Once again, there is a foment in world affairs. In response to a fatal attack on a U.S. military base in Jordan by an Iranian “suicide” drone, the Pentagon has responded with waves of air strikes.
But the situation has cooled. It appears that both Tehran and the United States are reluctant to trigger a larger, more direct confrontation. This is good news. It is also an opportunity to think, and act, before there is a “next time.”
Retaliation from the U.S. was a given. A failure to do so would invite more such attacks; there are just too many Americans serving abroad to fail to put Iran and its proxies on notice.
The breadth and ubiquity of America’s presence abroad is a key problem, however. The issue is so extremely simple, and obvious, that Americans keep overlooking it. Interventionism creates instability and invites attacks on Americans that the United States must then address.
Things that occur far from America’s shores are inevitably close to others. As we project power abroad in many, many places, we enter other people’s neighborhoods, places where we are strangers and our adversaries have natural advantages. These are also places that by their nature are much more important to others than they are to Americans.
Imagine for a moment that the U.S. troops that were, and are, in Jordan, on the border with Syria, were instead stationed elsewhere, some place in, or at the very least much closer to, the United States. It would be highly unlikely that they would be attacked by Iranian-sponsored militants. The United States would then not be compelled to strike Iran, or its surrogates.
This is not to say that Iran is our friend. Far from it. The objectives of the Iranian regime are clearly at odds with much that the United States espouses. But there is not much Iran can do to thwart the United States in places that are crucial to U.S. interests. Conversely, a fair amount of what Iran cares about is not that important to the United States. For example, Iran is experiencing heightened tensions with its eastern neighbor, Pakistan. Both nations have been at odds with Washington for various reasons in recent years. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the United States has little interest in joining either side in such a contest, should it escalate.
It is a feature of being in the middle of someone else’s fight that you will often be attacked from both (or all) sides, at inopportune moments, in an awkward manner, while managing (at best) only to further the interests of others. Again and again in the Middle East, the United States has been that third party, playing to another’s tune, instead of pursuing its own national interest.
For now, we are stuck with what we have blundered into. We have to meet force with force. But we have a chance once again to learn a lesson and do better next time. Adopting a posture of reacting to others is almost never the best way to conduct foreign policy and no amount of bombing and invading makes a place more peaceful, as America has demonstrated too often.
There is a simple, potent principle capable of healing a vast, recurrent, pernicious dynamic in U.S. foreign policy: inaction. Most people think that power must be exercised to be useful. This is devastatingly incorrect. The real luxury of being a “great power” is our ability not to act. Most nations do what they must; they operate in crowded regions, cheek-by-jowl with others that do more than wish them harm. They must thus function in circumstances, and with resources, that force them to react to the aggression of their neighbors. They are playthings of history.
But the United States is blessed with non-threatening neighbors and two vast oceans separate us from Eurasia. When we exercise judgement, and restraint, we are able to choose the time and place of our confrontations with others. Indeed, we are free to decide which set of adversaries we want to confront. The debate over U.S. foreign policy (scholars call this “grand strategy”) has been about which nations or groups the United States should oppose, where, and when.
But we hand this discretion about U.S. grand strategy and the exercise of force to others when we send young Americans to hang out in too many distant lands, places where the U.S. military is often unwelcome and where the issues at stake are much more salient to others.
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Let us as a nation stop blundering into conflicts triggered by others. Our geography and power provide us with the luxury, and ability, to retain the initiative if we so choose through a strategy of inaction. This involves serious, and proactive, questioning about whether stationing troops in places where they can more easily be attacked is best for the national interest. It will of course make sense at times to project power abroad. But often this is more trouble than it is worth.
Too often, U.S. foreign policy is simply, foolishly, reactive. Because of this, we have spent too much time, energy, good will, and blood on futile expeditionary efforts, triggered by others, rather than chosen – carefully and deliberately – by ourselves. In too many corners of the world some trivial group or petty potentate can direct the full might of American power just by killing a few Americans who have been needlessly deployed in harm’s way. This happened in Mogadishu. It happened with Al Qaeda. It will happen again, soon. Hit the stop button on excessive, ubiquitous foreign deployments now, before there is a “next time.”
Erik Gartzke is professor of political science and director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the University of California at San Diego.