Taking Out Dictators

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National Review:

 

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Victor Davis Hanson

In the past 40 years, the United States has intervened to go after autocrats in Afghanistan, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Somalia, and Serbia. We have attacked by air, by land, and by a combination of both. In the post-Vietnam, post–Cold War era, are there any rules to guide us about any action envisioned against Syria or Iran — patterns known equally to our enemies?

 

 

1. The target cannot have nuclear weapons. Strongmen in Pakistan and North Korea by virtue of their nukes are exempt from American reaction (unlike Syria or, at present, Iran) — unless they directly threaten our existence or that of our allies. With the end of the Cold War, many rogue states lost the Soviet nuclear umbrella and are still scrambling to acquire their own nuclear weapons to ensure them deterrence, especially against the United States, which has not yet invaded a nuclear nation.

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2. We do not attack large countries. About 30 million or so — roughly the population of Iraq or Afghanistan — is the upper limit. That criterion suggests that we will not ourselves seek regime change in Iran (population: 65 million) through force — a different case from punitive bombing or preemptive air attacks on its nuclear facilities.

 

3. The target should not directly border either Russia or China. We violated this commandment in Afghanistan, apparently encouraged by the global climate of goodwill toward America after 9/11, the short and mountainous Chinese border, and the fact that China shares our fear of radical Islam. But otherwise, after Vietnam and the Cold War, the former Soviet republics, North Korea, Tibet, and the countries of Southeast Asia will always be off-limits to U.S. intervention.

 

4. U.N. sanction and U.S. congressional approval, however praised and sometimes sought, seem irrelevant. We obtained neither before bombing Serbia, the former but not the latter in Libya, and the latter but not the former in Iraq. We obtained both for Gulf War I, but neither for Panama or for Grenada.