Why American reluctance endangers the world

COMMENT

United States intelligence services now agree that Syria’s President Bashar al Assad probably used chemical weapons on rebels inside the country. Yet despite Washington’s rhetoric about the Syrian regime crossing a “red line”, it has not moved any closer to intervening in the bloody conflict.

Many people are morally disappointed with US inaction in the Levant. The expectation felt by moral citizens everywhere is that American military force should be used rightly to defend the weak and downtrodden.

What better use is there for a democratic country’s troops than to stop evil men? Standing idly by as Mr al Assad slaughters his own people is morally outrageous, and now with the potential use of chemical weapons Washington’s continued inertia is surely unforgivable.

The reality is that Washington has learned much about fighting unending land wars in Asia over the past decade.

The moral thing for it to do in Syria would be to intervene and stop the bloodshed. But doing so would be ignoring the lessons of history.

That Washington has not, and probably will not, send an occupying force to Syria to quell the violence can at least in part be explained by US history. Going to war is easy – withdrawing is the difficult part.

What is truly frightening about discussions in Washington is that the reluctance to remain aloof in the Levant might encourage a gradual rolling up of US security interaction in other parts of the world, too.

Don’t ignore the lessons of history

America looks at Syria and remembers its pain of the last decade. It remembers the costs of grabbing the metaphorical broom to sweep evil from the earth. And now America’s decade of war winds down into a disperse, low-intensity, isolated conflict Washington is responding by disengaging slowly from the world again.

US inaction in Syria is worrying, but the issue is deeper than the way it is portrayed in the media. America these days is more than happy to let the world sort itself out – to an extent.

But is this really good for the world?

A huge part of power and control is in appearing to others to actually have that power and be in control. At the state level, a nation’s military record of victory speaks louder than the potential strength of its armed forces. In a similar way, parking an expensive car in the driveway is only a possession if that vehicle never roars around a racetrack.

The way things are looking in Washington, Syria might not be the last foreign conflict America refuses to become involved in. And plenty of other simmering regions around the world are watching and waiting.

Why are they watching?

It pays to remember that American military power is an enormously important stabilising glue, which in many ways holds the globalised world system together.

Like it or not, America makes it possible for nations to trade over the world’s oceans freely and without fear of rampant piracy or blackmail by recalcitrant states. The US Navy patrols the oceans every day of the year, at its own expense, so other trading nations do not have to allocate their own resources to do so.

Because the US offers explicit and implicit security guarantees to thisworld system, developed countries like New Zealand do not need to spend their own money on a large military.

Empire by any other name

Washington picks up the defence tab daily. If it were to significantly decrease this spending and remove overseas troops from host countries, the global system would shake.

For example, there is a barely contained aggression on the Korean peninsula. Thousands of American troops stationed there help deter the North are enough to preclude war, but Pyongyang still rattles its sabres regularly enough that removing American forces would tip the balance considerably against the South.

To take another example, reducing US naval patrols could loosen constraints around other Asian countries, heightening tensions as they each race to establish their own military dominance. Some nations claim mutually strategic territorial waters in the South and East China seas but dares increase pressure in today’s environment.

It may not be immediately obvious, but the American military achieves humanitarian good daily. The US occasionally blunders into poorly-conceived wars, but significant pain and suffering is more often avoided these days so young American troops do not have to give up their best years in foreign countries.

No matter what one thinks of the US, the global system can really only remain an interconnected one if America maintains an engaged military and appropriate foreign policies.

After all, the alternative to today’s uni-polar world is not a bi-polar world. The reality would be a multi-polar world in which each nation struggles to control its own patch.

Much more suffering would arise from this and, thankfully, such horrors largely do not haunt our lives. The US deserves at least some recognition for our present security, not scorn at inaction in the Levant.

Nathan Smith has a Bachelor of Communications in Journalism from Massey University and has studied international relations and conflict.