The Malady of Excessive Interventionism

There is a lot that ’s wrong with U.S. foreign policy right now, but a broader look at U.S. grand strategy in the post-Cold War era reveals just how broken things have been across administrations of both parties.The post-Cold War era has seen a continuation of along global trendtoward greater peace and stability,lower rates of conflict, and zero great power wars. More peace anddiminishing threats have merely enhanced theremarkable security already enjoyed by the United States thanks to its geographic isolation, weak neighbors, unparalleled economic and military power, and its nuclear deterrent.But America doesn ’t act as if it is safe. Instead, we have a hyper-interventionist foreign policy. Over the last century,according to the Rand Corporation, “there was only one brief period – the four years immediately after U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam – during which the United States did not engage in any interventions abroad.” Indeed, “the number and scale of U.S. military interventions rose rapidly in the aftermath of the Cold War, just as [rates of global] conflict began to subside.”According to data from theCongressional Research Service, the United States has engaged in more military interventions in the past 28 years than it had in the previous 190 years of its existence.* About46 percent of Americans have lived the majority of their lives with the United States at war. Twenty-one percent have lived theirentire lives in a state of war.This suggests a truly perver...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs