"You state here that the precedent we set by invading Iraq obligates us to intervene in Iran, China, most of Africa, etc - this is clearly a false position."
No, I'm not talking about obligation.
I'm looking at the general rule, the precedent that's being established, because over time the tendency is to extend a rule and often apply it in ways that were never intended, since politicians are possessive about their power and usually want more of it.
Originally, the rule was that the president must seek explicit authorization, a debate and war declaration from Congress, before ordering U.S. forces into a war.
Then comes a president who orders U.S. forces into war without explicit Congressional authorization, and Congress doesn't do anything about it. Actually, Congressmen like the idea of not going on record voting for or against a war authorization, because they can't be sure how the war is going to turn out.
This is similar to the practice of issuing executive orders to do an end run around Congressional approval or issuing executive agreements to do an end run around the Senate's power to approve treaties.
Some years later, another president orders U.S. forces into war without explicit Congressional authorization, and again Congress doesn't do anything about it.
The number of such cases increases until presidents routinely order U.S. forces into war after little or no consultation with Congress.
Many people go along with the expansion of arbitrary presidential power because they like the president who's doing it, but later they have second thoughts when the power is expanded and twisted by a president they don't like, but the precedent has been established, and it's hard to roll back the power.
Perhaps a president orders U.S. forces into Iran, and many Americans object, but the president replies that U.S. forces have already gone into Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq, so we know an executive order to go in is legit. It's now a power that presidents have. The only question is which country, and that's up to the president to decide. No congressonal votes have been required for years.
My concern is to limit the power of the government, especially the president, which is always hard to do. There isn't a direct check on what politicians do between elections, and the check of elections isn't very effective since something like 98% of congressional incumbents win reelection. Incumbents have the franking privilege (free mailings), pork barrel money for their districts, lots of free publicity, etc. In addition, politicians present packages mixing positions you like and positions you don't like. Finally, because of logrolling, after elections politicians commonly do some things they promised not to do, hoping you'll forget about it before the next election rolls around.
So, limiting the power of politicians is always difficult, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs.
A related issue is that intervention in the affairs of other nations is inherently complicated. We have to size up the local factions and back the right one, estimate how the population is likely to react to our intervention and decide what to do about it, size up the likely enemy tactics and counter with the most effective strategy, size up the terrain and adapt to that, etc. Bad judgment about just one of these issues can cause big problems for us.
A policy calling for more interventions means more risks of bad decisions.
All this means we need presidents with a high level of foreign policy expertise and judgment.
Yet our political process has no way of guaranteeing that we will get presidents capable of handling an inherently complicated policy calling for many interventions. Politicians are elected for many reasons unrelated to foreign policy, including their personality, their positions on other issues, the state they came from, etc.
An increasingly complicated, interventionist foreign policy is likely to lead to a crisis as a consequence of unavoidable human errors.
I'm reminded of Milton Friedman's years of study of the effects of the Federal Reserve's discretionary monetary policy aimed at moderating inflation and recession. He pointed out that because good timing is always difficult, in an effort to curb inflation, the Fed often "hit the brakes" too hard, making the next recession worse than it would otherwise have been, and in an effort to get the economy out of recession, it provided a stimulus that ended up making the next inflation worse than it otherwise would have been. Friedman showed that the Fed was itself a principal source of instability. It was the big pig at the trough, and every time it moved, everybody else was jostled aside. If the big pig only stood still, others could could pursue their own plans. Hence, Friedman's proposal for steady, predictable Fed policy.
I realize there are cases where the U.S. can claim some success for intervention, such as in post-World War II Germany and Japan. But there are also many cases of failed U.S. interventions including World War I, Korea and Vietnam. Presidents who made the blunders were advised by people who went to the best universities and had blue chip foreign policy experience yet were wrong, so it's hard to say we will never make such mistakes again.
I believe that as we move away from a policy of not entering wars unless they're directly related to national defense, we will find ourselves burdened with more and more distractions. We will be fighting wars that are going wrong, causing big political and military complicatons, requiring bigger build-ups than anticipated, costing more money than anticipated, with more of our soldiers killed than anticipated, and more and more Americans will be asking what the wars have to do with us and our security.
I predict political support for the Bush doctrine will collapse after one or two such wars.
I believe that after being burned, the American people are going to insist that we conserve our military resources for protecting America, period.
After beginning to understand the cost of the Bush doctrine that everything going on in the world affects U.S. interests and therefore might occasion U.S. intervention, I expect the American people are going to insist that a proposed intervention meet a reasonably strict test.
This public reaction will probably be denounced as "isolationism," but it will be nothing of the sort. It will be a recognition that more often than not intervention is a source of instability. Hence, the conclusion that we ought to maintain a strong defense, stay out of wars that don't directly threaten us and encourage the entire range of peaceful, private, commercial contacts with the world.
I thank you for an interesting discussion.
Jim Powell