How many wars is the United States fighting right now?
Well, one answer is zero.
Under the Constitution, Congress must declare war, and the last countries that Congress
declared war on were Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, members of the Axis powers.
That was in 1942.
That’s right – the United States has not declared war on any country since 1942.
Eight decades, zero wars.
America must be one of the most peaceful countries on earth!
But as you know, that’s not the reality.
America is still fighting wars around the world; it just doesn’t want to call them
wars.
In recent years, the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan,
Somalia, Syria, and Yemen – seven different countries, and those are just the ones the
Pentagon officially acknowledges.
The actual scope of American warmaking is wider.
Researchers at Brown University recently counted 14 countries in which U.S. troops were engaged
in combat to fight terrorism.
And then there are the forces the United States stations indefinitely overseas, as part of
a massive network of allies and partners.
Take the Middle East: U.S. troops number around 13,000 in Kuwait, another 13,000 in Qatar,
and 7,000 in Bahrain.
Around 78,000 remain in Japan and South Korea.
And that’s not even getting to Germany, Djibouti, Cuba, Romania, and so on.
In all, America stations about TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND service members overseas, because
it has committed them to protect, by force, about ONE THIRD of all the countries in the
world.
Where does that leave the other two-thirds, home to most of humanity?
The answer is on the receiving end.
Over the last 20 years, the United States has dropped an average of 46 bombs and missiles
on other countries EACH DAY.
In 2016, Barack Obama’s last year in office, the United States dropped upwards of 26,000
bombs on seven countries.
But not to worry.
America’s coercive power is not supposed to be for “war.”
It’s for “military-led operations,” or “police actions,” or “humanitarian
interventions.”
Bombings are “surgical strikes.”
And of course, there’s the “collateral damage” – a term the U.S. military created
during the Vietnam War as a euphemism for dead, innocent people.
At least America used to have a Department of War, calling it what it was.
But in 1949, the “Department of Defense” was born, and the American military establishment
began to pioneer a language of sterile obfuscation to describe the brutal realities of war.
The problem goes well beyond language.
Over decades, America has PERFECTED the art of isolating itself from the wars it wages.
On TV, wars play out like simple dramas: us versus them, with no blood and no casualties,
unless they’re inflicted by the enemy.
Americans rarely see images of combat.
To judge from most broadcasts, war involves firing missiles into the sky and admiring
“the beauty of our weapons,” to quote one anchor.
And the PEOPLE America sends to war are increasingly separated from the rest of society.
Since the draft ended in the 1970s, the government moved to an all-volunteer force, and relies
as much as possible on technology, like drones, that keep American casualties to a minimum.
So the wars America conducts take place largely outside of public view.
It was only when four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger in 2017 that many Americans learned
that WE HAD TROOPS THERE in the first place.
Although the system perpetuates itself like a self-licking ice cream cone, U.S. leaders
have a theory of the case.
Military dominance, they say, is supposed to achieve “peace through strength.”
This theory guided American leaders in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union fell, leaving
the United States with undisputed power.
During the Cold War, the United States built an apparatus of military alliances and bases
to contain Soviet Communism.
Once the Soviet enemy collapsed, America had an opportunity to scale back its military
footprint, invest the gains at home, and let other countries manage their own affairs.
But instead of pulling back, planners in the Pentagon vowed to maintain a “predominant
military position” so great as to prevent any potential rival from even “aspiring”
to a larger role in their regions.
No one would dare to take their own initiative — not even U.S. allies, who would stay subordinate
to the United States.
The result?
Of all the times the United States has used armed force since 1946, roughly 80 percent
of those interventions have taken place AFTER 1991.
That’s right: the United States has used force more frequently after the Cold War than
during it, and it’s not even close.
Despite the promise of “peace through strength,” peace has NOT come.
Quite the contrary.
Armed supremacy, assumed to ensure peace, has produced endless war.
In the 1990s, the United States began to station tens of thousands of soldiers in the Middle
East.
Suddenly it found a CAVALCADE of enemies in the region who resisted American aims.
Take Afghanistan.
After 9/11, the United States did not merely go after the terrorists responsible for the
attack and punish their sponsors.
Instead, America tried to transform Afghanistan.
It set out to build a brand new, Western-style centralized state, applying what was supposed
to be overwhelming strength to impose peace.
It soon became clear that, in the words of the lieutenant general who for six years was
the White House’s chief advisor on the war, quote, “we didn’t know what we were doing.”
The U.S. tried to build Afghan security forces, only to find they couldn’t do the job.
The U.S. tried to build a “thriving market economy,” only to see the OPIUM TRADE become
the ONLY thriving part of the Afghan economy.
The U.S. tried to build a liberal democracy, but in doing so empowered warlords and fueled
corruption.
So the Taliban mounted an insurgency and made steady gains.
Now the Taliban controls the country and enjoys its strongest position since the war began
in 2001.
War has come to appear normal, inescapable, eternal.
It has no declared beginning, and no end in sight.
That’s what makes them ENDLESS wars -- not just that they are long, but also that they
lack a worthy and achievable purpose.
The United States has trapped itself.
Pursuing military dominance has generated unnecessary enemies.
These enemies, in turn, have made dominance costlier and more dangerous.
That’s why year after year, the United States seems to grow ever more threatened, and ever
less safe — according to the very leaders RESPONSIBLE for that result!
It’s as though the most powerful nation on earth has no control over its conduct — no
choice but to keep spending more on the military than the next 11 countries COMBINED.
As Americans struggle to address urgent needs at home, their government has committed them
to the endless defense of places across the world – places we often make MORE dangerous.
Instead of strengthening ourselves and helping to build a world safe for diversity, we’ve
chosen to build an empire, or something all too close.
And if we continue the quest for dominance, the consequences will get even worse.
And we will ALL be weaker for it.
I’m Stephen Wertheim, Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute, for the
Gravel Institute.