The simple reason America can’t stop doing stupid things

Defenders of US “global leadership” sometimes concede that Washington has overextended itself, pursued foolish policies, failed to achieve its stated foreign policy aims, and violated its avowed political principles. They see such actions as regrettable aberrations, however, and believe the United States will learn from these (rare) mistakes and act more wisely in the future.

Ten years ago, for example, political scientists Stephen Brooks, John Ikenberry and William Wohlforth acknowledged that the Iraq War was a mistake but insisted that their preferred policy of “deep engagement” was still the right option for US grand strategy. In their view, all the US had to do to preserve a benign world order was maintain its existing commitments and not invade Iraq again. As former US president Barack Obama liked to say, we just need to stop doing “stupid shit”.

George Packer’s recent defence of US power in The Atlantic is the latest version of this well-worn line of argument. Packer opens his essay with a revealingly false comparison, claiming that Americans “overdo our foreign crusades, and then we overdo our retrenchments, never pausing in between, where an ordinary country would try to reach a fine balance”.

But a country that still has more than 700 military installations worldwide; carrier battle groups in most of the world’s oceans; formal alliances with dozens of countries; and that is currently waging a proxy war against Russia, an economic war against China, counterterrorism operations in Africa, along with an open-ended effort to weaken and someday topple the governments in Iran, Cuba, North Korea, etc, can hardly be accused of excessive “retrenchment”. Packer’s idea of that “fine balance” — a foreign policy that is not too hot, not too cold, but just right — would still have the US tackling ambitious objectives in nearly every corner of the world.

Unfortunately, Packer and other defenders of US primacy underestimate how hard it is for a powerful liberal country like the US to limit its foreign policy ambitions. I like the US’ liberal values as much as anyone, but the combination of liberal values and vast power makes it nearly inevitable that the US will try to do too much rather than too little.

If Packer favours a fine balance, he needs to worry more about directing the interventionist impulse and less about those who are trying to restrain it.

Why so hard for the US to act with restraint?

The first problem is liberalism itself. Liberalism begins with the claim that all human beings possess certain natural rights (e.g. “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”). For liberals, the core political challenge is to create political institutions strong enough to protect us from each other but not so strong or unchecked as to deprive us of these rights.

However imperfectly, liberal states accomplish this balancing act by dividing political power; holding leaders accountable through elections; enshrining the rule of law; protecting freedom of thought, speech, and association; emphasising norms of tolerance. For true liberals, therefore, the only legitimate governments are those that possess these features and use them to safeguard each citizen’s natural rights.

But take note: because these principles begin with the claim that all human beings possess identical rights, liberalism cannot be confined to a single state or even a subset of humanity and remain consistent with its own premises. No genuine liberal can declare that Americans, Danes, Australians, Spaniards or South Koreans are entitled to these rights but people who happen to live in Belarus, Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, the West Bank and any number of other places are not.

For this reason, liberal states are strongly inclined to what John Mearsheimer terms the “crusader impulse” — the desire to spread liberal principles as far as their power permits. The same problem bedevils other universalist ideologies, by the way, whether in the form of Marxism-Leninism or the various religious movements that believe it is their duty to bring all humans under the sway of a particular faith.

When a country and its leaders genuinely believe that their ideals offer the only proper formula for organising and governing society, they will try to convince or compel others to embrace them. At a minimum, doing so will guarantee friction with those who have a different view.

Second, the US finds it hard to act with restraint because it possesses a remarkable amount of power. As former US senator Richard B Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and no dove, put it back in the 1960s: “[I]f it is easy for us to go anywhere and do anything, we will always be going somewhere and doing something.”

When a problem arises nearly anywhere in the world, there is always something the US could try to do about it; weaker states do not have the same latitude and thus do not face the same temptations. New Zealand is a healthy liberal democracy with many admirable qualities, but nobody expects the Kiwis to take the lead in dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program, or Chinese incursions in the South China Sea.

By contrast, whoever sits in the Oval Office commands a bevy of options whenever trouble arises or an opportunity beckons. A president can impose sanctions, order a blockade, threaten the use of force (or use it directly), and any number of other actions, and almost always without placing the US at serious risk (at least in the short term).

Under these circumstances, resisting the temptation to act will be extremely difficult, especially when a chorus of critics stands ready to denounce any act of restraint as a failure of will, an act of appeasement, or a fatal blow to US credibility.

Should the US just mind its own business? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.