Give Force a Chance

(2 of 2)

The problem of U.S. foreign policy for the past century hasn't been too great a willingness to use military force--or too great a confidence about its efficacy. If anything, it's been the opposite. An earlier American intervention in World War I could have averted countless deaths and various political calamities. American intervention against Nazi Germany in the 1930s, or American support for intervention by our allies, could have averted World War II. Are we proud that it took the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and a German declaration of war against the U.S., for us finally to enter the war against Hitler? Then, even with the lessons of Munich fresh in mind, we were slower than we might have been to react to Stalin's aggression in Central and Eastern Europe. We foolishly (if inadvertently) suggested early in 1950 that we might not take action to protect South Korea, inviting aggression from the North. We pursued a policy of gradual escalation in Vietnam. Still, our performance during the cold war was, on the whole, robust--in our willingness to build up our military and to use, and threaten to use, force.

So the Berlin Wall fell. Soon after, we intervened to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. But that was apparently it. The end of history had arrived, after all, and we began spending the peace dividend and making excuses for ignoring what was happening elsewhere in the world. We were slow to act in the Balkans, we pulled out of Somalia, we stayed out of Rwanda, and we were uninterested in what was going on in Afghanistan.

Then came Sept. 11, and everything changed--for a while. We intervened in Afghanistan and went to war to remove Saddam, a brutal dictator with a history of developing weapons of mass destruction and fostering terrorism in the heart of the Middle East. We then thought we should try to stay to help these nations achieve decent and democratic governments. We are still engaged in this difficult task, and we have made mistakes in its pursuit.

Now many Americans want to give up--and many of them agree with the German Foreign Minister that the lesson of Iraq is that we need to be more wary of using military force. This would be the wrong lesson to take away. For if we revert to timidity in the face of threats and passivity in the face of dictators, we could present to the world the sorry spectacle of a great nation unwilling or unable to draw the sword on behalf of justice.