You cannot examine the bad interventions in isolation. The US is the core of a “Pax Democrática” coalition. Its military power keep the ocean open, and mostly repress conquest wars. If you make a list of “interventions” you get a terribly biased picture. American interventions are like police shooting: what happens when structural deterrence fails!
When you look at the American Hegemony as a system, then you can agree with Lincoln: America, the last best hope of Mankind.
The Iraq War is literally like a BLM fantasy of a police shooting. Cop shows up at some guys house without a warrant. Demands to search the place. Person refuses but is doing nothing dangerous. Cops shoot him cold in the head and then wreck the place.
If you're going to be the global policemen, you're going to have to take justified actions. What "deterrence" failed in that case? None.
And is "deterrence" the metric all the time? Seems to me that escalation begets escalation too. Are we convinced that "deterrence" is the only thing keeping it all together. Have you ever considered that people just want to be left alone by default?
You mean the Irak that did invade Kuwait and was on permanent breach of its postwar treaty obligations? The country that Clinton had to bomb once every two years? Let’s be clear, American boots are too expensive for that ground, but the entire post war of the I Gulf War was a period of escalation and sanctions evasion. And those sanctions were immaculately legitimate.
The Gulf War proved that the American military and allies could swiftly resolve a territorial dispute in the Middle East. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars proved, again, that all the military power in the world can not ensure a people will choose to be governed by an honest government and live according to the ideals of western liberalism.
The sin of the Iraq and Afghan Wars is the American "leaders" told the lie that this time it would be different. No, it will always be the same. America can setup political stooges in other countries and then watch political instability create revolution and war. Or America can take out the leaders they don't like and watch some other despot rise to power.
But nation building reaps such fantastic financial prizes to American corporations and it feeds the hubris of American policy makers, that nation building is what the politicians are persuaded to support.
Yesterday I met a gentleman at the swimming pool who lost his home in the hurricane in Puerto Rico some years ago and has settled here 2000+ miles away. I asked if he would like to return and he said that his "heart" is there (I mean, he lived on the beach in P.R. - it was probably beautiful) but that he feels that the situation there will never be fixed; here, he has access to the VA and one son, who has a family, is sometimes stationed here, though not at the moment. I admit I haven't followed news of Puerto Rico and perhaps imagined that it was "fixed" by now but I trust his opinion.
I said something about how the US should maybe take more direct paternalistic control of P.R. (I know nothing about this but was just trying to make conversation). I then thought maybe that sounded rude and was getting ready to walk it back - but he readily concurred, and said something sadly about how the Transportation Secretary had come one time ...
I then thought about the many things Americans can no longer seem to do, in America, and how unfortunate that this hurricane happened while we were on our downswing.
And in fact this colors my view of this debate - a feeling that whatever America does now abroad, will be flawed because of our weakness - and this inevitably muddies the issue.
I never has considered that people want to be alone by default.
By default the strong have not incentives to leave alone those who are weak. The relative benignity of America is the international projection of its bourgeoise character. And bourgeois republics are not the norm, but the exception.
When they’re being invaded they tend to shame us into acting as their security detail. Libertarians want to be left alone, but most countries don’t, as they live in much tougher neighborhoods than us. Think the Taiwanese, the Ukrainians, the Kuwaitis, the Bosnians, and S. Korea prefer(red) to be left alone? I can ramble off examples all day.
Of course not. They were far more extractive, and directly rule. The American Hegemony is a far more progressive system that the European imperialisms.
At what cost? Permanent deployment in a large empire. You need a massive amount of cheap labour to sustain that. What America does with tiny losses and expenditure is incredible.
And Americans rule without understanding and without involvement; nothing like Richard Burton or other eminent Victorians able to understand alien cultures.
Of course, the Americans are a disaster for direct intervention, but mostly avoid it.
I don't know if that's correct. My impression was the British Navy was the real key to maintaining the empire, and it required significant capital investment in shipbuilding, but the labor costs, once a ship was built, were relatively low. I don't know how that would compare in terms of % of GDP to the Pentagon or even if that's an appropriate measure, but I have a hard time seeing our DoD as a model of efficiency and high ROI, as you portray. Maybe that's just my cynicism talking, though.
One of the failure modes of progressivism, I think, is to unreflectively side with the weaker party in any conflict, big or small. I will spare you my speculations on why this is. Anyway, post WWII, the US was always the stronger party, and Chomsky spent his entire life stuck in this failure mode.
This comes from David & Goliath, plus the reality that most bullies are bigger and more aggressive than avg folk. The granting of moral superiority to the weak is wrong when the weaker are actually less moral.
I've noticed that when people don't want to own the Ukraine war they will drown on and on about whatever problems they feel Russia has. I got news, Ukraine has even more problems.
Most of the world is a shithole. It's full of bad people and bad leaders and bad situations. The North Vietnamese were bad. The South Vietnamese government was bad too. Saddam was bad. The people Saddam were fighting are bad. Assad and Qadaffi are bad. The people they were fighting are bad. The Taliban was bad. The people we put in place of the Taliban were bad. Etc Etc.
Taking a side in the Ukraine/Russia war is like taking a side in the Iran/Iraq war. There are no good guys. The war itself is the bad guy, and I don't think it takes much to show the US played its part in starting it and keeping it going.
Grotesque as it is, at least a guy Lindsay Graham admits that killing as many Slavs as possible is the goal of the war, the way Dick Cheney used to talk about the Iran/Iraq war. If that's your goal at least own it. Don't pretend you're doing it on behalf of anyones interest.
These people that support Ukraine like Noah are probably going to get us in a shooting war with China too for many of the same dumb reasons, and then it won't be some Slavs on the other side of the world dying for your amusement but your own sons and daughters. I'm sure I will be told then how bad China is and how not wanting to start a war with them means I want to move to China.
I don't disagree exactly but I think this supposedly eyes-wide-open attitude belies a newish tendency on the right to downplay just how bad a guy Saddam was.
Similarly, with Ukraine, it's unbelievable what the Soviets did to Ukraine and I think it's amazing we acknowledge longlasting, sometimes silly-seeming historical grievances in the world and somehow expect Ukraine to have forgotten what happened to them less than a hundred years ago. I haven't heard anyone suggest that that's why they are fighting now, and I suppose it's not; but I would never have expected peace to be the default there, with or without America. Putin, to me, was the one playing with matches.
I suppose that depends on one's definition of shithole but to me shithole is worse than "bad."
Harari argues that for most of history, the agricultural revolution made most people worse off. They worked longer, tedious, backbreaking hours than their hunter gatherer ancestors and got less for it. Maybe most people still work harder but I question the part about getting less for it. Extreme poverty and poverty rates are way down. So are food shortages.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying most of the world is comparable to the US. Far from it. Just that I wouldn't put most of the world in shithole territory.
1) We invaded Iraq because we wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East.
2) We invaded Iraq because GWB thought it would make good politics to get re-elected as a war president.
3) We invaded Iraq to make some defense contractors rich.
All of those can be true, and they aren't even including some of the worst reasons (to find WMD we knew didn't exist, etc).
It seems to me you asking that I only give #1 credence, even though there is a lot of evidence for the others. What's worse, as you note, #1 as an intention doesn't even guarantee #1 as a result.
My friend who served in Iraq certainly can give me a lot of stories that fall into the #2 and #3 camps.
We could do the same with lots and lots of interventions.
"It seems to me you asking that I only give #1 credence, even though there is a lot of evidence for the others."
I don't see that in what Kling wrote. The closest is the following, "But I believe that American foreign policy is well-intentioned.” but even that in no way suggest you should ignore 2 or 3, though I personally believe they are small or even negligible as contributors to deciding on war. Also, "bring democracy" is a bit of a strawman. I think the goal was improved stability.
I tend to agree the odds were greatly against improved stability. I thought that the first week of the war. It's probably safe to say stability didn't improve but does that outcome mean the odds were against it? Do we know that the no-go alternative wouldn't have deteriorated into something even worse?
Be that as it may, it does not change what I said about Kling's words or the contribution of 1, 2, and 3 to going to war.
There can be multiple motivations at work. We have a way of developing strong moral justification for what is in our interest. In the case of foreign policy, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the "idealist" approach may often serve as cover for grifter interests. Witness how pro-interventionist NGO's (for example, ISW, the Institute for the Study of War) are funded by defense contractors. This is not to say the moral justification for some particular intervention is therefore not valid, only to point out our motivations are complex and often not fully transparent to ourselves.
The people running our military industrial complex now are the bad guys. “We The People” aren’t bad by definition, though people in other countries may not be able to make that distinction at this point.
"I believe that American foreign policy is well-intentioned... We are not out to conquer an empire."
A few years ago I worked with a CIA employee who used our firm as a cover. I don't know the specifics of his work other than that he was involved with arming Syrian rebels.
We had a few discussions about American foreign policy. I told him I'd stopped believing that our fp establishment actually cares about self-determination. One example I gave was US encouragement of the 2014 Maidan coup against Ukraine's elected president. I also criticized US destabilization of Syria, arguing that it wasn't in the interests of American citizens to promote civil war in that country.
His response was interesting because he didn't disagree with my description of events in these countries, nor did he defend American policy by appealing to "human rights" or other good intentions. Instead he bluntly argued that US policy should promote American "empire." He said this explicitly. He believes there are three global empires (US, China, Russia), and that our actions in Ukr and Syria are correct because we need to drive back our Russian competitor in these regions. He made nothing like a moral argument for our behavior because he saw it purely as a matter of power politics.
Maybe he's an unusual case in the agency, but I tend to doubt it.
What gets lost in that explanation is the best interest of the other country. As a citizen of one of those countries, do you think you'd be better off in the US, Russian, or Chinese "empire"?
If you want to argue that the fight does more harm to that citizen than being within the Chinese or Russian empire, I'm open to that discussion. Kling indicated something similar too.
It's not clear that a war was necessary to keep Ukraine out of the Russian empire. Ukraine was a separate country. It had elections. If Ukraine hadn't had a US backed revolution, another election would have happened within a short time period.
Ukraines main problem was that electing people from Western Ukraine wasn't having any better effect on the country then people from Eastern Ukraine. The Orange Revolution failed. Maiden failed.
Ukraine had 1/3 the GDP/capita of Russia, being more like Russia would have been an improvement.
Now its people are under martial law, are conscripted against their will, and can't hold elections. When all they had to do was wait till the next election if they wanted a different trade deal.
I think the correct view on Ukraine is that NatSec wanted a war and Ukranians were the useful patsies that could be duped into bringing it about. Now they are trapped.
Your view is not correct. US involvement in Ukraine pre-war has been hugely overestimated. The idea that the events of 2014 were a US-supported coup is a myth. US policy towards Ukraine has been random, declarations and statements, but lacking a clear strategic view. If you write "Ukraine had 1/3 the GDP per capita of Russia; being more like Russia would have been an improvement," you are absolutely naive. Societies do not act this way. Ukraine is bordered on one side by Russia and on the other side by the European Union. Given the choice between being more like Russia or being more like Europe, the choice is obvious, even for Ukrainians.
During the last 30 years, Ukrainian society has gradually become more Western, culturally, mentally, and ideologically. This shift hasn't been driven by pressure from the West or Europe but by natural causes: low-cost airlines between Ukraine and Europe, Ukrainian migrants working in Germany and sharing their experiences of European life, Hollywood films, German cars, Swedish furniture, English pop music, and more. The West and Europe have a huge soft-power advantage over Russia. Europe does not have to beg others to join the European Union; there is a queue of countries wanting to join. Russia created its own economic and security organization (EU-like), but it is losing members because Russia has little to offer.
Events on the ground are a clear example. The West does not even have to give Ukraine anything, and Ukraine (or at least most of Ukrainian society) wants to be like the West. For instance, the European Union only decided in 2024 that they will start negotiation process with Ukraine. Over the last 20-25 years, there have been just talk—no offers, no carrots—yet Ukraine still wants to be part of the EU. As shown in 2014 and 2022, Russia has to invade and coerce Ukraine if it wants something from Ukraine. The EU does nothing, it just exists, and countries still want to join.
Tis gradual westernization of Ukrainian society has also influenced Ukrainian politicians and political systems. So, on one side, Ukraine has become more and more Western, while Russia, at the same time, has become more and more authoritarian and identitarian. Conflict between Ukraine and Russia was inevitable.
Saying something is "a myth" doesn't make it a myth. The facts of 2014-2015 are what they are.
"US policy towards Ukraine has been random, declarations and statements, but lacking a clear strategic view."
Obviously, this could apply to US policy all over the world. In truth there is no "US policy", but factions in the US that want different things and often act on their own.
In general I blame NATSEC for Ukraine and not "America". I believe that if Americans could hold a referendum on Ukraine our involvement would end.
"Given the choice between being more like Russia or being more like Europe, the choice is obvious, even for Ukrainians."
I take a very different view of "what the Ukranians can be like". I'm a eugenicist. I think Slavs are genetically inferior to European whites. I think these societies will always be poorer and more corrupt then Europe. When you add in the trauma these places suffered over the last century and since 1991, I just don't have any hopes for Ukraine becoming much of anything.
I have no doubt Ukranians want to be Europeans, but so do Pacific Islanders that hope they can build planes out of twigs. And so do some people in the Middle East were we have also wasted lots of blood and treasure trying to "westernize" them and running into the same problem (shitty genetics). We don't always get what we want.
The Polish regions that border Ukraine have GDP/capita similar to Russia, and they have the massive benefits of subsidy from the rest of Poland and EU membership. I see no reason that a country that has been through what Ukraine has would do better then that, and would probably do worse.
Western Ukranians got their shot from 2004-2010, and people elected Yanacovich in response. They had their shot from 2014-2022. Poroshenko ended his run in disgrace and Zelensky has an approval rating of 22% on right before the war started.
The problem isn't that Russia is keeping Ukraine down. The problem is that Ukraine is keeping Ukraine down. It's the same problem in say the Middle East. Changing the leadership doesn't change anything because the problem is the POPULATION just doesn't have the genetic chops.
The Russians and Ukranians are closer to "one people" genetically than Ukranians are to Germans. Russia is a pretty good barometer of what they might be able to accomplish if they got their shit together. It ain't much, but that's life. It's sure better then dying in the mud.
Joining the EU might allow Ukraine to become some parasitic welfare state that forever sucks Europe dry, but it won't fix Ukraine.
I think the tragedy of Maiden is that your average protestor (who wasn't a neo-nazi thug) really wanted was a EU passport to get the fuck out of Ukraine and leave it to rot. Now they are imprisoned in Ukraine and are going to get used as cannon fodder for a war they can't win. Seems like a big L compared to just waiting for the next election and voting out Yannavocich. But they are dumb Slavs so they make bad choices.
As far as the west is concerned, we ought not to be involved in the affairs of these shithole countries.
I prefer the honest isolationist's view: "There are countries far away of which we know little and people of whom we know nothing" over "sophisticated" takes about Ukraine, Russia, or Poland. If you do not know what happened in 2014 or in 2022, please do not lecture me. And do not talk about EU subsidies to Poland or whatever. People who do not know the EU think of it as some huge subsidy scheme. In reality, the EU's budget is around 170 billion euros, and the largest part of it goes to French and German farmers anyway. For comparison, Germany's state expenditure is 1.4 trillion euros, Poland's is 400 billion euros, and Finland's is 110 billion euros.
Poland has enjoyed one of the fastest growth rates in Europe, and although they may be Slavs, they will continue to grow fast—not because of EU subsidies (which are tiny).
By the way, I am not a eugenicist, but I have been many, many times to Russia, Ukraine, and Poland (including eastern Poland), and life is definitely more pleasant in Poland and Ukraine than in Russia. If you exclude Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a couple of other places, Russia is ugly, dirty, with a lot of garbage and mud, just unpleasant. In Ukraine (though I have not been in eastern Ukraine, so I'm talking about central, southern, and western parts) and obviously in Poland, you do not get a third-world vibe. The streets are clean, lawns are mowed, there is very little graffiti, public spaces are not covered with garbage—they are tidy, clean, and pleasant. I am well aware of GDP differences, but Russia, once again, is not much of a role model.
And by the way, I am not saying that the US should help Ukraine; I am just saying that the US did not cause 2014 and did not cause 2022. Americans' self-hatred mixed with grandiose mania (we are involved everywhere and have caused everything) really baffles me. Do not worry, the US did not cause it, and it is not the US's fault.
Poland has done well. Mostly in the capital and the parts that were part of the old German and AH empires. The regions bordering Ukraine are nothing impressive, and that is probably a better comparison for Ukraines potential.
Poles are not Slavs, they are Poles. They are genetically superior to Slavs, especially the further west you go. The Hajnal line is somewhere in Poland. The further east and south you go, the worse the people get.
If Ukraine gets admitted to the EU I have no doubt it will be a huge drain. That's the only way it's digging out of its mess, it's incapable of accomplishment on its own. I've seen the estimates of what "the west" is suppose to pony up to rebuild Ukraine if it "wins". One can only hope they lose and we are spared such a thing.
The role of NATSEC in 2014 and beyond is well documented, even in the NYTimes as I linked earlier. John McCain and Victoria Nuland were there in Maiden Square. I don't see the point in denying this.
If Ukraine wants to stand on its own two feet, it can stop asking us for handouts.
I have never walked around Eastern Europe. I go by the data I see. It doesn't paint a good picture of Ukraine. Before 2022, the opinion on Ukraine was Universally negative across the board. I don't think the facts changed because Ukraine got blown up.
"I am just saying that the US did not cause 2014 and did not cause 2022"
We'll never know, but it sure didn't help. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the Ukranian case had we never been involved.
How about you allow the Ukrainian people to leave Ukraine freely and then we will know what they really want. I’m not the one enslaving people against their will to die in the mud, you are.
The best outcome is peace. NatSec taking an L and being humiliated out of trying this nonsense again would be a plus.
"The best outcome is peace. NatSec taking an L and being humiliated out of trying this nonsense again would be a plus."
Unless things get significantly worse for Ukraine I'd say Russia has the L and that is the plus. It needs to be as clear as possible that invading other countries is bad for the invader.
The United States should demand that as a condition of support that Ukraine end conscription, allow its citizens to leave the country free of harassment, and hold elections. If it will not agree to these terms all support should be immediately cut off.
Pfui. To think that white Americans of all people have the gall to make that argument. They have left freely and ceded their cities, then their old suburbs, and then many of their newer suburbs to people you have literally called on Kling's old blog lumenproletariats who need someone to make them human. Should I conclude from this that white Americans did not really want the towns and cities and neighborhoods they had built and beautified with their own hands? Or perhaps if, like the beastly Oirish of South Boston, they had a mob - or dare I say an actual elected government - to force them into cooperate-cooperate equilibrium, they would have still had them?
Your "slave army" argument is also ridiculous. There are half a million heavily armed men in the country. The war's been going on for 2.5 years now. If they are as anarchic and hate it as much as you imply, why hasn't there been a single attempt to march on the capital? You may be sure that any such attempt would have been trumpeted by Russians to high heaven and you'd know about it. Putin called on Ukrainian military to make a coup on the 2nd or 3rd day of the invasion! But nothing going. Instead it was in Russia with its 3x higher GDP per capita (good to have oil fields gushing free money) that had a military coup come within an ace of success exactly a year ago last Sunday, and it only failed because Prigozhin was fundamentally a businessman eager to make deals rather than a warlord.
Why didn't the Italian people march on Rome rather than fight the 11th Battle of the Isonzo? Italy was not attacked. The people and the parliament opposed the war from the start. Entry was on the kings whim.
And yet they went over the top and died by the hundreds of thousands.
Why?
Well, punishments including long prison sentences and execution were what awaited those that didn't comply. These were increased throughout the war (as has been done in Ukraine) in order to get compliance.
The entire concept of conscription is based around the lack of choice and the punishment of dissent.
Perhaps there are times when conscription is called for, but its still slavery backed up by violence.
Prigozhin's coup failed because nobody rallied to support him, because nobody wanted him running Russia. You can't conquer Russia with 5,000 guys. If there were such widespread discontent it would have worked, or someone else would have tried it by now. His "loyal soldiers" all took contracts with the Russian MoD, in fact trying to stop them from doing that was why he launched a coup. Because nobody really was loyal to him, just to the dollar. Had they gotten to Moscow there would have been a slaughter at some point and he'd be dead.
In reality, Russia is mostly running a volunteer army. Call them poor mercenaries with few good life options if you wish, but most of them are there voluntarily. Perhaps they are making a bad life choice, perhaps they are killers for hire we should be revolted by. However, they don't need to be kidnapped off the street, they show up willingly.
Whites fled the cities because if they used vigilante justice to keep out the blacks the full force of the state would be used against them. Individuals and mobs can't take on the state. They could not get the votes to get the state to implement different policies in the cities.
At least they had elections as an option to change policy, Ukranians do not.
People can't refuse service without strong punishment and they can't vote to change that fact. As such, I have no clue what the revealed preference of Ukranians would be absent those incentives. I just know the Ukranian government is afraid to find out.
As others have expressed, it is juvenile to assign a single judgment to the actions of the American government. Whatever shared idealism Americans possessed in the past is largely missing today. Not only do the political parties disagree sharply on issues both large and small, but the government apparatus seems to operate independent of the politicians and the consent of the people. One can not logically claim "America" is anything when the culture and society is so bifurcated.
I think the appeasement of Cold War Communist aggression by 1960s Liberals was wrong. But today I think the unquestioned support for American Imperialism (ie being the World's policeman) is wrong. The problem with American foreign policy of today is it has become purely transactional. There are no ideals. Thus we have the American government simultaneously supporting Israel and opposing it. Supporting China and opposing it. This is not sane foreign policy! This is the behavior of middle school cliques!
I'm thinking through ways this stance of charity toward intentions and critique of outcomes applies not just to foreign policy but also other forms of elite decision making - public health, technocratic nudging, etc. Foreign policy by its nature tends to be framed as "our" actions whereas domestic policy tends to be "theirs," but it's all policy flowing through some group of elites - or do others see foreign policy as fundamentally different?
The best expression I know of the cynical view of US intervention in Central America is in Mario Vargas Llosa's novels _The Feast of the Goat_ and _Harsh Times_. It is all the more credible because Vargas Llosa is very much not a knee jerk anti American leftist.
I don't subscribe to Noah Smith's Substack as I regard him as a dishonest lefty (as compared to Bret Weinstein, for example), so I am unable to read the full post. However, I regard his (and your) use of Chomsky's 'foreign policy thought' as a frame of reference for criticizing the ongoing debate over US foreign policy as a classic example of a straw man. Sure, there has been a convergence of the right and the left in opposition to US foreign policy, especially in the wake of October 7th and Israel's response. However, opposition to a particular US foreign policy intervention can be principled even if it happens to come to the same conclusion as Chomsky's knee-jerk response to each and every US intervention. As loathsome as I find the leftist Chomsky-type view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict (or on the right, the Mearsheimer-Walt view of this conflict), that isn't going to dissuade me from agreeing that US policy with regard to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is both ill-intentioned and colossally stupid.
With regard to your last paragraph rejecting those on the left and the right who argue for the moral equivalence of the US and Russia, I want to bring your attention to Niall Ferguson's recent essay in the Free Press comparing the United States to the end-stage of the Soviet Union ("We're All Soviets Now"). I regard Niall Ferguson as one of those particularly annoying British neocons constantly egging on the US to expend its resources in disastrous military interventions, including most recently in Ukraine, so you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that it was him who authored this piece. Of course, for Ferguson the worry is that the pathologies of the US (which Ferguson's essay compares to the pathologies afflicting the end-stage Soviet Union) will prevent the US from winning Cold War II with China. For critics on the right like me, the essay raises another question: on what moral grounds are we intervening in places like Ukraine?
One of the strengths of economic analysis is that intent is nearly irrelevant. "It's not from the benevolence of the butcher... that we expect our dinner..."
We know this and it doesn't matter. We should evaluate foreign policy the same. A well intentioned policy that creates harm is obviously worse than a venal one that brings benefits.
I agree with you that 'America Bad' is childish...and 'America Good' is closer to the truth. The big problem - as I see it - with Western foreign policies/interventions - and conspiracy theories about them - is that the Western world has 'democratised' itself into a state whereby governments have little control over what gets done in their name and their leaders/policy-makers are just blown around in the wind... not much more 'in control' than their subjects.
You say that *we* have pursued and are pursuing an interventionist foreign policy. But this is misleading, since *you* have not done and are not doing this, nor have/am *I*. Admittedly, you and I both contribute to constituting the U.S.; “we Americans” includes us. But I am confident that it would foster clear thinking if people would stop saying that “we” do this or pursue that, just because some collective entity to which they belong (e.g., the U.S.) does so. Something is amiss when *you* do not, and *I* do not, but nevertheless it is said that “we” do.
You cannot examine the bad interventions in isolation. The US is the core of a “Pax Democrática” coalition. Its military power keep the ocean open, and mostly repress conquest wars. If you make a list of “interventions” you get a terribly biased picture. American interventions are like police shooting: what happens when structural deterrence fails!
When you look at the American Hegemony as a system, then you can agree with Lincoln: America, the last best hope of Mankind.
The Iraq War is literally like a BLM fantasy of a police shooting. Cop shows up at some guys house without a warrant. Demands to search the place. Person refuses but is doing nothing dangerous. Cops shoot him cold in the head and then wreck the place.
If you're going to be the global policemen, you're going to have to take justified actions. What "deterrence" failed in that case? None.
And is "deterrence" the metric all the time? Seems to me that escalation begets escalation too. Are we convinced that "deterrence" is the only thing keeping it all together. Have you ever considered that people just want to be left alone by default?
You mean the Irak that did invade Kuwait and was on permanent breach of its postwar treaty obligations? The country that Clinton had to bomb once every two years? Let’s be clear, American boots are too expensive for that ground, but the entire post war of the I Gulf War was a period of escalation and sanctions evasion. And those sanctions were immaculately legitimate.
Kuwait was in 1991. Iraq was invaded in 2003, having done NOTHING in-between. Literally NOTHING.
"Clinton had to bomb once every two years"
Why?
"And those sanctions were immaculately legitimate."
At doing what? Starving some people?
"but the entire post war of the I Gulf War was a period of escalation"
Escalation to what? What did Saddam DO? What countries did he invade?
Good question? Why? This is before Bush: 1998
https://www.congress.gov/105/plaws/publ235/PLAW-105publ235.pdf
Yeah, deciding to overthrow another government and funding insurgents is a good way to get some intransigent enemies.
Try to remember that Iraq didn't have WMDs, and openly lying about that was the "justification" for the war.
Those things were necessary for the containment of a proven expansionist enemy. And a very stupid one, if you read the above link…
The Gulf War proved that the American military and allies could swiftly resolve a territorial dispute in the Middle East. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars proved, again, that all the military power in the world can not ensure a people will choose to be governed by an honest government and live according to the ideals of western liberalism.
The sin of the Iraq and Afghan Wars is the American "leaders" told the lie that this time it would be different. No, it will always be the same. America can setup political stooges in other countries and then watch political instability create revolution and war. Or America can take out the leaders they don't like and watch some other despot rise to power.
But nation building reaps such fantastic financial prizes to American corporations and it feeds the hubris of American policy makers, that nation building is what the politicians are persuaded to support.
I will a bit more. Yesterday I was finishing “the Wire”, and it is funny: it is about nation building failing in Baltimore too…
Yesterday I met a gentleman at the swimming pool who lost his home in the hurricane in Puerto Rico some years ago and has settled here 2000+ miles away. I asked if he would like to return and he said that his "heart" is there (I mean, he lived on the beach in P.R. - it was probably beautiful) but that he feels that the situation there will never be fixed; here, he has access to the VA and one son, who has a family, is sometimes stationed here, though not at the moment. I admit I haven't followed news of Puerto Rico and perhaps imagined that it was "fixed" by now but I trust his opinion.
I said something about how the US should maybe take more direct paternalistic control of P.R. (I know nothing about this but was just trying to make conversation). I then thought maybe that sounded rude and was getting ready to walk it back - but he readily concurred, and said something sadly about how the Transportation Secretary had come one time ...
I then thought about the many things Americans can no longer seem to do, in America, and how unfortunate that this hurricane happened while we were on our downswing.
And in fact this colors my view of this debate - a feeling that whatever America does now abroad, will be flawed because of our weakness - and this inevitably muddies the issue.
True.
I never has considered that people want to be alone by default.
By default the strong have not incentives to leave alone those who are weak. The relative benignity of America is the international projection of its bourgeoise character. And bourgeois republics are not the norm, but the exception.
When they’re being invaded they tend to shame us into acting as their security detail. Libertarians want to be left alone, but most countries don’t, as they live in much tougher neighborhoods than us. Think the Taiwanese, the Ukrainians, the Kuwaitis, the Bosnians, and S. Korea prefer(red) to be left alone? I can ramble off examples all day.
On that note, blacks call the police for help at the highest rate of any racial group. I suspect higher than any "persecuted" identity group too.
Pretty different note…
Really?
Or I’m not smart enough to make the walk from A to B. What’s the parallel/point?
I wrapped all the arguments in this thread here:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vjQ5BhKnDyY35dXXf/chomsky-vs-pax-democratica
Good point, but part of me thinks the Brits did it better in the 19th century.
Of course not. They were far more extractive, and directly rule. The American Hegemony is a far more progressive system that the European imperialisms.
Yeah, but they were more pragmatic and less ideological, and thus were less prone to Vietnam or Iraq II boondoggles.
At what cost? Permanent deployment in a large empire. You need a massive amount of cheap labour to sustain that. What America does with tiny losses and expenditure is incredible.
And Americans rule without understanding and without involvement; nothing like Richard Burton or other eminent Victorians able to understand alien cultures.
Of course, the Americans are a disaster for direct intervention, but mostly avoid it.
I don't know if that's correct. My impression was the British Navy was the real key to maintaining the empire, and it required significant capital investment in shipbuilding, but the labor costs, once a ship was built, were relatively low. I don't know how that would compare in terms of % of GDP to the Pentagon or even if that's an appropriate measure, but I have a hard time seeing our DoD as a model of efficiency and high ROI, as you portray. Maybe that's just my cynicism talking, though.
One of the failure modes of progressivism, I think, is to unreflectively side with the weaker party in any conflict, big or small. I will spare you my speculations on why this is. Anyway, post WWII, the US was always the stronger party, and Chomsky spent his entire life stuck in this failure mode.
This comes from David & Goliath, plus the reality that most bullies are bigger and more aggressive than avg folk. The granting of moral superiority to the weak is wrong when the weaker are actually less moral.
I've noticed that when people don't want to own the Ukraine war they will drown on and on about whatever problems they feel Russia has. I got news, Ukraine has even more problems.
Most of the world is a shithole. It's full of bad people and bad leaders and bad situations. The North Vietnamese were bad. The South Vietnamese government was bad too. Saddam was bad. The people Saddam were fighting are bad. Assad and Qadaffi are bad. The people they were fighting are bad. The Taliban was bad. The people we put in place of the Taliban were bad. Etc Etc.
Taking a side in the Ukraine/Russia war is like taking a side in the Iran/Iraq war. There are no good guys. The war itself is the bad guy, and I don't think it takes much to show the US played its part in starting it and keeping it going.
Grotesque as it is, at least a guy Lindsay Graham admits that killing as many Slavs as possible is the goal of the war, the way Dick Cheney used to talk about the Iran/Iraq war. If that's your goal at least own it. Don't pretend you're doing it on behalf of anyones interest.
These people that support Ukraine like Noah are probably going to get us in a shooting war with China too for many of the same dumb reasons, and then it won't be some Slavs on the other side of the world dying for your amusement but your own sons and daughters. I'm sure I will be told then how bad China is and how not wanting to start a war with them means I want to move to China.
I don't disagree exactly but I think this supposedly eyes-wide-open attitude belies a newish tendency on the right to downplay just how bad a guy Saddam was.
Similarly, with Ukraine, it's unbelievable what the Soviets did to Ukraine and I think it's amazing we acknowledge longlasting, sometimes silly-seeming historical grievances in the world and somehow expect Ukraine to have forgotten what happened to them less than a hundred years ago. I haven't heard anyone suggest that that's why they are fighting now, and I suppose it's not; but I would never have expected peace to be the default there, with or without America. Putin, to me, was the one playing with matches.
"Most of the world is a shithole."
I suppose that depends on one's definition of shithole but to me shithole is worse than "bad."
Harari argues that for most of history, the agricultural revolution made most people worse off. They worked longer, tedious, backbreaking hours than their hunter gatherer ancestors and got less for it. Maybe most people still work harder but I question the part about getting less for it. Extreme poverty and poverty rates are way down. So are food shortages.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying most of the world is comparable to the US. Far from it. Just that I wouldn't put most of the world in shithole territory.
1) We invaded Iraq because we wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East.
2) We invaded Iraq because GWB thought it would make good politics to get re-elected as a war president.
3) We invaded Iraq to make some defense contractors rich.
All of those can be true, and they aren't even including some of the worst reasons (to find WMD we knew didn't exist, etc).
It seems to me you asking that I only give #1 credence, even though there is a lot of evidence for the others. What's worse, as you note, #1 as an intention doesn't even guarantee #1 as a result.
My friend who served in Iraq certainly can give me a lot of stories that fall into the #2 and #3 camps.
We could do the same with lots and lots of interventions.
"It seems to me you asking that I only give #1 credence, even though there is a lot of evidence for the others."
I don't see that in what Kling wrote. The closest is the following, "But I believe that American foreign policy is well-intentioned.” but even that in no way suggest you should ignore 2 or 3, though I personally believe they are small or even negligible as contributors to deciding on war. Also, "bring democracy" is a bit of a strawman. I think the goal was improved stability.
"I think the goal was improved stability."
Did it bring stability? Could it have been reasonably expected to work before the fact?
I go back to Steve Sailers 2003 essay. There was no reason to believe ousting Saddam would lead to stability.
I tend to agree the odds were greatly against improved stability. I thought that the first week of the war. It's probably safe to say stability didn't improve but does that outcome mean the odds were against it? Do we know that the no-go alternative wouldn't have deteriorated into something even worse?
Be that as it may, it does not change what I said about Kling's words or the contribution of 1, 2, and 3 to going to war.
There can be multiple motivations at work. We have a way of developing strong moral justification for what is in our interest. In the case of foreign policy, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the "idealist" approach may often serve as cover for grifter interests. Witness how pro-interventionist NGO's (for example, ISW, the Institute for the Study of War) are funded by defense contractors. This is not to say the moral justification for some particular intervention is therefore not valid, only to point out our motivations are complex and often not fully transparent to ourselves.
Just like the government’s motivation to do anything, it is a fallacy of composition to assign a single motive to an intervention.
Why the Baptists support an action is entirely different from why the bootleggers do.
The people running our military industrial complex now are the bad guys. “We The People” aren’t bad by definition, though people in other countries may not be able to make that distinction at this point.
"I believe that American foreign policy is well-intentioned... We are not out to conquer an empire."
A few years ago I worked with a CIA employee who used our firm as a cover. I don't know the specifics of his work other than that he was involved with arming Syrian rebels.
We had a few discussions about American foreign policy. I told him I'd stopped believing that our fp establishment actually cares about self-determination. One example I gave was US encouragement of the 2014 Maidan coup against Ukraine's elected president. I also criticized US destabilization of Syria, arguing that it wasn't in the interests of American citizens to promote civil war in that country.
His response was interesting because he didn't disagree with my description of events in these countries, nor did he defend American policy by appealing to "human rights" or other good intentions. Instead he bluntly argued that US policy should promote American "empire." He said this explicitly. He believes there are three global empires (US, China, Russia), and that our actions in Ukr and Syria are correct because we need to drive back our Russian competitor in these regions. He made nothing like a moral argument for our behavior because he saw it purely as a matter of power politics.
Maybe he's an unusual case in the agency, but I tend to doubt it.
What gets lost in that explanation is the best interest of the other country. As a citizen of one of those countries, do you think you'd be better off in the US, Russian, or Chinese "empire"?
If you want to argue that the fight does more harm to that citizen than being within the Chinese or Russian empire, I'm open to that discussion. Kling indicated something similar too.
It's not clear that a war was necessary to keep Ukraine out of the Russian empire. Ukraine was a separate country. It had elections. If Ukraine hadn't had a US backed revolution, another election would have happened within a short time period.
Ukraines main problem was that electing people from Western Ukraine wasn't having any better effect on the country then people from Eastern Ukraine. The Orange Revolution failed. Maiden failed.
Ukraine had 1/3 the GDP/capita of Russia, being more like Russia would have been an improvement.
Now its people are under martial law, are conscripted against their will, and can't hold elections. When all they had to do was wait till the next election if they wanted a different trade deal.
I think the correct view on Ukraine is that NatSec wanted a war and Ukranians were the useful patsies that could be duped into bringing it about. Now they are trapped.
Your view is not correct. US involvement in Ukraine pre-war has been hugely overestimated. The idea that the events of 2014 were a US-supported coup is a myth. US policy towards Ukraine has been random, declarations and statements, but lacking a clear strategic view. If you write "Ukraine had 1/3 the GDP per capita of Russia; being more like Russia would have been an improvement," you are absolutely naive. Societies do not act this way. Ukraine is bordered on one side by Russia and on the other side by the European Union. Given the choice between being more like Russia or being more like Europe, the choice is obvious, even for Ukrainians.
During the last 30 years, Ukrainian society has gradually become more Western, culturally, mentally, and ideologically. This shift hasn't been driven by pressure from the West or Europe but by natural causes: low-cost airlines between Ukraine and Europe, Ukrainian migrants working in Germany and sharing their experiences of European life, Hollywood films, German cars, Swedish furniture, English pop music, and more. The West and Europe have a huge soft-power advantage over Russia. Europe does not have to beg others to join the European Union; there is a queue of countries wanting to join. Russia created its own economic and security organization (EU-like), but it is losing members because Russia has little to offer.
Events on the ground are a clear example. The West does not even have to give Ukraine anything, and Ukraine (or at least most of Ukrainian society) wants to be like the West. For instance, the European Union only decided in 2024 that they will start negotiation process with Ukraine. Over the last 20-25 years, there have been just talk—no offers, no carrots—yet Ukraine still wants to be part of the EU. As shown in 2014 and 2022, Russia has to invade and coerce Ukraine if it wants something from Ukraine. The EU does nothing, it just exists, and countries still want to join.
Tis gradual westernization of Ukrainian society has also influenced Ukrainian politicians and political systems. So, on one side, Ukraine has become more and more Western, while Russia, at the same time, has become more and more authoritarian and identitarian. Conflict between Ukraine and Russia was inevitable.
Saying something is "a myth" doesn't make it a myth. The facts of 2014-2015 are what they are.
"US policy towards Ukraine has been random, declarations and statements, but lacking a clear strategic view."
Obviously, this could apply to US policy all over the world. In truth there is no "US policy", but factions in the US that want different things and often act on their own.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html
In general I blame NATSEC for Ukraine and not "America". I believe that if Americans could hold a referendum on Ukraine our involvement would end.
"Given the choice between being more like Russia or being more like Europe, the choice is obvious, even for Ukrainians."
I take a very different view of "what the Ukranians can be like". I'm a eugenicist. I think Slavs are genetically inferior to European whites. I think these societies will always be poorer and more corrupt then Europe. When you add in the trauma these places suffered over the last century and since 1991, I just don't have any hopes for Ukraine becoming much of anything.
I have no doubt Ukranians want to be Europeans, but so do Pacific Islanders that hope they can build planes out of twigs. And so do some people in the Middle East were we have also wasted lots of blood and treasure trying to "westernize" them and running into the same problem (shitty genetics). We don't always get what we want.
The Polish regions that border Ukraine have GDP/capita similar to Russia, and they have the massive benefits of subsidy from the rest of Poland and EU membership. I see no reason that a country that has been through what Ukraine has would do better then that, and would probably do worse.
Western Ukranians got their shot from 2004-2010, and people elected Yanacovich in response. They had their shot from 2014-2022. Poroshenko ended his run in disgrace and Zelensky has an approval rating of 22% on right before the war started.
The problem isn't that Russia is keeping Ukraine down. The problem is that Ukraine is keeping Ukraine down. It's the same problem in say the Middle East. Changing the leadership doesn't change anything because the problem is the POPULATION just doesn't have the genetic chops.
The Russians and Ukranians are closer to "one people" genetically than Ukranians are to Germans. Russia is a pretty good barometer of what they might be able to accomplish if they got their shit together. It ain't much, but that's life. It's sure better then dying in the mud.
Joining the EU might allow Ukraine to become some parasitic welfare state that forever sucks Europe dry, but it won't fix Ukraine.
I think the tragedy of Maiden is that your average protestor (who wasn't a neo-nazi thug) really wanted was a EU passport to get the fuck out of Ukraine and leave it to rot. Now they are imprisoned in Ukraine and are going to get used as cannon fodder for a war they can't win. Seems like a big L compared to just waiting for the next election and voting out Yannavocich. But they are dumb Slavs so they make bad choices.
As far as the west is concerned, we ought not to be involved in the affairs of these shithole countries.
I prefer the honest isolationist's view: "There are countries far away of which we know little and people of whom we know nothing" over "sophisticated" takes about Ukraine, Russia, or Poland. If you do not know what happened in 2014 or in 2022, please do not lecture me. And do not talk about EU subsidies to Poland or whatever. People who do not know the EU think of it as some huge subsidy scheme. In reality, the EU's budget is around 170 billion euros, and the largest part of it goes to French and German farmers anyway. For comparison, Germany's state expenditure is 1.4 trillion euros, Poland's is 400 billion euros, and Finland's is 110 billion euros.
Poland has enjoyed one of the fastest growth rates in Europe, and although they may be Slavs, they will continue to grow fast—not because of EU subsidies (which are tiny).
By the way, I am not a eugenicist, but I have been many, many times to Russia, Ukraine, and Poland (including eastern Poland), and life is definitely more pleasant in Poland and Ukraine than in Russia. If you exclude Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a couple of other places, Russia is ugly, dirty, with a lot of garbage and mud, just unpleasant. In Ukraine (though I have not been in eastern Ukraine, so I'm talking about central, southern, and western parts) and obviously in Poland, you do not get a third-world vibe. The streets are clean, lawns are mowed, there is very little graffiti, public spaces are not covered with garbage—they are tidy, clean, and pleasant. I am well aware of GDP differences, but Russia, once again, is not much of a role model.
And by the way, I am not saying that the US should help Ukraine; I am just saying that the US did not cause 2014 and did not cause 2022. Americans' self-hatred mixed with grandiose mania (we are involved everywhere and have caused everything) really baffles me. Do not worry, the US did not cause it, and it is not the US's fault.
Poland has done well. Mostly in the capital and the parts that were part of the old German and AH empires. The regions bordering Ukraine are nothing impressive, and that is probably a better comparison for Ukraines potential.
Poles are not Slavs, they are Poles. They are genetically superior to Slavs, especially the further west you go. The Hajnal line is somewhere in Poland. The further east and south you go, the worse the people get.
If Ukraine gets admitted to the EU I have no doubt it will be a huge drain. That's the only way it's digging out of its mess, it's incapable of accomplishment on its own. I've seen the estimates of what "the west" is suppose to pony up to rebuild Ukraine if it "wins". One can only hope they lose and we are spared such a thing.
The role of NATSEC in 2014 and beyond is well documented, even in the NYTimes as I linked earlier. John McCain and Victoria Nuland were there in Maiden Square. I don't see the point in denying this.
If Ukraine wants to stand on its own two feet, it can stop asking us for handouts.
I have never walked around Eastern Europe. I go by the data I see. It doesn't paint a good picture of Ukraine. Before 2022, the opinion on Ukraine was Universally negative across the board. I don't think the facts changed because Ukraine got blown up.
"I am just saying that the US did not cause 2014 and did not cause 2022"
We'll never know, but it sure didn't help. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the Ukranian case had we never been involved.
It would have been great if different decisions had convinced Russia not to invade Ukraine but It absolutely became necessary once Russia invaded.
Being under Russia would not likely help Ukraine's economy.
We don't agree on your "correct view."
It would be interesting to hear whether the Ukrainian people blame the US or Russia for what is happening.
How about you allow the Ukrainian people to leave Ukraine freely and then we will know what they really want. I’m not the one enslaving people against their will to die in the mud, you are.
The best outcome is peace. NatSec taking an L and being humiliated out of trying this nonsense again would be a plus.
"The best outcome is peace. NatSec taking an L and being humiliated out of trying this nonsense again would be a plus."
Unless things get significantly worse for Ukraine I'd say Russia has the L and that is the plus. It needs to be as clear as possible that invading other countries is bad for the invader.
"How about you allow..."
Who is "you"?
What you point out is indeed a horrible situation but I fail to see how that counters anything I wrote.
The United States should demand that as a condition of support that Ukraine end conscription, allow its citizens to leave the country free of harassment, and hold elections. If it will not agree to these terms all support should be immediately cut off.
Until that occurs, we are funding a slave army.
Pfui. To think that white Americans of all people have the gall to make that argument. They have left freely and ceded their cities, then their old suburbs, and then many of their newer suburbs to people you have literally called on Kling's old blog lumenproletariats who need someone to make them human. Should I conclude from this that white Americans did not really want the towns and cities and neighborhoods they had built and beautified with their own hands? Or perhaps if, like the beastly Oirish of South Boston, they had a mob - or dare I say an actual elected government - to force them into cooperate-cooperate equilibrium, they would have still had them?
Your "slave army" argument is also ridiculous. There are half a million heavily armed men in the country. The war's been going on for 2.5 years now. If they are as anarchic and hate it as much as you imply, why hasn't there been a single attempt to march on the capital? You may be sure that any such attempt would have been trumpeted by Russians to high heaven and you'd know about it. Putin called on Ukrainian military to make a coup on the 2nd or 3rd day of the invasion! But nothing going. Instead it was in Russia with its 3x higher GDP per capita (good to have oil fields gushing free money) that had a military coup come within an ace of success exactly a year ago last Sunday, and it only failed because Prigozhin was fundamentally a businessman eager to make deals rather than a warlord.
Why didn't the Italian people march on Rome rather than fight the 11th Battle of the Isonzo? Italy was not attacked. The people and the parliament opposed the war from the start. Entry was on the kings whim.
And yet they went over the top and died by the hundreds of thousands.
Why?
Well, punishments including long prison sentences and execution were what awaited those that didn't comply. These were increased throughout the war (as has been done in Ukraine) in order to get compliance.
The entire concept of conscription is based around the lack of choice and the punishment of dissent.
Perhaps there are times when conscription is called for, but its still slavery backed up by violence.
Prigozhin's coup failed because nobody rallied to support him, because nobody wanted him running Russia. You can't conquer Russia with 5,000 guys. If there were such widespread discontent it would have worked, or someone else would have tried it by now. His "loyal soldiers" all took contracts with the Russian MoD, in fact trying to stop them from doing that was why he launched a coup. Because nobody really was loyal to him, just to the dollar. Had they gotten to Moscow there would have been a slaughter at some point and he'd be dead.
In reality, Russia is mostly running a volunteer army. Call them poor mercenaries with few good life options if you wish, but most of them are there voluntarily. Perhaps they are making a bad life choice, perhaps they are killers for hire we should be revolted by. However, they don't need to be kidnapped off the street, they show up willingly.
Whites fled the cities because if they used vigilante justice to keep out the blacks the full force of the state would be used against them. Individuals and mobs can't take on the state. They could not get the votes to get the state to implement different policies in the cities.
At least they had elections as an option to change policy, Ukranians do not.
People can't refuse service without strong punishment and they can't vote to change that fact. As such, I have no clue what the revealed preference of Ukranians would be absent those incentives. I just know the Ukranian government is afraid to find out.
As others have expressed, it is juvenile to assign a single judgment to the actions of the American government. Whatever shared idealism Americans possessed in the past is largely missing today. Not only do the political parties disagree sharply on issues both large and small, but the government apparatus seems to operate independent of the politicians and the consent of the people. One can not logically claim "America" is anything when the culture and society is so bifurcated.
I think the appeasement of Cold War Communist aggression by 1960s Liberals was wrong. But today I think the unquestioned support for American Imperialism (ie being the World's policeman) is wrong. The problem with American foreign policy of today is it has become purely transactional. There are no ideals. Thus we have the American government simultaneously supporting Israel and opposing it. Supporting China and opposing it. This is not sane foreign policy! This is the behavior of middle school cliques!
I'm thinking through ways this stance of charity toward intentions and critique of outcomes applies not just to foreign policy but also other forms of elite decision making - public health, technocratic nudging, etc. Foreign policy by its nature tends to be framed as "our" actions whereas domestic policy tends to be "theirs," but it's all policy flowing through some group of elites - or do others see foreign policy as fundamentally different?
Well, when United Fruit Company ran a lot of Central America, we didn't have a border crisis.
That issue was mentioned in a few different semi satirical books, including Stephen Colbert’s I Am America.
The best expression I know of the cynical view of US intervention in Central America is in Mario Vargas Llosa's novels _The Feast of the Goat_ and _Harsh Times_. It is all the more credible because Vargas Llosa is very much not a knee jerk anti American leftist.
I don't subscribe to Noah Smith's Substack as I regard him as a dishonest lefty (as compared to Bret Weinstein, for example), so I am unable to read the full post. However, I regard his (and your) use of Chomsky's 'foreign policy thought' as a frame of reference for criticizing the ongoing debate over US foreign policy as a classic example of a straw man. Sure, there has been a convergence of the right and the left in opposition to US foreign policy, especially in the wake of October 7th and Israel's response. However, opposition to a particular US foreign policy intervention can be principled even if it happens to come to the same conclusion as Chomsky's knee-jerk response to each and every US intervention. As loathsome as I find the leftist Chomsky-type view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict (or on the right, the Mearsheimer-Walt view of this conflict), that isn't going to dissuade me from agreeing that US policy with regard to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is both ill-intentioned and colossally stupid.
With regard to your last paragraph rejecting those on the left and the right who argue for the moral equivalence of the US and Russia, I want to bring your attention to Niall Ferguson's recent essay in the Free Press comparing the United States to the end-stage of the Soviet Union ("We're All Soviets Now"). I regard Niall Ferguson as one of those particularly annoying British neocons constantly egging on the US to expend its resources in disastrous military interventions, including most recently in Ukraine, so you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that it was him who authored this piece. Of course, for Ferguson the worry is that the pathologies of the US (which Ferguson's essay compares to the pathologies afflicting the end-stage Soviet Union) will prevent the US from winning Cold War II with China. For critics on the right like me, the essay raises another question: on what moral grounds are we intervening in places like Ukraine?
One of the strengths of economic analysis is that intent is nearly irrelevant. "It's not from the benevolence of the butcher... that we expect our dinner..."
We know this and it doesn't matter. We should evaluate foreign policy the same. A well intentioned policy that creates harm is obviously worse than a venal one that brings benefits.
I agree with you that 'America Bad' is childish...and 'America Good' is closer to the truth. The big problem - as I see it - with Western foreign policies/interventions - and conspiracy theories about them - is that the Western world has 'democratised' itself into a state whereby governments have little control over what gets done in their name and their leaders/policy-makers are just blown around in the wind... not much more 'in control' than their subjects.
This essay is completely deluded, and is an assertion without supporting arguments
You say that *we* have pursued and are pursuing an interventionist foreign policy. But this is misleading, since *you* have not done and are not doing this, nor have/am *I*. Admittedly, you and I both contribute to constituting the U.S.; “we Americans” includes us. But I am confident that it would foster clear thinking if people would stop saying that “we” do this or pursue that, just because some collective entity to which they belong (e.g., the U.S.) does so. Something is amiss when *you* do not, and *I* do not, but nevertheless it is said that “we” do.