End the “Forever War” Mindset!
America fights "forever wars" because the "experts" favor crisis management over conflict resolution. The key to peace and development lies in reclaiming proven conflict-resolution mechanisms.
November 5 opened the floodgates. It suddenly seems possible to reexamine much of the disastrous, expert-driven, completely nonsensical “conventional wisdom” degrading modern life. Whether this moment will persist beyond January 20 remains to be seen. In the interim, however, it’s glorious to dream.
Longtime readers know that I’ve been awaiting this moment for quite some time and on more than a few issues. And that’s not because I’ve got some unique gift. Honesty compels humility: Identifying absurdities among the experts is like shooting fish in a barrel. (Not that I’ve ever actually shot fish in a barrel, but I hear it’s not hard).
One area that’s occupied my thoughts as particularly ripe for reassessment is foreign policy. After publishing one piece specifically about the Middle East, I backed up and wrote one about general principles.
The question I posed in both places was simple: What does “America First” mean beyond our borders?
Hint: It bears little resemblance to what we’ve been doing.
For details, click the links above to my articles in RealClearWorld and the Daily Signal (my first appearance in that particular forum), respectively.
If I had to pick one shift in mindset, however, the choice would be easy: Stop managing crises. Start resolving problems.
For decades, American (and Western) foreign policy experts have insisted that all disputes can be addressed by calm voices sitting around a conference table. Hence the common—and almost always inaccurate—refrain, “there is no military solution.” Well, guess what? Killing the other guy’s soldiers and blowing up his stuff actually solves quite a lot. In many cases it also creates new problems, but history has shown that the clearest resolutions of longstanding conflicts occur when one side wins decisively, the other loses decisively, and the populations retreat to their own, often newly delineated spaces.
Want to know why we get trapped in so many “forever wars?” It’s easy. We’ve taken off the table the two most effective mechanisms for ending wars: Redrawing borders and shifting populations.
The nation-state system got its start in Europe in 1648. For 300 years, Europeans warred, redrew borders, and moved people around the continent. In 1948, following a particularly bloody mess, a realignment of borders, and massive population movements, European leaders declared the process complete and perfect. No longer would any nation be allowed to extend its borders merely by winning a war! No longer would Europe attempt to achieve stability by moving people into the states designated for their ethnicity or nationality! Because those things would be wrong!
Having given themselves 300 years, the benevolent Europeans also froze in place the new post-colonial state borders they’d drawn throughout Asia and Africa. If the people they’d crammed together within those states didn’t much like it, well, that was an internal matter. And so we regaled ourselves with the myth that fine, legitimate, indigenous leaders like Saddam and the Assads poisoned “their own” people and flattened “their own” cities. What made those people “their own?” A European exercise in line-drawing on a map.
Forever wars arise because of a commitment to crisis management. In nearly all cases, a “crisis” represents an eruption of long-simmering tensions. The American—and Western—approach for far too long has been to restore the status quo ante. We see a cauldron boiling over and run to weld it shut. Anyone else think we might do better to lower the flame? Or barring that, to let it boil over, then survey the new reality?
Alternatively—we could revisit our thinking about “humane” interventions. Contemporary thinking has coined the ugly term “ethnic cleansing” to shut down all conversation about population transfers. Yet, as recently as the first half of the twentieth century, population transfers were recognized as the best way to stabilize post-war regions, minimize future conflict and suffering, and provide the largest number of people with the best possible prospects for development.
Of course, most such transfers were brutal. The most common mechanism was to wait until a war was underway, then have people flee en masse as war refugees. (That’s the only form still acceptable under human rights law). Others were nominally “peaceful,” though largely in the same sense as the 2020 race riots—that is, they occurred during peacetime. A genuinely humane approach would collect development aid for an orderly evacuation and resettlement, emphasizing relocation to regions and states with cultures similar to those of the transferred populations.
I first explored this issue in depth in the context of the Christians and Yazidis whose villages had fallen prey to ISIS. Should we help them return home after liberation? It’s a tougher question than many might want to believe. Wouldn’t we just be setting them up for a future genocide? If so, who would defend them? Who would pay for reconstruction, fully aware that another war was likely not far down the pike? Some questions don’t have good answers. The best we can do is “least bad.”
Let’s recall that even outside the context of war, evacuation and eviction define two setting in which it’s “acceptable” to knock on someone’s door and say: “Sorry, but you must move.” In an evacuation, some imminent crisis necessitates pulling people out of harm’s way as a preventive measure. Failure to evacuate when demanded risks the lives of rescuers and drains resources that could be put to better use. In an eviction, someone forwards a legal claim deemed superior to possession—say a landlord showing unpaid rents, or a government using eminent domain.
In both cases, people are forced to leave their homes in the service of a higher good. Whether you or I agree with the formulation and balance applied in any specific case, the principle is longstanding and universal.
The same is true at the international level. Redrawn borders and relocated populations are critical tools in the drive towards peace, stability, human development, and cultural preservation. The diplomatic decision to eliminate them in favor of preserving long-simmering crises and prolonging suffering was truly sadistic. Time to revisit it.
Within the readily foreseeable future, the U.S. will be called upon to fund reconstruction of war zones in (at least) Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Let’s reintroduce wisdom and compassion into our approach: Forget the status quo ante. Separate populations within logical, defensible, redrawn borders to promote the causes of peace and development.
Because if we let nasty labels trap us into overspending to spread misery even in a moment of optimistic reassessment, we are truly lost.
For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about America’s Spiritual Crisis and the new religion of Wokeism, see: American Spirit or Great Awokening? The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024).
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.