The Foreign Service Journal, October 2005

F O C U S 30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 5 the constraints are essentially gone. The end of the Cold War meant that the United States could aspire to global dominance — something it never sought to do during the Cold War — because no one could challenge her. Indeed, as William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan argued in making the case for war with Iraq, to revert to a foreign policy guided by “the narrowest self- interest” — in other words, to adhere to any realistic conception of our country’s limitations — would spell disaster because “the United States remains the hinge of the international system. And when it sits idly by in the face of threats to that system, international order erodes.” By this for- mulation, the United States is responsible for dealing with all rogues, anywhere in the world, because global security is completely dependent upon U.S. action. Domestic Constraints But American power is not unlimited. There are constraints on how and when this power is deployed, and the most important of these are domestic, not for- eign. While some might scorn the American public’s reluctance to play the world’s policeman, these atti- tudes reflect an accurate assessment of the high costs and dubious benefits of military operations that are not directly tied to the protection of U.S. vital interests. Few politicians will be willing to buck the trend if sup- port for a particular overseas mission wanes. An even more tangible limitation is the U.S. military itself. While our troops are eminently capable of defeating any force foolish enough to engage them on the battlefield, they cannot be everywhere, and they cannot do everything. We should be extremely careful about deploying our forces abroad, and we should be particularly wary of attempting to sustain a long-term military presence in foreign lands. In the meantime, in the interest of freeing up crucial resources in the war on al-Qaida and other threatening extremist groups, policy-makers should revisit Cold War–era military deployments that were dedicated to fighting a foe that has long since disappeared, and that have little, if any, relevance to fighting radical Islamists. Beyond the military, however, policy-makers must focus on applying all of the means at our disposal — diplomatic, cultural, economic — that enhance U.S. security. Fighting terrorists will only rarely require the deploy- ment of massive numbers of troops, but it will require other strategies and tactics that are not appropriate for fighting state- based threats. Deterrence still works against states, even rogue ones. It did against Saddam Hussein. He never attacked the United States directly because he knew that such actions would be suicidal. The burden of proof should be very high for those who argue that the leaders of Iran or North Korea cannot be deterred in the same way as Saddam Hussein. This is why the war in Iraq, the first manifestation of the broader strategy of confronting rogue states, is so tragic and unnecessary. The Bush administration opted to take action against an evil and despicable person who had been, and could have continued to be, deterred from taking action against us. Now, the U.S. military presence in Iraq plays into the feelings of resentment, humiliation and anger that Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists use to recruit new fighters for their global jihad. The broader strategy concurrently encourages and enables our diplomatic adversaries to arm against us so as to secure themselves against preventive American action. As Carpenter and Peña observe: “Those who cheered U.S. military interventions, conservatives and liberals alike, need to ask themselves whether increas- ing the incentives for nuclear proliferation was a price worth paying — because greater proliferation is the price we are now paying.” There is time to change course. U.S. policy-makers should avoid an open-ended strategy of confronting all rogue states, not because they are lovable, but rather because the most immediate threats to our security — those posed by non-state rogues — demand their full attention. n While our troops are eminently capable of defeating any force foolish enough to engage them on the battlefield, they cannot be everywhere, and they cannot do everything.