The fog of war makes it difficult for most people to think beyond the here and now. Following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, policymakers, the military, and others focused on the following:Singular operation failure— withdrawal — and not the overall feasibility or desirability of U.S. foreign policy.
Russian government announcement closes opportunity for broader introspection invasion of ukraine In February 2022, new calls for U.S. involvement abroad arose. Next year, in October 2023, Hamas attacks Israel.More recently, governments have israel and iran They have carried out retaliatory military attacks.
These conflicts have given rise to constant debates such as:assistanceand other involvements. Concerns about China, North Korea, and other unfriendly regimes are creating further debate about how U.S. policymakers should respond to certain scenarios.
These conversations are relevant, but they highlight important blind spots in foreign policy. For many people, it is very difficult to see through the fog of war and see the big picture. But they have to. Otherwise, we will continue to be stuck in a short-sighted, continuous cycle of war, moving from one crisis to the next.
Our endlessly aggressive foreign policy has made war the norm, with great costs and brutal realities. When war and foreign intervention are treated as unchanging facts of life, our focus shifts from understanding their reality and causes to violent executions. Treat the symptoms while ignoring the underlying disease.
Argentine political theorist who wrote in the late 19th century Mr. Alberdi of John the Baptist said:War legalizes crimes such as large-scale robbery, murder, arson, and destruction. These activities, which are considered illegal and wrong all over the world, have become business as usual.
“War sanctions” [these crimes],”he wrote“and transform them into just and lawful acts…a perversion of the senses that is horrifying and blasphemous, an irony of civilization.”
What Alberdi asked us to understand is that our myopic focus on today’s conflicts is a combination of “good” and “evil,” while ignoring the true horror of the enterprise of war itself. Or that it requires us to think in terms of a simple dichotomy of “us” versus “them.” . Treating war as inevitable presupposes from the beginning that the atrocities of war are inevitable.
When faced with the brutality of others, war proponents say, “What can we do but use force against force?” One of his simple but neglected answers is that he does not respond with violence precisely because he recognizes the barbarity inherent in the enterprise of war.
The typical response to this answer is, “That’s naive.” But that reaction itself is naive. How confident can we be that in every case of war, all other viable non-violent means of surviving the conflict have been exhausted, and war is the only remaining option? Are you confident that you have clear, achievable goals with a high chance of success? Have the wide range of unintended consequences been adequately considered?
Beyond these issues, the normalization of acts of war ignores other important consequences. These include fiscal and imperial overreach, and an expansion in the size and scope of government.home electricityand the accompanying erosion of constitutional constraints.
It also ignores the natural consequence of continuous intervention in complex systems: the emergence of complex networks of tripwires, or hidden triggers, that lead to conflict and violence. These tripwires could easily be triggered, dragging the United States, and by extension the American people it represents, into an eternal war for lasting peace.
With the presidential election to be held later this year, much of the foreign policy debate is framed as a contrast between the two candidates: Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But perhaps the bigger problem is that the role the United States has played for decades ispolice officers of the worldIt has placed significant emphasis on the country’s economic and political institutions, while normalizing the war effort and the crimes inherent in war.
Only by moving beyond the fog of war can we understand these nuances and consider alternative paths to peace that avoid the atrocities of armed conflict.
Christopher J. Coyne is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Abigail R. Hall is an associate professor of economics at the University of Tampa.Both senior fellow of independent research institute and the co-authors of an upcoming satirical book.How to Wage War: A Confidential Handbook for the National Security Elite. ”
