Monday, April 3, 2017

MUST READ: US Military Should Get Out of the Middle East



By Jeffrey D. Sachs

It’s time to end US military engagements in the Middle East. Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings — the whole nine yards. Over and done with. That might seem impossible in the face of ISIS, terrorism, Iranian ballistic missiles, and other US security interests, but a military withdrawal from the Middle East is by far the safest path for the United States and the region. That approach has instructive historical precedents.

America has been no different from other imperial powers in finding itself ensnared repeatedly in costly, bloody, and eventually futile overseas wars. From the Roman empire till today, the issue is not whether an imperial army can defeat a local one. It usually can, just as the United States did quickly in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The issue is whether it gains anything by doing so. Following such a “victory,” the imperial power faces unending heavy costs in terms of policing, political instability, guerilla war, and terrorist blowback.


Terrorism is a frequent consequence of imperial wars and imperial rule. Local populations are unable to defeat the imperial powers, so they impose high costs through terror instead. Consider the terrorism used by Jewish settlers against the British Empire and local Palestinians in their fight for Israel’s independence and territory; or Serbian terrorism deployed against the Hapsburg Empire; or Vietnamese terrorism used against the French and United States in Vietnam’s long war for independence; or American terrorism, for that matter, that independence fighters used against the British in America’s war of independence.

This is of course not to condone terrorism. Indeed, my point is to condemn imperial rule, and to argue for political solutions rather than imperial oppression, war, and the terror that comes in its wake. Imperial rulers, whether the British in pre-independence America; the Americans in Cuba and the Philippines after 1898; the French and Americans in Vietnam; and the United States in the Middle East in recent decades, foment violent reactions that destroy peace, prosperity, good governance, and hope. The real solutions to these conflicts lie in diplomacy and political justice, not in imperial rule, repression, and terror.

Let me get some verbiage out of the way. By “empire” I mean a state that uses force to impose the rulers of another country. Empires are most visible when they rule directly through conquest and annexation, such as in the US conquests of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico at the end of the 19th century. Yet empires also rule indirectly, when they use force, covert or overt, to depose a government they deem hostile and replace it with a government of their design and that they intend to be under their control.

Indirect rule has been the more typical US approach, for example when America overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953 in order to impose the autocratic Shah of Iran. Similarly, America toppled the Taliban-led government of Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003, in order to install regimes friendly to the United States Easier said than done. In all of these cases, the American imperial vision proved to be a fantasy, and the US-led violence came to naught in terms of US interests.

In fact, there are dozens of cases in which the CIA or American military has overthrown governments in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, with the aim of indirect rule. And there are also countless bloody cases, such as Syria and Yemen today, where the United States and local allies tried and failed to overthrow a government and instead fomented a prolonged war. Whether the overthrows have succeeded or failed, the long-term consequences have almost always been violence and instability.

Read the rest here.

4 comments:

  1. Are you sure this wasn't published on April 1st? Jeffery Freekin Sachs?? He's Jewish, right? What about poor little Israel with her paltry 600 nukes (or however many). Why she's surrounded by Palestinian kids with BOTTLE ROCKETS!! The horror!
    So maybe the Trump thing is allowing space for the left to go back to foreign policy sanity? Oh, pleeze pleeze make it so!

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  2. Sachs is from the same Jewish Detroit suburb of Detroit that I am, but 3 years younger. He grew up in the Jewish area. I was one of 8 Methodists living in the Catholic area. He is also a solid “establishment” voice and a climate change fanatic. Perhaps it might now be OK to be antiwar and a climate change fanatic.

    Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and author of “The Age of Sustainable Development.”

    Someone should explain to Mr. Sachs that government intervention in domestic affairs and the economy is analogous to government intervention in foreign affairs. “Sustainable development” results from a private property society with sound money, honest pricing of resources, strict liability for pollution and a non-corrupt legal system. And where Mr. Sachs probably won’t be in charge.

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  3. He neglected to mention Egypt. And the beat goes on ba-da-dum-dum-dum-ba-da...

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