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ABSTRACT
The United States has repeatedly intervened militarily in situations where tactical success on the battlefield did not translate into meaningful political resolution of the issues triggering the introduction of military force. Although US military interventions are hardly a recent phenomenon, a series of systemic, political and institutional developments over the past several decades have been particularly conducive to the limited use of force as a policy option. These factors have reduced the costs and risks of military intervention, incentivising the use of force in situations when it may not be the optimal policy response.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 ‘America’s Forever Wars’, New York Times (22 October 2017).
2 Lawrence Freedman, ‘Can There be Peace with Honor in Afghanistan?’, Foreign Policy (26 June 2017).
3 Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace (New York: Basic Books 2002).
4 Eric R. Alterman, ‘Thinking Twice: The Weinberger Doctrine and the Lessons of Vietnam’, Fletcher Forum 10/1 (Winter 1986).
5 Alex Horton, ‘The Navy, Stunned by Two Fatal Collisions, Exhausts some Sailors with 100-hour Workweeks’, Washington Post (19 September 2017).
6 Robert Kagan, The World America Made (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2012); John A. Thompson, A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s Global Role (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2015).
7 Robert Mandel, ‘Defining Postwar Victory’, in Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duyvesteyn (eds.), Understanding Victory and Defeat in Contemporary War (London: Routledge 2007), 13–45.
8 Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005); Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power (New York: Metropolitan Books 2008); Rosa Brooks, How Everything became War and the Military Became Everything (New York: Simon & Schuster 2016); Robert Cassidy and Jacqueline Tame, ‘The Wages of War without Strategy’, Strategy Bridge (5 January 2017); Keith Nightingale, ‘Why is America Tactically Terrific but Strategically Shipshod?’, War on the Rocks (30 September 2015).
9 Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithica: Cornell University Press 2003), 4.
10 Colin Gray, ‘Grand Strategy in War and Peace: Toward a broader definition’, in Colin Gray (ed.), Grand strategies in War and Peace (New Haven: Yale University Press 1991), 5; Sarah Kreps, ‘American Grand Strategy after Iraq’, Orbis 53/4 (2009), 629–645, 633.
11 Stephen Biddle, American Grand Strategy after 9/11: An Assessment (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute 2005).
12 Biddle, American Grand Strategy after 9/11.
13 See, for example, John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton 2001) and Stephen Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to American Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton 2005).
14 Patrick E. Tyler, ‘US Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop a One Superpower World’, New York Times (8 March 1992).
15 Douglas Jehl, ‘CIA Nominee Wary of Budget Cuts’, New York Times (3 February 1993).
16 Robert Jervis, ‘US Grand Strategy: Mission Impossible’, Naval War College Review LI/3 (Summer 1998).
17 Thomas Freidman, ‘US Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed’, New York Times (22 September 1993).
18 George W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington DC: White House 2002).
19 Leon Panetta, Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21st Century (Arlington: Department of Defense 2012).
20 Nathan Freier, ‘Primacy Without a Plan’, Parameters (Autumn 2006), 5–21, 9. Emphasis in original.
21 Freier, ‘Primacy Without a Plan’, 12.
22 Stephen M. Walt, ‘Containing Rogues and Renegades: Coalition Strategies and Counter-proliferation’ in Victor A. Utgoff (ed.), The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, US Interests, and World Order (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2000), 191–226.
23 Donald Rumsfeld, Quadrennial Defense Review Report 2001 (Department of Defense 30 September 2001), 4.
24 Richard B. Myers, The National Military Strategy of the United States (2004), 5.
25 Robert Mandel, ‘Defining Postwar Victory’, 19.
26 ‘Full transcript and video: Trump’s speech on Afghanistan’, New York Times (21 August 2017).
27 Thomas Gibbons-Neff, ‘It’s like Everyone Forgot: On a Familiar battlefield, Marines Prepare for their Next Chapter in the Forever War’, Washington Post (22 August 2017).
28 See note 2 above.
29 See, for example, Thomas Ricks, Fiasco (New York: Penguin Press 2006).
30 Ryan Henry, ‘Defence Transformation and the 2005 Quadrennial Defence Review’, Parameters
Winter (2005–2006), 5–15.
31 Jonathan Monten, ‘Primacy and Grand Strategic Beliefs in US Unilateralism’, Global Governance 13 (2007), 130.
32 Michael Fitzsimmons, ‘The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning’, Survival 48/4
(2006–2007), 135.
33 Johannes Rø, Mechanistic Realism and US Foreign Policy (London: Routledge 2013), 89.
34 Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006); Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence (New York: Routledge 2002).
35 Thompson, A Sense of Power, p. 230.
36 Rather than notifying Congress ‘pursuant to’ the War Powers Resolution, presidents usually employ the phrase ‘consistent with’.
37 James A. Baker et al., National War Powers Commission Report (Charlottesville: Miller Center for Public Affairs 2008).
38 Robert Golan-Vilella, ‘A Tale of Two AUMFs’, The National Interest (27 August 2014).
39 Jim Webb, ‘Congressional Abdication’, The National Interest (March/April 2013).
40 Patrice Taddonio, ‘The President Blinked: Why Obama Changed Course on the “Red Line” in Syria’, PBS Frontline (25 May 2015).
41 For a deeper treatment of the role of elites in executive decision-making on military force, see Elizabeth Saunders, ‘War and the Inner Circle: Democratic Elites and the Politics of Using Force’, Security Studies 24/3 (2015), 466–501.
42 A.A. Jordan, W.J. Taylor, M.J. Meese, and S.C. Nielsen, American National Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2009), 89–90.
43 Julie Ioffe, ‘The State of Trump’s State department’, The Atlantic (1 March 2017).
44 Dan Lamothe, ‘Retired Generals Cite Past Comments from Mattis while Opposing Trump’s Proposed Foreign Aid Cuts’, Washington Post (27 February 2017).
45 Bacevich, The New American Militarism.
46 Jane Kellett Cramer ‘Militarized Patriotism: Why the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas Failed Before the Iraq War’, Security Studies 16/3 (2007), 489–524.
47 Brian Kennedy, ‘Most Americans Trust the Military and Scientists to Act in the Public’s Interest’, Pew Research (18 October 2016).
48 H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty (New York; HarperCollins 1997).
49 Peter Feaver, ‘Civil-military Disagreement? Yes. Crisis? No.’, Foreign Policy (17 September 2014); Mark Landler and Thom Shanker, ‘Pentagon Lays out Options for US Military Effort in Syria’, New York Times (22 July 2013).
50 Leslie Gelb, ‘The Essential Domino: American Politics and Vietnam’, Foreign Affairs 50/3 (1972).
51 Quoted in Alterman, ‘Thinking Twice’.
52 see note 1 above.
53 Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press 2001), 16.
54 Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2006); Bruce Jentleson and Rebecca Britton, ‘Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 42/4 (1998), 395–417.
55 Dina Smelz, Ivo Daalder, Karl Freidhoff, and Craig Kafuru, What Americans think of America first: Results of the 2017 Chicago Council Survey of American Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (Chicago: Chicago Council 2017).
56 Louis Klarevas, ‘The “Essential Domino” of Military Operations: American Public Opinion and the Use of Force’, International Studies Perspectives 3 (2002), 417–437.
57 Jeffrey Record, Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War (London: Brasseys 1993), 137.
58 Barry Blechman and Tamara Cofman Wittes, ‘Defining Moment: The Threat and Use of Force in American Foreign Policy’, Political Science Quarterly 114 (Spring 1999), 27.
59 Blechman and Wittes, ‘Defining Moment’, 28.
60 John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security and the American Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2004), 13.
61 See also Ulrich K. Preuss, ‘The Iraq War: Critical Reflections from “Old Europe”’, in Daniel Levy, Max Pensky and John Torpey (eds.), Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe (London: Verso 2005), 169.
62 Robert Kagan and William Kristol, ‘The Present Danger’, National Interest (Spring 2000), 57–70.
63 Kyle Dropp, Joshua D. Kertzer and Thomas Zeitzoff, ‘The Less Americans Know about Ukraine’s Location, the More they Want U.S. to Intervene’, Washington Post (7 April 2014).
64 Kevin Quealy, ‘If Americans Can Find North Korea on a Map, They’re More Likely to Prefer Diplomacy’, New York Times (5 July 2017).
65 For an excellent overview, see Michael Barber and Nolan McCarty, ‘Causes and Consequences of Polarization’, in Jane Mansbridge and Cathie Jo Martin (eds.), Task Force on Negotiating Agreement in Politics (Washington DC: American Political Science Association 2013).
66 Aaron Blake, ‘Republicans’ Transparent, Obama-tinged Flip-flop on Syria’, Washington Post (11 April 2017).
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Notes on contributors
Michael Mayer
Michael Mayer is an independent researcher and author specialising in US security policy and the strategic implications of military technology. His most recent book, US Missile Defense Strategy, was published by Lynne Rienner in 2015.