Whenever a humanitarian crisis flares up somewhere in the world, advocates of so-called humanitarian intervention claim that the United States has an obligation to respond because it is the world’s most powerful country, both militarily and economically. The latest call to arms is to stop the violence in Darfur. But the U.S. military does not exist to be the world’s first responder.
Other countries have the capacity to act in Darfur, independent of the United States. Collectively, the economies of the 27 member states of the European Union represent the largest economy in the world – roughly $13 trillion. Yet U.S. taxpayers spend more than twice as much on defense than their European counterparts. So the Europeans have the economic wherewithal to have a comparable military capability to that of the United States – and thereby the ability to intervene – if they choose to do so.
Indeed, because the European nations are often the first to demand international action in response to a humanitarian crisis, they should be the first to develop such a capability. More often than not, their default response is to tell the United States what it should do. But Sudan is much closer to Europe than the United States and therefore more of a strategic concern for the Europeans, who are certainly capable of conducting military missions in defense of their vital security interests. For example, over the course of a few months in 1997, roughly 7,000 troops (mostly Italian) restored stability to a violent, anarchic region of Albania as part of Operation Alba. Italy did not want to see its neighbor descend into chaos, and under a UN resolution the regional force restored order and left quickly. Notably, this force did not include any U.S. military personnel. If Darfur is perceived as a European security concern, a similar effort should take place.
European and African forces have historically played the leading roles in operations in Africa. In June 2003, an EU-led multinational force was sent to Bunia, Congo. A Nigerian-led force intervened in Sierra Leone in 1998. And the French sent forces to the Ivory Coast in 2002. None of these operations depended on the U.S. military.
Paradoxically, many of those who want the United States to intervene in Darfur are the same people criticizing the U.S. military intervention in Iraq. They fail to understand that Iraq is the mother of all humanitarian interventions. And they don’t recognize that the use of military force to advance humanitarian goals is ultimately counterproductive because it ignores one unalterable fact: the use of military force kills people.
Proponents of humanitarian military intervention assume that the U.S. military can protect people who are being killed. But doing so ultimately requires killing those doing the killing – in the case of Darfur, the Janjaweed militia group tacitly backed by the Sudanese government. First and foremost, this mistakenly assumes that the interveners will be able to know who all the “right” people are to target. Moreover, even if the military uses remarkable skill and precision weaponry to target the perpetrators of violence, there will inevitably be collateral damage. However unintentionally, many of the “wrong” people will killed. So while advocates of humanitarian military intervention believe that the United States is performing a great and moral mission by using its might to stop violence, those who lose friends or family as a result of U.S. firepower are not likely to see it that way.
Thus an unintended, but inevitable, consequence of so-called humanitarian intervention is sowing the seeds of animosity and hatred toward the United States, which exacerbates – rather than reduces – the terrorist threat to America. Conventional wisdom holds that other countries and people hate the United States for “who we are.” To be sure, suicide terrorists who fly airplanes into buildings probably do hate our culture, our political traditions, and our economic prosperity. But it would be misleading to assume that such hatred is the primary motivation for terrorism against the United States. Throughout the world – including the Islamic world – there is admiration and appreciation for American accomplishments, culture, and values (including democracy and capitalism). But many of those same admirers hate U.S. policies. That is, anti-Americanism is fueled more by our government’s actions than by our cultural values. Yet U.S. policymakers continue to be blind to the obvious conclusion: American interventionist policies abroad – including noble, well-intentioned humanitarian interventions – breed anti-Americanism and, subsequently, terrorism.
Ultimately, humanitarian military intervention is an oxymoron.
