Iatrogenic warfare

In a Newsweek cover story that is the first we've seen in the major media to make this point, Jeff Stein and Jonathan Broder note: 

To be sure, the United States won the Cold War without battling Soviet troops. But since its humiliating defeat in Vietnam, America has engaged in a string of significant military conflicts and emerged the clear winner in only two—ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 and bombing Serbia to the negotiating table in 1995. More recently, even quick, dramatic triumphs in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned into grinding guerrilla wars, the seeds of which sprouted into the Islamic State, or ISIS. So on the 40th anniversary of Saigon’s collapse, it seems timely to ask: Can America win a war?

It's an issue that we've been raising for about two decades, sometimes referring to it as iatrogenic warfare i.e. when military action harms the country that it is meant to be defending. Back in 1999, for example, the Progressive Review noted:

It may help add some perspective to the present troubles if we bear in mind that the jewel in the crown of post-World War II American military action was the invasion of Granada. Otherwise, from Korea and Vietnam to Somalia and Iraq, the record has not been impressive. Even in Panama we have left the drug lords in charge.

This is not because the American military is incompetent; it is often, in fact, too good for our own good. Bernard Fall, early in the Vietnam conflict, noted this ironic contradiction. He pointed out that while the French, after Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave SE Asia, the economic, technological, and military might of the US allowed it to keep making mistakes indefinitely without suffering serious consequences.

Now, once again American politicians have succumbed to the allure of airborne military hardware as a substitute for actual policy. They are led by a Don Juan in military as well as sexual matters who has set something of a recent record for gratuitous overseas adventures. From the carpet of the Oval Office to the carpet bombing of the Balkans, Clinton displays a taste for the reckless that, thrilling as it may be for him, should scare the hell out of us.

Combine presidential pathology, massive propaganda, and a media that believes objectivity stops at the bomb-bay door, and you've got a problem. But even brush aside all of these factors and you still have a problem, namely that we spend hundreds of billions developing our capacity to make war and hardly anything developing our capacity to make peace.

What would a peace-centered policy look like? Some of the components would include stopping the bombing, using third parties to negotiate, avoiding the demonization of disputants, bringing back international observers, providing honest broadcast and print information (including debates between the parties) to replace the propaganda all side are fed, and using economic aid to encourage those involved to look towards the future rather than to the past.

Peace-making requires entirely different mindsets, paradigms, and even bureaucracies. It doesn't help having a secretary of state who once asked Colin Powell what was the point of having a modern military if you didn't use it. And it certainly requires a different budget.