No endless intervention

We may argue about the wisdom of invading Iraq in the first place. We can enter into what is now an extensive debate upon the success or failure of the 2007 “surge” or the advisability of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in 2010. But the bottom line remains: the experience of the Iraq invasion is a cautionary tale about the limits of U.S. power— however immense—to remake fractured polities. Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been fighting for 13 years without a conclusive victory over the Taliban, is another case in point.

One might contend that the U.S. response to such failures should be to increase the human and financial resources it commits to “victory,” however defined: more troops, more budgetary outlays, permanent stationing of significant numbers of U.S. troops in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Putting aside the question of whether such a response would merely mire the U.S. even more deeply in never-ending conflict, there is little evidence that the American public would support such a policy. U.S. power is not just limited by its ability to shape developments on the ground; it is also limited by the necessity of creating and, more importantly, sustaining domestic support for costly foreign military ventures. Finally, there are real financial limits to U.S. freedom of action. After all, the U.S. already spends immense sums on defense; a major new military intervention would further increase the cost. The public might accept substantially higher taxes, sharply reduced expenditures, or the acquisition of even greater debt in a true national emergency. But there is little taste to do so, for the sake of yet another large-scale intervention in Iraq.