If there’s anything close to a bipartisan consensus these days, it’s the idea that the righteous anger in America over the 9/11 terror attacks devolved into reckless military adventurism. It is almost taken as a truism that, in the Bush era, disastrous choices were made that set the country on a costly war footing for a decade and a half. “Forever wars” has become the colloquial shorthand for the kind of conflicts the Bush administration led us into and the foreign policy approach behind them.
Well, we are now in the fifth post-Bush presidential term, with each term being filled by a President who has promised to end forever wars. Yet somehow, they keep happening. The Obama era saw the beginning of a decade-long civil war in Syria, the sudden rise of the Islamic State caliphate, the Crimean Conflict (the early beginnings of the Ukrainian War), and the descent of Libya into anarchy. The first Trump term saw the American intervention into Syria to end the threat of the Islamic State and the early skirmishes of the conflict in Iran that we are now fully engaged in. Biden’s single term in office saw the launch of the Ukrainian War, one of the most devastating direct conflicts since World War II, and it’s showing no signs of ending soon. And now, America is enmeshed in a conflict with Iran that doesn’t seem to have an off-ramp, and that could escalate even further at the slightest provocation.
So, how does everyone—political candidates, pundits, officeholders, special interests, and constituencies—who have so thoroughly and straightforwardly criticized and denounced George W. Bush for his “reckless” entangling of American interests in “forever wars” so completely fail to avoid the creation of more forever wars? If we’re ever going to get back to a place where we have a consistent and strong foreign policy doctrine, that is the real question we need to confront.
For my part, I think that while the Bush years had several crucial errors in strategic thought, there is nevertheless a pretty complete misunderstanding of what led America into forever wars and how to avoid them. And all the various ideas out there that propose to avoid serious conflict abroad have failed and are failing, either because they are gross overcorrections or because they are built on ideological priors attempting to use the longevity of the War on Terror as a pretext for dismissing the Pax Americana.
Forever wars clearly haven’t been avoided by leading from behind, through multilateralism and international governance, through over-the-horizon power, or through establishing spheres of influence. They definitely haven’t been avoided through the pipedream that America can retreat to its shores and pretend that a) the global economy isn’t a complicated and overlapping reality that America can’t just wall itself off from and that b) the vacuum created by the absence of an American forward presence won’t be filled by belligerent actors working against American interests and destabilizing regions.
What does a foreign policy look like that fearlessly defends Americans and American interests, establishes peace through strength, deters threats against us from both major powers and non-government actors, but avoids getting entangled in forever wars? I contend it is one that adopts a posture of strategic prudence with unyielding force when force is necessary.
We shouldn’t be “Team America: World Police.” But neither should we be a passive target for the world’s destabilizing forces. Weakness and uncertainty invite conflict, engender instability, and send a signal to the enemies of peace and freedom that they can act with impunity. And that’s why we have found ourselves in forever wars even when the stated policy of presidential administrations since 2009 has been “no more forever wars.” We thought to avoid forever wars by taking half measures, flinching away from standing with regional allies, and trying to break bread with those who wish to break our neck. We have kept the actual errors of the Bush years while jettisoning the aspects of Bushism that actually stood on solid ground.
George Washington said, “to be prepared for war is the most effectual means of preserving peace,” echoing the old Roman saying, Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war). All through our history, this sentiment has perpetuated. Whether it’s TR’s advice to “speak softly and carry a big stick” or Ronald Reagan’s simple adage of “peace through strength,” America has always maintained peace, prosperity, and freedom through being slow to war but quick to wage it decisively and win when war is upon us. This is the principle that has been lost in those periods of time when the conflicts we have involved ourselves in drag on, with no end in sight, no clear path to victory, and no understanding of what victory even looks like.
George W. Bush did not consign us hopelessly into the pit of forever wars by daring to strike back at those who attacked us on 9/11, nor by overthrowing a corrupt despot who had built and used chemical weapons in the past and who had offered his oppressed country as a training ground for more terrorist attacks (military action in both Afghanistan and Iraq was actually supported overwhelmingly by the American people at the time). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan devolved into what they became because of errors on the ground, half-measures, and the pipedreams of political advisors.
They didn’t become forever wars because we were willing to engage, because we committed ground troops, or because our strategies were too bold. If those things are what create forever wars, then we should have been embroiled in forever wars in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s, and in Kuwait and Kosovo in the 1990s. If those things are what create forever wars, then our involvement in World War I shouldn’t have been less than two years and our involvement in World War II less than four years. None of those conflicts became forever wars, even though we engaged in direct military action, committed ground troops, and took strong and decisive action. In fact, I would contend that those very things are what helped avoid forever wars. Our enemies were either made to know that we meant business, or they were destroyed.
What America has actually done since the Bush years is retreat to a time of doctrinal uncertainty. The reflexive frustration with the Bush doctrine led to throwing out the Reagan doctrine along with it, as we embraced, mostly unknowingly, the Nixon and Carter doctrines. It should be no surprise, then, that we are finding ourselves in a 1979 moment, or that this moment is being punctuated by a contentious interaction with radicals in Iran.
We cannot retreat from the world, because too many forces arrayed across the world have crosshairs trained on us. If and when we try to retreat, they see such retrenchment as an invitation. We get pulled kicking and screaming back into conflict, and when we respond with half measures, we set the stage for forever wars.
And I fear that this will remain the status quo for the time being. Because how can we expect our enemies to be certain of American decisive action when its interests and its people are attacked, if America is uncertain of itself? Deterrence is the surest means of maintaining peace, and decisive, overwhelming action is the surest path toward winning a war and re-establishing peace. But neither deterrence nor decisive, overwhelming force is possible when a country ties its own hands behind its back, sets its own strategic limitations, and takes options off the board, when its enemies are more certain of what a country won’t do than what it will do.
Until America finds a way to get its mojo back, we can expect the era of forever wars to continue.
