In the mid 80s Weinberger offered a list of several restrictive conditions he wanted to see met before the US should intervene militarily (vital national interests at stake, clear objectives, public support, etc.). Summarizing the approach of the US armed forces to the Gulf War, Powell offered a similar but simpler version (overwhelming force, clear objective, etc.). Both were designed to prevent a replay of Vietnam and Beirut 82, and to ensure supposedly clean victories like the one over Iraq. After the Somalia debacle, a new concept--that of an "exit strategy"--was added to the list of things that should supposedly be in place before going in.
Although Weinberger's and Powell's concepts were slightly different, and neither mentioned exit strategies, all of these were motivated by the same thing--a desire to avoid messy, open-ended foreign entanglements--and so are often put into the same basket, sometimes called Weinberger-Powell and sometimes just Powell. Those interested in thinking clearly about intervention might want to check out Richard Haass' book Intervention, which contains both Weinberger's and Powell's texts as appendices.
As for the Schwartz review of the Boot and Cohen books, I thought it was a hatchet job--particularly with reference to Cohen. I mean, it's entirely appropriate to say that Boot is trying to reclaim an earlier, more interventionist approach to foreign policy and use it to support a more aggressive stance today. Boot himself is very clear about that. And it's fair to point out that Boot takes a rosier view of some of these earlier conflicts than others might (although he's hardly the hack Schwarz implies).
It's also true that Cohen supports a more aggressive approach now, one that is broadly similar to Boot's. But Cohen's book is not at all potted history designed to push a current foreign policy agenda. It's a serious study of how democracies manage the fighting of wars, and Cohen has forgotten more about strategy and military history than Schwartz ever learned.
Schwartz is a smart guy, and a good writer, and is entitled to his (left isolationist) views on what America's role in the world today should be. But Boot and Cohen are correct that the post-Vietnam-Lebanon-Somalia conventional wisdom that we all take for granted is in fact historically unusual.
I gather there will be a good summary and discussion of Cohen's argument by the first-rate British scholar Lawrence Freedman in the next issue of FA, which should be a more balanced and authoritative treatment.
tb@doctrinaire.com |
