Why Interventionism Fails

The complexity conundrum
by Justin Raimondo

Aggressive wars are immoral: mass murder is unforgivable, and our foreign policy of global interventionism puts us in the same moral class as any of the European imperialist powers that blundered their way through Africa, Eastasia, the Americas, and the Middle East. Anti-imperialism is, first and foremost, a moral position, especially for Americans, who have always utilized the world stage to dramatize their own virtue.

Yet the question of how, when, and if we ought to intervene abroad, either militarily or in some other, less obtrusive manner, can also be settled in its own terms. The case against interventionism can be made in a purely practical, empirical framework: i.e. it can be shown that it just doesn't work. Not because the wrong people are in charge, not due to incompetence, the wearing of ideological blinders, or some other disability or shortcoming on the part of policymakers – but because it is simply not possible, no matter who is in charge.

What rules out any really effective foreign intervention, either military or economic (i.e. taxpayer-funded "aid" programs of one sort or another), is the sheer complexity of the terrain we find ourselves on. There are just too many factors to fit comfortably into convenient equations, too many layers of historical debris to uncover and clear away, too many ancient disputes that can only be dimly understood by outsiders. The common complaint, by war critics and the neocons, is that there wasn't enough "planning" done by the administration, that insufficient resources made available to the Iraq war effort, etc., etc. Yet no amount of resources deployed under the constraints of even the most meticulous, well-thought-out plan can achieve what we set out to do in Iraq, i.e. create a stable democratic ally, or even a stable replacement for the despotism we upended.

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