WisconsinLiberty
Member
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2022
- Messages
- 870
Condemning Foreign Interventions
The New American
Feb 27, 2023
In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace, by Christopher Coyne, Oakland: Independent Institute, 2022, 141 pages, hardcover.
On Independence Day in 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams addressed Congress on the issue of whether the United States should get involved in the internal affairs of foreign nations, or in far-flung international conflicts. He disagreed with those who advocated using direct means — such as military force — to export the American experiment in liberty that was then a marvel of the world.
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be,” Adams said. “But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty.”
These wise words were the prevailing view among America’s Founding Fathers. Christopher Coyne, a senior fellow of the Independent Institute — an organization dedicated to building peaceful, prosperous, and free societies — used that quotation in the title of his new book In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace, which offers expert analysis of why “searching for monsters to destroy” around the world is a bad idea.
In fact, this continual “search” advocated by most presidential administrations for more than a century not only has been largely unsuccessful, it has been detrimental to our nation’s prosperity and freedom.
“There tends to be a strong consensus among the political elite in their support for and propagation of American empire,” Coyne observes. This consensus tends to prevail regardless of whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican. Although he pulled back on this impulse to some degree, even President Donald Trump — with his “America First” inclinations — was led to carry out some interventionist actions, such as his bombing of Syria.
The occupation of Afghanistan ended as it began, with the Taliban in control, Coyne laments: “Despite efforts by US political leaders to save face, the reality is that the US government and its foreign policy of military imperialism are the latest victims of the ‘graveyard of empires’ — a label given to Afghanistan following the defeat of superpowers Britain (1839-42, 1919) and the Soviet Union (1979-89).”
And the costs of the U.S. government’s efforts in Afghanistan were substantial. Not only did the war cost the lives of more than 4,000 U.S. military personnel and contractors, but nearly 70,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers were also slain.
When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his rhetoric pleased non-interventionists sick of the repeated deployments and interventions of the Bill Clinton presidency. America needed a “more humble foreign policy,” Bush had argued — yet his administration is most remembered for his own search abroad for “monsters to destroy.”
In an address to Congress on September 20, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush’s goals were grandiose. “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Four years later, in his second inaugural address, Bush even vowed to end all dictatorships around the world.
Afghanistan is only the most recent example of failed U.S. military imperialism, Coyne noted, offering the example of the failure of an Obama administration effort to slay a foreign “monster.” A NATO coalition intervened in Libya, involving the naval and air forces of participants enforcing a no-fly zone to protect rebels, attacking Libyan military targets, and establishing a naval blockade. The operation in Libya lasted about seven months and ended in October after the brutal death of Moammar Gadhafi. It was initially hailed as a success by Western politicians and pundits. In 2011, The New York Times suggested that the “success” in Libya would serve as a template for future military interventions. To the contrary, four years later, the Times wrote that ISIS — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — benefited from the intervention in Libya.
Coyne discusses the various “justifications” for interventions — concern for suffering, spreading freedom and democracy, fixing broken societies through nation-building, and retaliating against perceived threats and enemies. This is not new, of course. President Woodrow Wilson argued for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917 with his claim that “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
The underlying assumption is that a liberal international order cannot emerge spontaneously but requires imperial design and, when necessary, the use of force. These interventionists argue that failed states require nation-building because they undermine a stable international order.
Coyne traces the intellectual origin of the American “Liberal Empire” to the 19th-century idea of Manifest Destiny — the belief that America was meant to expand west, based on a unique set of virtues and a duty to spread them. This was followed by the Spanish-American War, in which the United States intervened in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands due to internal instability associated with the Cuban War of Independence against Spanish colonizers.
President Theodore Roosevelt argued that the United States may be forced, reluctantly, to exercise an “international police power.” This was, Coyne argues, a “tectonic shift.” Instead of focusing on defending her own national borders, the United States would focus on “the broader Western Hemisphere.”
According to Coyne, this new U.S. interventionism in the Western Hemisphere is at least partially responsible for the rise of revolutionary ideology in Latin America, whose people often “view revolution as the only means of change,” leading them to associate capitalism with “a brutal oligarchy-military complex that has been supported by US policies — and armies.”
With the National Security Act of 1947, which restructured the U.S. military and intelligence agencies after WWII, “The imperial national security state and associated deep state — the labyrinth of government agencies, private contractors, and industries associated with the security state — were born,” Coyne concluded.
The U.S. government now self-identified as “the world’s policeman.” One might recall that President Harry Truman said America’s intervention in Korea was not a “war,” but rather a “police action.”
Coyne makes the case that the so-called Deep State acts outside of electoral politics, spanning administrations and government agencies. It provides — and withholds — “crucial information on foreign affairs.… The deep state requires that officials not be constrained by laws because they must be free to respond to unexpected events. This gives rise to rogue actions, rampant illegality, and political opportunism under the guise of advancing the national interest.”
He added that “much of the government spending on what is categorized as ‘defense’ is more often related to political privilege and corporate welfare.”
Most dangerous, Coyne contends, is that a vast military empire, one that is often outside constitutional boundaries, poses a lethal threat to liberty. He cites James Madison, who said, “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
National security provides a focal point for rallying citizens around a common external cause, Coyne believes. “This shared focus diverts citizen attention away from the domestic threat of the state to external threats and affairs.” This was made particularly clear in Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984. In that novel, the ruling oligarchy of Oceania was perpetually at war — supposedly — with foreign powers, thus keeping the populace excited and concerned about foreign threats while their own totalitarian government exercised dictatorial control over them. Some have even speculated that our own elites have used Orwell’s book not as a warning, but as a road map.
“My skepticism, and critique, of empire,” Coyne concludes, “is based on the study of constraints and incentives facing imperialists, as well as a recognition of the negative, illiberal consequences of foreign interventions — including, paradoxically, this real possibility: less freedom and security at home.”
Unfortunately, this desire to go abroad seeking monsters to destroy continues unabated, even though interventionism and nation-building has a long history of failure. “In the wake of the US government’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan in August 2021,” Coyne laments, “there was little self-reflection regarding the realities and limits of American military imperialism. The window of introspection closed with the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, which led to renewed calls for the reassertion of American empire.”
The only way this madness will ever end is if the American people finally say “enough is enough.” This book is certainly a noble effort in that regard.
The New American
Feb 27, 2023
In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace, by Christopher Coyne, Oakland: Independent Institute, 2022, 141 pages, hardcover.
On Independence Day in 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams addressed Congress on the issue of whether the United States should get involved in the internal affairs of foreign nations, or in far-flung international conflicts. He disagreed with those who advocated using direct means — such as military force — to export the American experiment in liberty that was then a marvel of the world.
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be,” Adams said. “But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty.”
These wise words were the prevailing view among America’s Founding Fathers. Christopher Coyne, a senior fellow of the Independent Institute — an organization dedicated to building peaceful, prosperous, and free societies — used that quotation in the title of his new book In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace, which offers expert analysis of why “searching for monsters to destroy” around the world is a bad idea.
In fact, this continual “search” advocated by most presidential administrations for more than a century not only has been largely unsuccessful, it has been detrimental to our nation’s prosperity and freedom.
“There tends to be a strong consensus among the political elite in their support for and propagation of American empire,” Coyne observes. This consensus tends to prevail regardless of whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican. Although he pulled back on this impulse to some degree, even President Donald Trump — with his “America First” inclinations — was led to carry out some interventionist actions, such as his bombing of Syria.
The occupation of Afghanistan ended as it began, with the Taliban in control, Coyne laments: “Despite efforts by US political leaders to save face, the reality is that the US government and its foreign policy of military imperialism are the latest victims of the ‘graveyard of empires’ — a label given to Afghanistan following the defeat of superpowers Britain (1839-42, 1919) and the Soviet Union (1979-89).”
And the costs of the U.S. government’s efforts in Afghanistan were substantial. Not only did the war cost the lives of more than 4,000 U.S. military personnel and contractors, but nearly 70,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers were also slain.
When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his rhetoric pleased non-interventionists sick of the repeated deployments and interventions of the Bill Clinton presidency. America needed a “more humble foreign policy,” Bush had argued — yet his administration is most remembered for his own search abroad for “monsters to destroy.”
In an address to Congress on September 20, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush’s goals were grandiose. “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Four years later, in his second inaugural address, Bush even vowed to end all dictatorships around the world.
Afghanistan is only the most recent example of failed U.S. military imperialism, Coyne noted, offering the example of the failure of an Obama administration effort to slay a foreign “monster.” A NATO coalition intervened in Libya, involving the naval and air forces of participants enforcing a no-fly zone to protect rebels, attacking Libyan military targets, and establishing a naval blockade. The operation in Libya lasted about seven months and ended in October after the brutal death of Moammar Gadhafi. It was initially hailed as a success by Western politicians and pundits. In 2011, The New York Times suggested that the “success” in Libya would serve as a template for future military interventions. To the contrary, four years later, the Times wrote that ISIS — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — benefited from the intervention in Libya.
Coyne discusses the various “justifications” for interventions — concern for suffering, spreading freedom and democracy, fixing broken societies through nation-building, and retaliating against perceived threats and enemies. This is not new, of course. President Woodrow Wilson argued for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917 with his claim that “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
The underlying assumption is that a liberal international order cannot emerge spontaneously but requires imperial design and, when necessary, the use of force. These interventionists argue that failed states require nation-building because they undermine a stable international order.
Coyne traces the intellectual origin of the American “Liberal Empire” to the 19th-century idea of Manifest Destiny — the belief that America was meant to expand west, based on a unique set of virtues and a duty to spread them. This was followed by the Spanish-American War, in which the United States intervened in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands due to internal instability associated with the Cuban War of Independence against Spanish colonizers.
President Theodore Roosevelt argued that the United States may be forced, reluctantly, to exercise an “international police power.” This was, Coyne argues, a “tectonic shift.” Instead of focusing on defending her own national borders, the United States would focus on “the broader Western Hemisphere.”
According to Coyne, this new U.S. interventionism in the Western Hemisphere is at least partially responsible for the rise of revolutionary ideology in Latin America, whose people often “view revolution as the only means of change,” leading them to associate capitalism with “a brutal oligarchy-military complex that has been supported by US policies — and armies.”
With the National Security Act of 1947, which restructured the U.S. military and intelligence agencies after WWII, “The imperial national security state and associated deep state — the labyrinth of government agencies, private contractors, and industries associated with the security state — were born,” Coyne concluded.
The U.S. government now self-identified as “the world’s policeman.” One might recall that President Harry Truman said America’s intervention in Korea was not a “war,” but rather a “police action.”
Coyne makes the case that the so-called Deep State acts outside of electoral politics, spanning administrations and government agencies. It provides — and withholds — “crucial information on foreign affairs.… The deep state requires that officials not be constrained by laws because they must be free to respond to unexpected events. This gives rise to rogue actions, rampant illegality, and political opportunism under the guise of advancing the national interest.”
He added that “much of the government spending on what is categorized as ‘defense’ is more often related to political privilege and corporate welfare.”
Most dangerous, Coyne contends, is that a vast military empire, one that is often outside constitutional boundaries, poses a lethal threat to liberty. He cites James Madison, who said, “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
National security provides a focal point for rallying citizens around a common external cause, Coyne believes. “This shared focus diverts citizen attention away from the domestic threat of the state to external threats and affairs.” This was made particularly clear in Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984. In that novel, the ruling oligarchy of Oceania was perpetually at war — supposedly — with foreign powers, thus keeping the populace excited and concerned about foreign threats while their own totalitarian government exercised dictatorial control over them. Some have even speculated that our own elites have used Orwell’s book not as a warning, but as a road map.
“My skepticism, and critique, of empire,” Coyne concludes, “is based on the study of constraints and incentives facing imperialists, as well as a recognition of the negative, illiberal consequences of foreign interventions — including, paradoxically, this real possibility: less freedom and security at home.”
Unfortunately, this desire to go abroad seeking monsters to destroy continues unabated, even though interventionism and nation-building has a long history of failure. “In the wake of the US government’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan in August 2021,” Coyne laments, “there was little self-reflection regarding the realities and limits of American military imperialism. The window of introspection closed with the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, which led to renewed calls for the reassertion of American empire.”
The only way this madness will ever end is if the American people finally say “enough is enough.” This book is certainly a noble effort in that regard.
