World Policing or World Perfecting?

Some thoughts

Lee Fang writes,

All too often, American foreign policy takes the form of policing that is much more akin to the authoritarian model. We force our belief systems on others at the barrel of the gun. When we act unilaterally and attempt to use the awesome might of the American military and intelligence forces for regime change, we tend to have disastrous results. 

…black-and-white thinking – whether it is practiced by the extreme BLM left or by those in Congress who want to bomb America’s supposed adversaries – is simply crude propaganda.

Let me propose that trying to police the world might be a good thing sometimes, while trying to perfect the world is almost never going to work out well. For example, using our navy to protect freedom of navigation and commerce seems good to me. Military action to promote our ideas of human rights is generally unwise.

Let us consider the Middle East, which is obviously the most tendentious example. I think that you can fault our policy there as trying to do too much perfecting and too little policing.

Too much perfecting would include our destabilization of Libya. It would include our attempt to overthrow Assad in Syria. It would include our attempt to turn Iraq into a western democracy.

Was there really a significant ex ante probability that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Did we really need to have inspectors there to find out? If so, then their refusal to allow inspections justified a police action. What makes the intervention leave a sour taste in my mouth are two things. First, I question whether we needed onsite inspections in order to determine whether they had weapons of mass destruction. Second, our attempt at nation-building had high costs and low benefits, for everyone involved.

I would argue that we did too little policing of Iran, from 1979 to the present. Iran, much more than America, has been single-mindedly determined to impose its ideology on the region. I think that we should have tried to keep the regime in a box. From the hostage-taking of our embassy staff in 1979 to the Houthi assault on shipping, we have let Iran’s crimes go unpunished and undeterred.

Why did we allow “humanitarian” aid to Gaza to be channeled into creating armed, underground bunkers? Why did we allow south Lebanon, which was supposed to be a demilitarized zone, to become an ultra-militarized zone?

As I write this, Israel is asserting a role as the policeman of the Middle East. I don’t think this is the best arrangement for Israel, for America, or for the region. But given America’s unwillingness to take on the job, it boils down to a choice between Israel and Iran.

Is policing the world in America’s interest? I think that we are better off in a world that is relatively less militarized and less radicalized. America policing the world strikes me as a bad idea, but many other ideas are worse. If you think that it is a job for the UN, I’ve got a school in Gaza with a Hamas tunnel underneath to sell you.

We need to face the fact that the world is going to be far from perfect. Whether we try to police it a lot or a little.

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Against Reckless Foreign War and Unilateral Intervention