“Adults in a Room” is a series in collaboration with The Stimson Center’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy program. The series stems from the group’s monthly networking events that call on analysts to gather virtually and hash out a salient topic. It aims to give you a peek into their Zoom room and a deep understanding of the issue at hand in less than the time it takes to sip your morning coffee without the jargon, acronyms, and stuffiness that often come with expertise.
The proclivity for military intervention has defined US foreign policy in recent decades. Under the Global War on Terror umbrella, the United States has intervened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Somalia and assisted dozens of other countries’ militaries in their own conflicts. The reliance on military force as a primary tool of engagement in the world has had tremendous consequences for the countries subject to the interventions and for the United States, which has spent millions of dollars and thousands of American lives fighting these wars.
But has the nature of US interventions changed? Skepticism toward using this military tool has developed among younger generations, but the Pentagon’s budget continues to grow exponentially. Reimagining US Grand Strategy’s July 2023 networking roundtable brought together foreign policy experts to discuss the root of its predilection toward interventionism and whether there has been a shift in how the United States considers deploying the military tool. Four participants expanded on their thoughts on the state of US interventionism below.
Sidita Kushi, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Bridgewater State University and Monica Duffy Toft, Academic Dean and Professor of International Politics, Fletcher School, Tufts University
How has the United States wielded its military might across history and in the modern day, and to what effect? With foreign policymaking mainly in the hands of political elites, removed from public opinion and electoral processes, our book “Dying by the Sword: The Militarization of US Foreign Policy” is one step toward alerting citizens to the United States’ increasingly militaristic footprint across the world.
The book traces the United States’ reliance on military tools relative to other tools of state-craft, such as diplomacy, across historical eras. We argue that the United States has ramped up its usage of force abroad at a time when its effectiveness is most limited despite decreasing international threats. The United States’ “kinetic diplomacy” — diplomacy by armed force, removed from in-depth local knowledge acquired by traditional diplomats — poses grave issues for the country’s continued international leadership role, credibility, and domestic priorities. For instance, adversaries (and allies) can use our militarized behavior to justify their own, regardless of the validity of the comparisons, such as President Vladimir Putin’s co-opted justification for his invasion of Ukraine.
While the strategy of primacy understands the biggest global threats as arising from rogue, failed, or non-democratic states, it does not link US hegemony and militarism to the worsening of these same challenges.
Military force is no longer a last resort for US foreign policymaking, which has led to an inversion of the hard-won lessons of past military and economic conflicts. The roots of rising US militarism may be explained by multiple historical and structural forces, such as the unipolar inertia that defined US foreign policy beyond its actual “unipolar moment” in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the path dependencies of increasing defense budgets at the expense of diplomatic tools of statecraft, bureaucratic politics, and an overly broad, ill-defined grand strategic vision, amongst others.
Whatever the causes, the outcomes are similar: a heavy-handed, overstretched United States that creates more blowback in its wake. US military interventionism further erodes US soft power and credibility, and it sacrifices domestic priorities to the altar of global primacy through its force-first interventions.
While the strategy of primacy understands the biggest global threats as arising from rogue, failed, or non-democratic states, it does not link US hegemony and militarism to the worsening of these same challenges. The solution demands a dramatic decrease in US military engagements abroad, with an associated increase in diplomacy, intelligence sharing with allies, and deploying economic tools of statecraft. A sound grand strategic vision for the future would see the United States wielding its military force only as a last resort, in tandem with other tools, and in response to vital national interests, which are often ill-defined in the modern-day.
As Russia has recently found, unused power potential is a better deterrent internationally than military power unleashed with terrible costs. The United States should reconsider its force-centered foreign policy and refocus on diplomacy as the key tool of its grand strategic vision for the future.
Madison Schramm, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
Evidence is increasing that US military interventions, from regime change operations to large-scale wars, often fail to produce long-term political advantage. As the United States faces pressing non-military, existential threats like the climate emergency and global health pandemics, we must critically examine why it continues to rely on tools that so often fail to achieve their desired ends despite staggering financial and human costs.
Practitioners and scholars alike have pointed to, among other things, the massive defense budget and resources, owing in part to pork-barrel politics and the power of private defense companies, and institutional failures to review and learn lessons from previous conflicts. But there is another element that gets relatively less attention — how the military and wars exist in Americans’ national imagination and identity.
Despite the fact that negotiations are much more common than wars, not just in starting or ending conflict but in preventing them, they tend not to get as much attention.
From textbooks assigned in primary school and “founding” myths to statues, memorials, and representation in popular media, wars operate as critical events in defining American identity. Despite the fact that negotiations are much more common than wars, not just in starting or ending conflict but in preventing them, they tend not to get as much attention. Ignoring the importance of negotiation is partly aided by the Pentagon’s close relationship with Hollywood.
Even television shows that purport to focus on diplomacy and the Department of State (which incidentally frequently features more women as lead diplomats) tend to devote extensive story arcs to covert action and decisions regarding the use of force rather than negotiations. Hollywood has produced scores of cinematic spectacles focusing on individual wars, battles, generals, and even weapons, including recently critically acclaimed pieces like “Dunkirk” and “1917,” not to mention the dozens of movies and TV shows about the daring feats of special operations teams and world-saving superspies. But where are the summer blockbusters about the diplomacy that prevents wars or brings wars to a close, that creates or recreates countries wholesale or refashions world order in their aftermath? Where are the movies about Versailles, Potsdam, and Yalta, the Reykjavík Summit, or the Dayton Accords? Where are the star-studded biopics lionizing diplomats and peacemakers?
If military intervention occupies such a prominent position in American identity, can this ultimately be changed? Identity and culture are sticky, and a shift will not come without other major policy changes, like cuts to the defense budget and better institutionalizing and publicizing internal and external reviews of US military performance. These changes would take generations, not weeks or months. It is, however, possible to take very small steps to actively disrupt the strong associations between American identity and the military. For example, advocating for more curricular emphasis on diplomacy and non-military tools of statecraft, publicly identifying negotiations and diplomacy as cultural touchstones (and not only the Cuban missile crisis), and spending more time and money on books, movies, and television shows depicting diplomats not just as stodgy background characters or undercover spies are just some things that may help with the shift toward less militarism. If the status quo requires massive resources and has a mixed record of success, shouldn’t we try to change the conversation?
Bruce Jentleson, William Preston Few Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science, Duke University
To what extent do domestic political pressures influence US decisions to go to war? In several cases during the Cold War and post-9/11 eras, hawkish politics have helped push the United States into wars that, as argued in “Dying By the Sword: The Militarization of US Foreign Policy,” proved highly counterproductive to US interests. In recent years, while by no means having gone pacifist, the American public has been “pretty prudent” in when it will and won’t support the use of military force. Why?
After experiencing the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which had little benefit and lots of costs and consequences, during their formative years, the views of younger generations are much more rational than reactive.
One reason is that the commander-in-chief credentials have come to matter less to voters. In one presidential election after another — 1992, Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush; 2000, George W. Bush over Al Gore; 2008, Barack Obama over John McCain; 2016, Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton — the candidate with the stronger foreign policy credentials in terms of experience and expertise lost. Indeed, in 1992, despite the Persian Gulf War victory, H.W. Bush still lost to the non-foreign policy credentialed Arkansas governor.
Another reason is “bi-wing” partisan challenges to traditional internationalism. Van Jackson chronicles increased efforts to develop a more systematic and wide-ranging progressivism, but Democrats have been wrestling with Cold War liberal internationalism for a long time. The Vietnam War protest movement, the Carter era questioning the “inordinate fear of communism,” and the backlash against the bevy of Democratic senators with presidential ambitions (Hillary Clinton, Biden, John Edwards) who voted for the Iraq War in 2003 are good examples of this intra-party tension. Among Republicans, while the Trumpian version of “America First” has been most prominent, there are other less lashing-out tappings into a tradition of Republican isolationism that goes back to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s (R-Mass.) 1918-1919 opposition to the League of Nations, 1930s resistance to joining World War II, and 1950s questioners of Cold War containment such as Senator Robert A. Taft (R-N.Y.).
Younger generations also have a version of internationalism that sees the value of staying engaged with the world but is much less supportive of things military. On maintaining US military superiority, 64% of Boomers are supportive, while 52% of Generation X, 39% of Millennials, and 34% of Gen Z are supportive. On cutting defense spending, it’s 18% Boomers, 23% Gen X, 36% Millennials, and 33% Gen Z. On drone strikes, 32% of Boomers, 26% of Gen X, 15% of Millennials, and 16% of Gen Z are supportive.
While some traditionalists reassure themselves that the younger generations will come around over time, Cat Stevens-like (“you’re still young, that’s your fault, there’s so much you have to know”) that is unlikely. After experiencing the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which had little benefit and lots of costs and consequences, during their formative years, the views of younger generations are much more rational than reactive. And this is a particularly telling trend as these generations are on the verge of becoming a majority of the American electorate.
