Will America ever again be at peace? Pressure is building for the U.S. again to intervene in Libya.

Less than three years after Libya’s civil war the country has ceased to exist. This debacle offers a clear lesson for American policymakers. But denizens of Washington seem never to learn.

The administration presented the issue as one of humanitarian intervention, to save the people of Benghazi from slaughter at the hands of Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy.

Although he was a nasty character, he had slaughtered no one when his forces reclaimed other territory. In Benghazi he only threatened those who had taken up arms against him.

In fact, the allies never believed their rhetoric. They immediately shifted their objective from civilian protection to slow motion regime change. Thousands died in the low-tech civil war.

Alas, Libya was an artificial nation. When Khadafy died political structure vanished. The country split apart. Today multiple warring factions have divided into two broad coalitions.

“Operation Dignity” is a largely secular grouping including Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s “Libyan National Army” and the internationally recognized government. Last May Haftar launched a campaign against the Islamist militias with covert support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

“Libya Dawn” is a mix of Islamists, moderate to radical, and conservative merchants which now controls Tripoli. They are backed by Qatar, Sudan, and Turkey, and deny that the Islamic State poses much of a threat.

Now Libya has become an ISIL outpost. Three jihadist groups have formally claimed allegiance to the Islamic State. These forces have attacked oil installations, killed journalists, and conducted bombings. Some of these militants were responsible for the murder of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

ISIL’s slaughter of Egyptian Coptic workers triggered retaliatory airstrikes by Cairo, and then new Islamic State attacks. The national wreckage known as Libya is being pulled into the regional sectarian maelstrom.

Obviously, Khadafy’s continued rule would have been no picnic. Nevertheless, he offered an ugly stability which looks better than chaos, civil war, and terrorism. British envoy Jonathan Powell warned of the emergence of “Somalia by the Med.”

In Libya, as with most other failed interventions, war advocates say the problem was that America didn’t stick around. But as I point out on Forbes: “the allies only played a supporting role; the Libyans liberated themselves through their own boots on the ground. The militias fighting now would have resisted any foreign occupation.”

Alas, this disastrous history hasn’t precluded new proposals for Western involvement. Abdullah al-Thinni, Libya’s official prime minister, wants the West back. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi advocated that the UN run a “stronger mission.”

Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe that the second (or third) time would be the charm. The Atlantic Council’s Karim Mezran observed: “There are no good guys or bad guys there—both sides have been acting in bad faith.”

The West naturally favors the internationally recognized government. But intervening against the Islamist-oriented government would make enemies of many Libyans not linked to the Islamic State.

The best outcome would be a national unity government as backed by the U.S. and European governments. But months of mediation have led nowhere.

More practical would be to acquiesce in the partition of what never was an organic nation. In the meantime the West should consider selectively lifting the arms embargo to aid groups likely to combat jihadist forces.

Moreover, Libya’s neighbors should act rather than wait helplessly for Washington to do something. The region’s stability is these nations’ business.

Libya’s collapse has been almost total. But so far no one has been held to account.

As problems metastasize with the rise of ISIL in Libya, however, the American people may be more inclined to critically assess the judgment and competence of Washington policymakers. Voters should hold officials accountable for the disaster they created in Libya.

The Boston Globe kindly published a piece I wrote about the lack of strategy guiding Pentagon spending, but gave it the somewhat misleading title and subtitle: “The Pentagon’s Bloat: Accounting tricks and self-interested politicians ensure that US military spending will remain immune from any real ‘hard choices.’”*

The article doesn’t really bemoan bloat, in the standard sense of wasteful or inefficient pursuit of objectives. It complains about excessive objectives—our overly capacious definition of security—and explains the cause.

My argument is that it would be terrific if Ashton Carter, the new Secretary of Defense, and the military service chiefs were correct in their contention that they cannot execute the U.S. security strategy without exceeding the $499 billion cap that law imposes on 2016 Pentagon spending. They made that claim in requesting a budget that requires raising the cap by $34 billion or eliminating it, another $51 billion for war and relief from future years’ caps.

Our current “strategy” isn’t really one. Strategy, by definition, requires prioritization among competing threats and methods of defending against them. Our government uses that word to rationalize the avoidance of those choices. The primacy theory that best describes our approach to security is really a justification for a log-roll of disparate military interests and goals, most only vaguely related to our safety. A poorer state facing more pressing threats would have to choose among those objectives, which is what strategy does. Poverty demands choices that wealth avoids. And as realists explain, big threats unify preferences, lowering obstacles to strategy formation.

The United States has long been rich and safe enough to minimize choices among defenses and avoid strategy. So we get the phony, listicle sort: recitations of nice things that we hope U.S. military power might accomplish, justified as security objectives. That has the effect of conflating safety with values, and promoting a sense of insecurity.

I argue that the current austerity—the Pentagon budget is down almost 25 percent, in real terms, including the wars, since 2010—will not cause us to change course and pick among allies or region to defend, military services to fund, and possible wars to fight. My article’s subtitle notwithstanding, that’s not because of politicians’ self-interest, which, incidentally, is both desirable and imperishable in a democracy.

I blame three other culprits. One is the monopolistic behavior of the military services. If they competed more for each other’s share of the budget, they might offer alternative strategic concepts. Another is the beliefs of the Pentagon civilians who might encourage that sort of competition. They think interservice conflict is always bad, even though it can enhance their management ability, and embrace primacy. Elsewhere I explain why.

A third culprit is the shallowness of the current austerity. The cuts underway take us only back to about 2004 levels of military spending, and two-thirds of that is just declining war costs. So the pressure to make hard choices in the base (non-war) budget is limited. Plus the uncapped war budgets (Overseas Contingency Operations or OCO funding) increasingly include funds that belong in the base. That “accounting trick” pads the budget against austerity and the need for hard choices. Note also that OCO is, like the 2001 Authorization of Military Force, a tool of executive wars powers. Vague AUMFs provide legal authority for wars presidents want to start without further democratic check; OCO provides the funds. Because wars should be hard to start, we should get rid of both.

These factors lead me to conclude pessimistically:

With a trim here and an accounting trick there, the Department of Defense will muddle along its present course, while elected leaders justify it with paeans about American military power’s indispensability to every pleasant noun that “global” can modify. We that object might take solace in the fact that our hubris is a luxury that our fortune affords. Only blessed nations can worry so much about their safety while confusing it with everything they want.

*An article Justin Logan and I wrote for Orbis a few years ago includes a similar but more developed version of this argument. 

American foreign policy is a bipartisan failure. The U.S. must intervene everywhere all the time, irrespective of consequences?

No matter how disastrous the outcome, promiscuous interventionists insist that the idea was sound. Any problems obviously result from execution, a matter of doing too little: too few troops engaged, too few foreigners killed, too few nations bombed, too few societies transformed, too few countries occupied, too few years involved, too few dollars spent.

As new conflicts rage across the Middle East, the interventionist caucus’ dismal record has become increasingly embarrassing. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a cheerleader for war in Libya, recently defended her actions after being chided on Twitter for being a war-monger. She had authored a celebratory Financial Times article entitled “Why Libya skeptics were proved badly wrong.” Alas, Slaughter’s Mediterranean adventure looks increasingly foolish.

Slightly more abashed is Samantha Power, one of the Obama administration’s chief Sirens of War. She recently pleaded with the public not to let constant failure get in the way of future wars: “I think there is too much of, ‘Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought’ … one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons.” Just because the policy of constant war had been a constant bust, people shouldn’t be more skeptical about a military “solution” for future international problems.

President Barack Obama also appears to be a bit embarrassed by his behavior. The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been as active militarily as his much-maligned predecessor.

Yet in 2013 he admitted that “I was elected to end wars, not to start them.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself when he added: “I’ve spent the last four and a half years doing everything I can to reduce our reliance on military power.”

The two parties usually attempt to one-up each other when it comes to reckless overseas intervention. Yet Uncle Sam has demonstrated that he possesses the reverse Midas Touch. Whatever he touches turns to mayhem.

In the Balkans the U.S. replaced ethnic cleansing with ethnic cleansing and set a precedent for Russian intervention in Georgia and Ukraine. In Afghanistan the U.S. rightly defenestrated the Taliban but then spent 13 years unsuccessfully attempting to remake that tribal nation.

Invading Iraq to destroy nonexistent WMDs cost the lives of 4500 Americans and 200,000 Iraqis, wrecked Iraqi society, loosed radical furies now embodied in the Islamic State, and empowered Iran. Bombing Libya prolonged a low-tech civil war killing thousands, released weapons throughout the region, triggered a prolonged power struggle, and offered another home for ISIL killers.

As I point out on Forbes online: “Not only has virtually every bombing, invasion, occupation, and other interference made problems worse. Almost every new intervention is an attempt to redress problems created by previous U.S. actions. And every new military step is likely, indeed, almost guaranteed, to create even bigger new problems.”

Yet virtually never do foreign policy practitioners admit that things hadn’t gone well. Most of official Washington simply takes the Samantha Power position: “What, me worry?”

There may have been a mistake or two, but one certainly wouldn’t want to “overdraw” a lesson from these multiple and constant failures. No responsible policymaker would want to admit that even one foreign problem was not America’s responsibility.

Washington’s elite might disagree about details, but believes with absolute certainty that Americans should do everything: Fight every war, remake every society, enter every conflict, pay every debt, defeat every adversary, solve every problem, and ignore every criticism. Unfortunately, over the last two decades this approach has proved to be an abysmal disaster.

There’s an equally simple alternative. Indeed, the president came up with it: “don’t do stupid” stuff. Too bad he failed to practice his own professed policy.

Washington should stop doing stupid things. But only the American people can make that happen. They must start electing leaders committed to not doing “stupid” stuff.

Proving that hawks never seem to learn, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the other usual suspects are advocating more substantial U.S. involvement in the civil wars convulsing such places as Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. Before we head down that road again, we ought to insist that proponents of U.S. military crusades defend the results of their previous ventures. That exercise would cause all except the most reckless interventionists to hesitate.

It’s not merely the catastrophic outcomes of the Afghan and Iraq wars, which were pursued at enormous cost in both blood and treasure. The magnitude of those debacles is recognized by virtually everyone who is not an alumnus of George W. Bush’s administration. But even the less notorious interventions of the past two decades have produced results that should humble would-be nation builders. The current situations in Kosovo and Libya are case studies in the folly of U.S. meddling.

The United States led its NATO allies in a 78-day air war against Serbia to force that country to relinquish its disgruntled, predominantly Albanian province of Kosovo. In early 2008, the Western powers bypassed the United Nations Security Council and facilitated Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence. But today’s Kosovo is far from being a success story. In the past few months, there has been a surge of refugees leaving the country, fleeing a dysfunctional economy and mounting social tensions. Despite a massive inflow of foreign aid since the 1999 war, a third of the working-age population are unemployed, and an estimated 40 percent of the people live in dire poverty. Tens of thousands of Kosovars are now seeking to migrate to the European Union, ironically by traveling through arch-nemesis Serbia to reach European Union member Hungary.

Economic misery is hardly the only problem in the independent Kosovo that the United States and its allies helped create. Persecution of the lingering Serb minority and the desecration of Christian churches, monasteries, and other sites is a serious problem. Kosovo has also become a major center for organized crime, including drug and human trafficking.

Yet Kosovo is an advertisement for successful U.S.-led military crusades compared to the outcome in Libya. The Obama administration boasted of its “kinetic military action” (primarily cruise missile strikes) as part of the NATO mission to help insurgents oust dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Today, Libya is a chaotic mess. Once a major global oil producer, the country’s pervasive disorder has so thoroughly disrupted production that Libya faces financial ruin. Not only is Libya teetering on the brink of full-scale civil war, much of the country has become the plaything of rival militias, including an affiliate of ISIS. Journalist Glenn Greenwald concludes correctly that the Libyan intervention, which was supposed to show the effectiveness of international military action for humanitarian goals, has demonstrated the opposite.

Such sobering experiences confirm that U.S.-led interventions can often make bad situations even worse. Serbia’s control of Kosovo was hardly an example of enlightened governance, and Gaddafi was a corrupt thug who looted Libya. But as bad as the status quo was in both of those arenas, Western military meddling created far worse situations. That is the lesson that should be kept firmly in mind the next time armchair warhawks in Congress or the news media prod Washington to lead yet another ill-conceived crusade.

Russian aggression in Eastern Europe during the last year has brought to the fore many of the issues surrounding the transatlantic security relationship, in particular, the role of NATO. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been floundering, seeking new missions and goals, with recent involvement in military campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya emblematic of this search. In some ways, Russia’s recent actions have brought back a sense of purpose to the alliance.

Unfortunately, NATO still has many problems. Common vision among members is lacking, a problem exacerbated by the expansion of NATO from sixteen members at the end of the Cold War to twenty-eight members today. Many of these new member states in Central and Eastern Europe feel – understandably – more threatened by Russian aggression than West European or North American member states, creating tension within the organization.

NATO itself has increasingly become a political entity. Indeed, the growth of NATO membership among East European states during the last decade has been a key impediment to improved relations with Russia. The suggestion that Georgia and Ukraine might become EU or NATO members has also been widely discussed as one of the roots of the current conflict.

NATO funding is a big problem. Though most member states hail NATO’s importance and demand its services, few are willing to pay the costs, which fall disproportionately on the United States. In 2012–2013, only three other member states met NATO’s stated military spending target of 2% of GDP: the United Kingdom, Estonia and Greece. Many countries which rely heavily on NATO nonetheless contribute little to the alliance or their own defense, relying instead on the United States.

These problems are not new, but current events highlight the need for a more coherent and participatory transatlantic security framework. Is NATO the right tool for the task? Should the alliance be reformed? How should NATO interact with the European Union? And what role should the United States play in European security?

These questions will be discussed at an upcoming Cato policy forum, “The Future of NATO and the Transatlantic Security Framework.” The event features James Goldgeier, Dean of American University’s School of International Service, and author of the 2010 Council on Foreign Relations report The Future of NATO; Cato’s Doug Bandow, a noted critic of NATO, whose recent writings on NATO can be found here and here; and François Rivasseau, Deputy Head of Delegation for the European Union, who has spent his diplomatic career working on European security issues.

The event begins at noon on March 4, 2015. You can learn more, and register for the event here. 

The Islamic State is evil. But that’s no reason for America to go to war again in the Middle East or for Congress to approve more years of conflict.

The president requested formal legal authority to war against ISIL—more than six months after dropping the first bomb on the self-proclaimed caliphate. The United States is defending a gaggle of frenemies from a far weaker foe unable to seriously threaten America.

The Obama administration long ignored the group’s gains, recognizing that ISIL was more about insurgency than terrorism, and was targeting Middle Eastern countries, not the United States.

The administration reversed course when the group’s advances threatened Kurdistan’s capital of Erbil and Iraq’s Yazidi community. Then the beheading of two American hostages transformed administration policy.

Now President Obama claims the Islamic State threatens “U.S. national security.” But how? How can a few thousand insurgents, locked in bitter combat with several Middle Eastern nations endanger the globe’s superpower?

The administration created yet another pseudo-coalition, with U.S. forces responsible for over 90 percent of the airstrikes, as of last week. “ISIL is going to lose,” declared the president. But Washington gave the group a recruiting bonanza. The Associated Press reported that foreign fighters continue to join “in unprecedented numbers.”

In seeking congressional authority, the administration is playing on emotions. Hostage Kayla Mueller’s killing “fueled congressional outrage and renewed calls to defeat” the organization, reported USA Today.

Yet her tragic fate demonstrates ISIL’s limited reach. The only U.S. citizens harmed by the Islamic State are those who voluntarily traveled to a war zone.

Of course, the president paints ISIL’s threats much more broadly. However, the longer the “caliphate” has existed in cities like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, the less popular ISIL has become.

The group has succeeded so far only because of others’ failings. In Syria, a civil war destroyed the political order. In Iraq, the sectarian Shia central government spawned a Sunni counter-reaction.

The Islamic State found the going much tougher once it expanded. Indeed, the movement has targeted nations with a million or more men under arms. Paradoxically, Washington is protecting ISIL from this formidable collection of enemies by taking over other nations’ defense duties.

Unfortunately, the proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force would further entangle America in sectarian war without addressing the reasons for ISIL’s success. The measure would leave in place the 2001 AUMF, directed against al-Qaeda, under which the administration improbably claimed authority to attack the Islamic State.

Moreover, the new measure would be a dangerous expansion of executive power. First, the administration requested authority to wage at least three more years of war. Secretary of State John Kerry also urged “provisions for extension” of such a limit.

Second, there is no geographic limit. Today the United States is operating in Iraq and Syria. The new AUMF would authorize combat anywhere.

Third, the measure does not limit war to the Islamic State. Also included are “any closely related successor entity” and “associated persons or forces,” meaning ISIL’s allies, defined as “fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” That would cover almost any Iraqi or Syrian opposition group.

Fourth, the resolution bars only “enduring offensive ground operations.” However, the current operation is described as a matter of America’s “inherent right of individual and collective self-defense” even though ISIL did not attack America. Moreover, the president’s transmittal letter exempted a variety of military actions from any limit, including “missions to enable kinetic strikes.”

Fifth, as I point out on Forbes online, “instead of turning the war over to threatened Arab states, the new AUMF would assure Washington’s “allies” that they need not worry about their own defense. The administration plans to create a herd of long-term military dependents.”

If Congress truly is concerned about legality, it should enforce the 2001 AUMF. Any new measure should sharply limit military operations. Legislators should end old wars rather than rationalize new ones.

It’s hard to get out of a bad relationship. People can’t admit that it’s time to say goodbye.

Countries have the same problem. The United States has spent decades collecting allies, like many people accumulate Facebook “Friends.”

After Valentine’s Day, Washington should send the equivalent of a “Dear John” letter to at least a half-dozen foreign capitals. Where to start:

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia and America have little in common other than commerce in oil. Essentially a totalitarian state, the monarchy plunders people, brutalizes political opposition, suppresses religious expression, and even exports Sunni tyranny.

But no alliance is necessary for the two states to cooperate when their interests coincide. It’s time to send Riyadh a text message breaking up. The two governments still should cooperate where appropriate, but the U.S. military no longer should act as an inexpensive bodyguard for the al-Saud family.

South Korea

The United States was drawn into war in Korea during the Cold War. Then American troops were required on the peninsula until South Korea gained both political stability and economic development.

By the 1980s the South had raced well ahead of the North economically. Today South Korea enjoys a 40–1 economic lead, 2–1 population edge, vast technological advantage, and overwhelming diplomatic support.

The South can defend itself. Other forms of cooperation could be conducted without a “Mutual Defense Treaty” that would be mutual in name only.

Iraq

The George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq was based on a number of costly illusions. The rise of the Islamic State was blowback after the U.S. invasion triggered a bitter sectarian war.

The two countries do not share values. Nor is there much strategic agreement. The relationship always will be one of convenience.

Joining with Baghdad has entangled the United States in a bitter sectarian war. Better to make the relationship purely transactional when advantageous for America.

The Baltic Trio

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania live in a bad neighborhood. But Washington has forgotten what alliances are supposed to be.

In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. created NATO as a shield behind which Western Europe could revive. With the end of the Cold War the alliance lost its purpose. Bringing in the Baltics added countries that are security black holes—weak states with minimal military capability but potential conflicts with Russia.

America’s real problem is NATO. Washington should drop out of the alliance, forging a set of more limited military cooperation agreements with the European Union and leading European nations.

The Philippines

America long has had a tortured relationship with this semi-failed Pacific state. The Philippines has sputtered through dictatorship and corrupt and incompetent democracy. Manila’s military reflects this flawed foundation. Yet the Philippines wants to challenge China over territory in the South China Sea.

More accurately, Manila wants the United States to do so. But Washington has little interest in local territorial disputes. “Dear Manila,” should run the letter written by President Barack Obama.

Ukraine

Technically Kiev is not a U.S. ally, but the administration and the usual gaggle of hyper-hawks want to treat Ukraine as one. And the government in Kiev wants to be treated like one.

Ukraine was dealt a tough hand by history and geography. But it never mattered much to America. The United States signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum after Ukraine divested its nuclear weapons, but the agreement offered only platitudes.

The Obama administration’s promotion of last year’s street putsch backfired disastrously on both America and Ukraine, encouraging Russia to sever Crimea and back separatists in the Donbas. Ukraine always will matter more to Moscow, which will pay far higher costs and take far greater risks to prevail.

The United States should make clear that Kiev will never be in NATO. There will never be American troops in Ukraine. Washington will not give weapons to Kiev.

As I point out on National Interest online: “America long has had trouble saying no. But the U.S. should start dropping faux allies. Doing so is far more likely to increase American security than extending new commitments and guarantees to additional weak and unimportant states.”