Why is U.S. foreign policy so militarized.
James Joyner had a good piece in the Atlantic last week asking why perpetual war became an American ideology:
The passionate zeal of the liberal interventionists and neoconservatives satisfies an emotional hunger that has been a part of our political system since the emotion-laden days of the Cold War, when the public first came to view U.S. foreign policy as a tool of good to be deployed against evil. Both ideologies use the language of morality and appeal to our shared humanity. People want to do something about tragedy and it's easy to persuade them that doing the right thing will be worthwhile. Realists may often be right, but they are rarely convincing.
I think that's right, but something's missing. I don't think we can explain the post-Cold War interventionist streak in U.S. foreign policy in just ideological terms, although I think the notion of "American leadership" has played an important role in pushing the U.S. in this direction. As Joyner notes, the disappearance of the Soviet Union left the U.S. without a competitor to push back against various foreign adventures, but I think there's more to it. When it comes to national security policy, Washington has engaged in the same kind of corporate book-cooking that would make Goldman Sachs proud. In other words, America has done a lot of "off balance sheet" accounting in the national security realm, all in an effort to shield the voter and tax payer from the true costs of various policy pursuits.
First, there is the sidelining of Congress in decisions of war and peace (a sidelining which they have all too enthusiastically consented to). Rather than a serious debate, the executive branch positions interventions as a fait accompli. No one takes seriously the idea that Congress should "declare war" before troops are dispersed. Second, there's a refusal to pay for wars by raising taxes. During the Bush years, we ran a guns and butter economy, with generous social spending and tax cuts, all while prosecuting two major ground wars. Third, there has been a refusal to resource counter-insurgency efforts by expanding the Army through conscription. There are good arguments against a draft, but surely one reason Washington has assiduously avoided the subject, despite the strain on manpower, is that it would make an interventionist foreign policy much harder to sustain.
