Liberal Hawks - Doing It Wrong

By Steve Hynd

Our own Eric Martin, writing at his home base Obsidian Wings today, has an absolute must-read post exploring America's overly militarized foreign policy in the context of "liberal inteventionism". Liberal hawks, he says, are doing it wrong:

Leaving aside the issue of the massive loss of life and maiming physical injuries suffered by the target population, if helping foreign people is a motivating force in informing foreign policy decisions, it is simply much, much easier and cheaper to do so in ways that don't involve using the U.S. military in an aggressive capacity (or at all). Why don't we fully exhaust the myriad opportunities to do so in non-violent ways before we even ponder if and when to bomb a given people for their own good. 

For example, malaria kills vastly more people than terrorism (and is particularly malignant for children under 5 years old in Africa), and the weapons needed to combat this disease with a high degree of efficacy (mosquito nets) are cheap and easy to distribute.  Yet there is much less "serious" debate and advocacy for taking easy, cheap, safe measures such as distributing nets amongst the liberal hawk set that is, instead, enamored with imagining new and better ways to use military force for the good of the [INSERT HERE] people.

As alluded to above, the added advantage of non-bellicose humanitarian interventions are manifold: For one, they don't involve killing people, but rather saving lives.  Second, the local population tends to appreciate the foreign intervention, rather than react with violent blowback. For example, as seen with US humanitarian aid to Indonesia post-tsunami, helping people in ways that don't involve killing their neighbors, surprisingly, yields positive results in terms of generating good will. 

Finally, as mentioned above, the costs are lower and, importantly, the outcomes are easier to predict and effectuate, whereas war is the mother of unintended consequences and ephemeral, transient successes - if that.

There's not a word in Eric's post I'd disagree with, but in passing I'd like to mention that Europe is looking to lead the way in a "wingtips on the ground" strategy that delivers humanitarian assistance without green uniforms and assault rifles.

In the wake of severe flooding in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and the earthquake in Haiti, French President Nicolas Sarkozy Sunday called for the establishment of an EU disasters rapid reaction force.

In a letter to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, released on Sunday evening, Sarkozy said that amid such natural catastrophes "we must take the necessary measures and build a real EU reaction force ... that draws on the resources of the member states."

France is to make a concrete suggestion for such a force in the near future, the statement said.

In a multi-polar world where Afghanistan has exposed NATO's charter as less than ironclad, expect the world's liberal democracies to look for ways that maximise their influence without expensive armed force being involved. This is one way.