The Good Country

[Valin]

Commentary:

Tim Kane

12.01.14

 

President Obama’s foreign policy of disengagement has been shattered by the events of the past year. His conviction that a retrenched United States would be better for Americans at home and for people around the globe has only invited aggression, from the Middle East to Europe to the Pacific. The animating ideas behind Obama’s policies have been called into question: the beliefs that “military solutions” are always inferior, that American troop deployments are tantamount to occupations, that multilateral compromise is more moral than decisive unilateral action, and that America’s enforcement of world order does more harm than good.

 

Obama is actively uncomfortable exercising American power abroad, but he is entirely comfortable exercising centralized power at home. He believes that a strong central government is a moral force inside the United States, but he does not believe that American power is a force for good outside our borders. He is especially certain that American “boots on the ground” don’t do anyone any good—not us and not the countries to which they are deployed.

 

This is wrong. Indeed, it is tragically wrong. Having compared growth and development indicators across all countries of the world against a database of U.S. “boots on the ground” since 1950, I’ve discovered a stunning truth: In country after country, prosperity—in the form of economic growth and human development—has emerged where American boots have trod.

 

Unique among dominant powers in world history, America intervenes in the world not merely to advance its own narrow interests but to forward a greater good. And that is due in large measure to the belief that the greater good is in America’s national interest—that a freer and more prosperous world is one in which the United States will flourish.

 

(Snip)

 

The tangle of relationships among Middle Eastern states (and non-states) is complex and fragile, you might say. Was it any different in 1950s Asia, where our closest allies in Tokyo, Seoul, and Manila had been bitter enemies? The complexities in 1960s Indochina or the Balkans in the 1990s rival our era as well. The bottom line is that America’s engagement has been successful even when its war record is mixed, and the successes point to a strategy of strong support for our allies, cultural and economic openness, investing in human development, and above all—patience.