention abroad is that the United States, or any other democratic state, can enable autocratic or failed regimes to change and adopt democratic institutions.  The long run effect of such involvement, so the argument goes, is a more stable and peaceful government which allows greater involvement of all sectors of the nation’s society, and thus creates a more stable and peaceful global state of affairs.  This has been a staple of presidential aspiration in America since Theodore Roosevelt’s administration at the turn of the 20^th century.

It seems plausible that such an argument can only be accepted at face value if American interventions of the past have successfully provided the intended results.  Christopher Coyne, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hampden Sydney College, and Steve Davies, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of History and Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University, (2007) conducted a survey of twenty-six countries which the United States has occupied in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, beginning with the occupation of Cuba from 1898-1902, and ending with the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1996-2002 (pp. 33-37).  The results are less than favorable for the support of American occupation as a method of spreading democracy.

Coyne and Davies used the Polity Index IV as a determination of the levels of democratization.  The scale ranges from fully democratic (10) to fully autocratic (-10), and the researches required a score of only +4, one point higher than Iran received in 2003, to be considered a success (Coyne & Davies, 2007, pp. 24-35).  Even with this low benchmark for success, Coyne and Davies (2007) concluded:

There is no clear indication of what a “good” success rate might be, but the United States has achieved a 28 percent success rate for reconstructions that ended at least ten year       (SIC) ago, a 39 percent success rate for reconstructions that ended at least fifteen years ago, and a 36 percent success rate for those that ended at least twenty years ago.  The presumptive failures outnumber the successes, suggesting that “global public goods” in    the form of stable political institutions cannot reliably be exported via military         occupation”.  (p. 37)

The statistics don’t favor the continued intervention in foreign lands, even for altruistic purposes.  These economists hearken back to Adam Smith, stating that the result of military intervention “is a failure on its own terms and which imposes costs upon groups outside the magic circle greater than any putative benefits (Coyne & Davies, 2007, p. 38).

In a related study on the effectiveness of nationality by Great Britain and the United States since the middle of the 19^th century, James L. Payne (2006) examined the success or failure of democracies in colonies and foreign countries in which the explicit goal of the occupying state was nation building and the creation of democracy.  Once again, as was the case for the study of military interventions, Payne (2006) does not require levels of democracy comparable to Great Britain or the United States, but simply that the occupied countries held democratic elections, and did not descend into violence or civil war, and avoided massive corruption in election cycles after the departure of the occupying force (pp. 602-605).

The results of the analysis from Payne were no more favorable for the success of nation building than they were in the analysis of Coyne and Davies, even given occupying forces’ explicit intent to nurture democracy.  Payne (2006) described the results of his study, which included American involvement from the Philippines and Cuba in 1898 to Haiti in 1996, as well as British missions during the same period, 51 in total, thusly:

Overall, the results indicate that the military intervention left behind a democracy in fourteen cases, or 27 percent of the time.  Our first conclusion, then, is that nation building by force is generally unsuccessful.  A president who went around the world invading countries in order to make them democratic would probably fail most of the time. (p. 605)

Therefore, given the conclusions of these three researchers, further American occupation, intervention, and nation building exercises are generally doomed to failure, and represent a tremendous expenditure of life and money for little measurable reward.

Military intervention for humanitarian reasons is a more difficult proposition upon which to reach a logical conclusion, in the positive or negative, as most research has been inconclusive, primarily due to moral and legal ambiguities.  While nobody can argue against the prevention of wholesale slaughter, there can be arguments made that military intervention may ultimately prove to be even more lethal.  There simply has been no effective and widely accepted method for making the correct determination in all cases.

But, it should be easily accepted that military intervention is not always the answer to crises.  Thomas McShane (2002) argues that NATO intervention in Kosovo was less than successful (p. 69).  He suggests that “the air war may have helped to create the very refugee flow it was designed to prevent.  Most sources reporting on conditions in Kosovo after the entry of NATO and Russian forces indicate that the reports of death and destruction which triggered the intervention in the first place had been exaggerated” (McShane, 2002, p. 69).  Carola Weil (2001) identified another problem with this type of intervention, claiming that “slippery slope” problem is when humanitarian interventions turn into invasions or blur the lines between relief and political-military objectives, as in Kosovo” (p. 100).  Compelling arguments can be made on both sides of the Kosovo intervention, as in many others.  However, McShane (2002) comes to a foolproof conclusion: “every outbreak does not cry out for international intervention.  Some problems will resolve themselves; other problems may be resolved by regional powers or regional organizations.  Unless international stability is seriously threatened, mobilizing the international community and its resources might be counterproductive” (p. 69).  This seems like sage advice in a complicated world, but it is counter-intuitive to a great many American foreign policy wonks.

In order for the United States to effectively conduct the war on terror, or to prepare for overseas contingencies, there must be reliable military bases from which to operate.  In the areas which concern America at the moment, those conducive to or actively witnessing the growth of terrorist organizations, there are few openly democratic countries from which to choose.  Therefore, the United States military has found it necessary to build new bases in states with autocratic regimes and populaces which are sometimes hostile to American troops.  The result of such cooperation can prove costly, in both the lives of American troops and in an increased expenditure for the security of these bases.

Alexander Cooley, of Columbia University, (2005) suggests that recent examples of problems in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, autocratic and oppressive regimes, will be representative of future problems, and that, “the governments of these countries will label both extreme and democratic opposition groups as regional security threats and embroil the United States in domestic political disputes and low-intensity clashes in which it has no compelling interest” (pp. 79-84).  The fact that America spends millions of dollars constructing bases which are politically destabilizing elements to regimes which are already in possibly precarious situations in order to carry out operations in other states which are either failed or autocratic states, and which have little chance of democratic transformation, is a convincing argument that serious analysis should be focused on military spending in many regions of the world.  Michael Boyle (2008) offers alternatives to that spending, arguing that “Preserving access to the “global commons” and maintaining the technological capability to project power over distances is sufficient for preserving US freedom of action” (p. 208).

Conclusion

The United States of America is more than $14 trillion in debt.  There is little hope of witnessing a balanced budget in the next five to ten years.  Part of that problem is a bloated military budget which is required to support overseas bases in scores of countries, hundreds of ships in every sea, and the waging of wars in Afghanistan and Libya, and any leftover violence in Iraq.  All of this spent money is in addition to a myriad of operations to defeat terrorism in dozens of locales around the globe.  The money seems less than well spent, when you consider that Iraq and Afghanistan will more than likely be teetering on the edge of collapse for the foreseeable future, Libya is a stalemate, our overseas excursions are continuing to incur the wrath of zealots and murderers, and the country continues to tread water economically while the debt ceilings continue to be shattered.

Even if intervention in all four corners of the globe were proven to be a net plus, it is difficult to imagine that the current level of operations, or anything close to it, can continue, unless money falls out of the American sky.  It seems very likely that either foreign policy will be changed by reasonable people with rational ideas, or those operations will be shut down out of necessity at some not so distant point in the future.  But, the American economy has proven resilient in the past, and maybe it will again.  However, should that recovery continue to support an overseas effort which should be shouldered by others?  No.

References

Belasco, A. (2011). The cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Global War on Terror operations since 9/11. Congressional Research Service.  Retrieved from        http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

bin Laden, O. (2002, November 24). Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America. The Guardian.   Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

Boyle, M. J. (2008). The war on terror in American grand strategy. International Affairs, 84(2), 191-209.

Carr, M. (2010). Slouching towards dystopia: the new military futurism. Race & Class, 51(3),   13-32.

Chemerinsky, E. (2005). Civil liberties and the war on terrorism.  Washburn Law Journal, 45(1),        1-19.

Cooley, A. (2005). Base politics: redeploying U.S. troops. Foreign Affairs, 84(6), 79-92.

Coyne, C. J., & Davies, S. (2007). Empire: public goods and bads. Econ Journal Watch, 4(1), 3-       45.

Dellapenna, J. W. (2008). Presidential authority and the war on terror.  Villanova School of Law Working Paper Series.  Retrieved from http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=villanovalwps

Desch, M. C. (2008). America’s liberal illiberalism: the ideological origins of overreaction in U.S. foreign policy. International Security, 32(3), 7-43.

Dunn, D. H. (2005).  Isolationism revisited: seven persistent myths in the contemporary American foreign policy debate. Review of International Studies, 31, 237-263.

Eisenhower, D. D., (1960). Retrieved from http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm

Elden, S. (2007). Terror and territory. Antipode, 39(5), 821-845.

Gold, D. (2007). Evaluating the costs and benefits of the US war on terror. Retrieved from http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/6932/1/MPRA_paper_6932.pdf

Johnson, C. (2000). Blowback: The costs and consequences of American empire. New York:  Holt Paperbacks.

Johnson, C. (2004). The sorrows of empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic.  New York: Holt Paperbacks.

Kull, S. (2010, June 7). Muslims and America: internalizing the clash of civilizations. World Public Opinion.  Retrieved from     http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/663.php

Lobel, J. (2005). Civil liberties and the war on terrorism. In T. E. Baker & J. F. Stack, Jr. (Eds.), At war with civil rights and civil liberties (25-48). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.  Retrieved from             http://chapters.rowmanlittlefield.com/07/425/0742535983ch2.pdf

McShane, T. W. (2002). Blame it on the Romans: Pax Americana and the rule of law.   Parameters, Summer 2002, 57-72.

Meernick, J., & Oldmixon, E. (2004).  Internationalism in Congress. Political Research Quarterly, 57(3), 451-465.

Niday, J. A. (2008). The war against terror as war against the constitution. Canadian Review of  American Studies, 38(1), 101-117.

Pape, R. A. (2009). First draft of history: empire falls. The National Interest, January/February 2009, 21-34.

Payne, J. L. (2006). Does nation building work? The Independent Review, 10(4), 599-610.

Payne, J. L. (2009). Making the world safe for muddle: the meaning of democracy in American foreign policy. The Independent Review, 13(4), 601-610.

Pew Research Center. (2010).  Retrieved from: http://pewglobal.org/files/2010/06/Pew-Global- Attitudes-Spring-2010-Report-EMBARGOED.pdf

Pham, J. P. (2008). What is in the national interest: Hans Morgenthau’s realist vision and American foreign policy. American foreign policy interests, 30, 256-265.

Walker, T. C. (2008). Two faces of liberalism: Kant, Paine, and the question of intervention.  International Studies Quarterly, 52, 449-468.

Weil, C. (2001). The protection-neutrality dilemma in humanitarian emergencies: why the need   for military intervention? International Migration Review, 35(1), 79-116.

Zalman, A., & Clarke, J. (2009). The global war on terror: a narrative in need of a rewrite. Ethics         & International Affairs, 23(2), 101-113.

Topics: Foreign Policy, International Relations, Diplomacy, and Wars, The White House | No Comments »

Comments