On Violence

At the end of the August 22nd episode of KCRW’s Left, Right and Center, former journalist and Canadian parliamentarian Chrystia Friedland pissed me off.

She was describing how America had hoped for a “peace dividend” following the fall of the USSR, and then after the drawdown in Iraq. However, she used this history to caution that America “can’t withdraw from the world” (min 15:30), and (therefore) must be prepared to go to war with countries like Russia, Syria and Iraq.   

“Withdrawing from the world” is a familiar criticism of President Obama/Democrats when they don’t want to start another war. In June, Congressman Paul Ryan accused President Obama of “withdrawing from the world” by refusing to bomb ISIS or send troops back to Iraq. John McCain has said this too, in regards to Syria.

It seems every time the Washington war-hawk establishment gets spun up about another war--by our count, since President Obama’s reelection, it has happened with Egypt, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Ukraine, Iraq and Nigeria--they first trot out the lines about “Munich Moments”, then they try to portray advocates against another war as “isolationists”, and finish by admonishing that the U.S. cannot “withdraw from the world”.

We find these lines of attack, particularly when they come from hardcore conservatives or conservative think tanks, incredibly hypocritical. Take the Heritage Foundation. They host the text of a speech on their website from Walter Lohman, a director on their staff, called “Honoring America’s Superpower Responsibilities”, where Lohman repeatedly admonishes that America must not “withdraw from the world”. Lohman claims he is not just talking about military power, but other forms of engagement as well.

Fair enough. So let’s go to the Heritage Foundation’s website, and see its official stances on a host of international issues: Does it support more foreign aid spending? Nope. Does it support the UN Council on Human Rights? Nope. Should the U.S. honor the Geneva convention when it comes to terrorists? Nope. Should the U.S. pull back funding from the U.N.? Yep. Should it call for less peacekeeping missions to stop on-going wars? Yep.

Most importantly, does the Heritage foundation recommend rejecting almost every treaty placed in front of America? Hell yes.

See conservatives love to “engage” the world, when it means fighting there. Anyone who backs down from a fight is “withdrawing” from America’s superpower responsibilities. Yet when it comes to low cost, simple ways to spread the rule of law--and international norms, which seemed so important to uphold in both Ukraine and Syria--Republicans and conservatives balk. As Kevin Drum pointed out, conservatives in particular hate treaties.

This applies to Senate Republicans particularly. In the last decade or so they have…

- Promised to kill the the Rome Treaty that established the International Criminal Court. (President Clinton signed on to the treaty but never submitted it to the Senate, because he knew it wouldn’t pass. President Bush withdrew from it. (We’ve written before how an ICC for Terrorists, Pirates and Trans-National Criminals would solve about a dozen international issues in one fell swoop.)

- Filibustered or stalled the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was signed in 1994. (The U.S. does follow its provisions anyways.)

- Failed to sign onto treaties banning cluster munitions, land mines and white phosphorous.

- Rejected an international treaty on Human Rights for the Disabled. The U.S. most recently rejected the UN treaty on protecting disabilities, a treaty styled on US disability law!

- And more!

We’ve written about this before, defending ourselves--and fellow advocates for restraint in military adventures around the world--from charges of isolationism. But it seems important to bring it up again, especially when in Ukraine, the value of “international norms” was brought up again and again as the raison d’etre for intervention. In the words of Fareed Zakaria:

“But beyond these narrow considerations is a larger one: Do these countries want to live in a world entirely ruled by the interplay of national interests? Since 1945, there have been increasing efforts to put in place broader global norms — for example, against annexations by force. These have not always been honored, but, compared with the past, they have helped shape a more peaceful and prosperous world.”

We agree. International norms trump national self-interest, especially in the long run. But the true value of international norms isn’t created on the eve of war, it’s created in the years before conflict. The Senate, which has allowed its minority group to deny any new treaties since 1997, has done more to hurt international norms than not bombing Russia or the Islamic State.

The irony is that refusing to ratify global treaties makes the world more dangerous and free trade less likely.

And that forces the U.S. to go to unnecessary wars.

Now that’s withdrawing from the world.

Back in 2008, Eric C and I used to use the phrase “Munich Moment” fondly. For us, a Munich moment was when Eric C managed to make out with two different girls on the same night.

Ah, Munich.

Unfortunately, our use of “Munich Moment” has been bastardized by our great country’s politicians. John Kerry, in a desperate bid to attempt every single rhetorical flourish possible in pursuit of a war with Syria, described America’s need to launch cruise missiles at Syria as America’s “Munich Moment”.

Obviously, comparing every single foreign policy crisis to Munich in 1938 doesn’t make sense. And don’t kid yourself: every single foreign policy crisis in my adult lifetime--stretching from Iraq to Egypt to Iran (here, here and here) to Ukraine (here and here) and to Syria--has had some political leader invoking this terrible analogy.

We aren’t the first writers to bemoan this overused phrase. Tom Schactman in Foreign Policy wrote an article asking to retire the phrase here. Elias Groll piled on here. Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the New Republic argued against it here. And others said it here, here and here.

In Syria’s case, the analogy--especially in hindsight--was particularly egregious. Unlike Hitler, Bashar al Assad hadn’t invaded a single one of his neighbors. Supporting the rebels would have probably (and ironically) strengthened ISIS. (As Fareed Zakaria pointed out--citing Marc Lynch--in civil wars, extremists tend to thrive, not moderates.) Since ISIS later expanded to Iraq, who they kind of invaded, in a way, fighting Bashar al Assad actually would have been like the U.S. siding with Germany in 1938.

So the question for today, and one we don’t have a great answer for, is how do we stop this analogy? Like HYDRA in a Captain America movie, every time we kill one head, two grow back. Here are some ideas:

1. Public shaming. It’s been tried.

2. One of those White House petitions saying President Obama should issue an executive order forbidding this analogy in his cabinet. That would be funny, but either unconstitutional or unproductive.

3. More data analysis on this term. I don’t need to repeat the arguments for why this comparison/analogy is beyond ludicrous. So instead we want to provide something new to the debate. What is the “Munich Moment’s” batting average? In other words, how often have critics who used this phrase been correct? (Probably once, with the original use of the term.)

4. Crush opponents with logic. Especially the growth of international institutions. The Munich conference existed in a world before the UN, NATO, the Arab League, the EU, the G-Anything and countless other international institutions. The world frankly uses diplomacy a lot more than it used to. What is particularly remarkable about all the accusations of “Munich Moments” is they don’t even occur during diplomatic meetings. These are countries with internal troubles, not great powers invading neighbors.

5. Call them real-life trolls? In the future, when anyone says, “Munich Moment” can we immediately say they just violated Godwin’s law, turn off their microphone (if they are on cable television), and move on?

6. Replace “Munich Moment” with “July Crisis” or “Gulf of Tonkin”. There are two other analogies out there. The first--”July Crisis”--is an analogy no one ever uses, but should. One hundred years ago last August, the leaders of Europe had a “July Crisis”, in which every diplomat utterly failed to prevent a senseless world war. The minor assassination of an archduke led to tens of millions of deaths. Instead of worrying about Munich Moments, we should be worried about a July Crisis. Gideon Rachman of FT made this argument pretty persuasively, when also pondering the centennial of World War I.

The second is more familiar in the U.S., but hasn’t been evoked since we invaded Iraq. In hindsight, the Johnson administration used faulty intelligence to escalate in Vietnam, and the quagmire cost 60,000 Americans their lives. Initial data points are often the worst excuses to go to war, not the best.

In short, we should worry about July Crises and Gulf of Tonkins, not fret about Munich moments.

(This is a continuation from Wednesday's post.)

Lesson #3: America needs to focus less on America

Focusing on Ebola in America may actually cause more deaths, because it focuses attention where it actually shouldn’t be (America) rather than where it should (West Africa). Radiolab recently updated one of my favorite episodes of the show, “Patient Zero”, with an update on Ebola. (If you don’t listen to Radiolab, you should.) This line stuck out to me [emphasis mine]:

“I think the most important thing we should be doing is not letting the public health vs. civil liberties issues in the US distract us from West Africa. As the case count gets higher, it has more chances to mutate and therefore, more opportunities to adapt. So we need to end this outbreak in west Africa before this virus learns too much about us.” David Quammen (Min. 52:45)

Ebola could become more dangerous if it, ironically, becomes less dangerous. If the disease mutates in a way that allows more victims to live and live longer, it could become a pandemic by not burning out too quickly. To mutate in this way--the worst case scenario--the virus needs to infect many, many hosts. This outbreak, which has been brewing since December of last year, could have been stopped early on. Since it hasn’t, Ebola has had more opportunities to become more dangerous.

But the news media is focused on Ebola in America rather than helping people in Africa, where the real threat of a pandemic looms. (Though again, I’m not afraid.)

Lesson #4: We shouldn’t use the military.

Of course, when the U.S. finally did decided to respond to West Africa, who did we send? The military! With tents! While we appreciate a U.S. response to the Ebola epidemic, it boggles our minds that the U.S. never has a non-military option. USAID couldn’t have supported this mission? Or someone else in the State Department? And of course, the Pentagon put the price tag at a starting point of $750 million dollars.

America consistently believes that the military can solve all the world’s problems, so we fund the Pentagon to the near exclusion of any other department. This means, in times of crisis, we only have the military. This is probably the wrong response to many problems and it is exacerbated by the worst problem...

Lesson #5: We really, really, really need to start investing in countries in the long term.

What do we mean? Many politicians--let’s be honest, Republicans--are really concerned about Ebola. Despite the warnings of professional medical workers, they wanted to shut down travel from Africa and institute incredibly draconian measures to stop the spread of Ebola to the U.S.

You know what would have been more effective? Spending money (like that $750 million from above) a decade ago (when the economy was strong) to help countries face Ebola now. We should have spent money on foreign aid to develop the medical infrastructure in these countries so they’d have been equipped to handle this outbreak.

You know who hates foreign aid? Oh right, the same people who are afraid of Ebola.

We fight terrorism the same way. We wait until a crisis bubbles up--like ISIS, Boko Haram or Syria--then we lose our minds. Instead of helping these nations build their economies that repel terrorist groups naturally, we wait until a crisis happens, and then overreact.

Many readers and Twitter followers have asked us, “When are you writing about American Sniper?”

Looking at our work on Lone Survivor, it makes sense. Chris Kyle was as conservative--if not more so--than Marcus Lutrell and filled his book with conservative and anti-ROE ideology. American Sniper, both the book and the movie, are huge hits. And, as multiple media outlets have noticed, Chris Kyle had a tendency to make things up, including shooting looters after Hurricane Katrina, killing two men at a gas station, and punching Jesse Ventura in the face. (This last one cost his family’s estate after he lost a defamation court case.)

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, we didn’t have time to debunk the facts behind the book. We did, though, have barely enough time last week to write up a piece for Slate, titled, “The Surprising History of American Sniper’s “Wolves, Sheep, and Sheepdogs” Speech”. It also allowed us to finally debunk the sheep, sheepdogs and wolves analogy that we’ve hated for years. (This satisfied another request from our readers, who requested that we debunk this pop philosophy.) Since the American Sniper film uses this analogy, it allowed us to discuss both topics in place.

So, head over to Slate and check it out. Expect more on sheep, sheepdogs and wolves in the next few weeks.

I know what you’re thinking. “Ebola is a disease; how can it be violent?” Fair point. It’s tough to assign agency to a disease. But the Ebola “crisis” in America (and those quotation marks are firmly planted around “crisis”) shows how poorly America--if not the whole world--handles crises.

Unfortunately, America’s focus on Ebola mirrors our focus on terrorism in all the wrong ways. But if America can learn the lessons for either terrorism or Ebola, we have a chance to fundamentally improve our foreign policy.

Lesson #1: Misusing Statistics

This exchange from the cold open on Saturday Night Live a few months ago, mocking the new “Ebola czar”, illustrates how people don’t understand statistics:

Ebola Czar: If anything, we should be more afraid of the flu. It kills way many more people every year.

Reporter: But .01% of people with the flu die from it. And with Ebola it’s 50%.

Ebola Czar: We could all go throwing statistics around.

Reporter: Such as?

Challenge accepted, fake reporter from a sketch comedy show who, strangely enough, actually described how most Americans feel about Ebola.

As of right now, four Americans have tested positive for Ebola in America. All of the cases came from people who went to Africa or cared for a person who’d been in Africa. Only one person died.

How many people will die from the flu? “...according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average annual death toll from influenza between 1976 and 2007 was more than twenty-three thousand,” as James Surowiecki wrote in the New Yorker. So...we’ll need approximately 46,000 more people to contract Ebola to make it deadlier than the flu.

Oh, and the flu may be deadlier this year than in years past.

Unlike Ebola, the average person can actually do something about the flu: get a flu shot. The more people that get the flu shot, the better America’s overall herd immunity against the disease. (The CDC no longer recommends just the sick and elderly get the flu shot; everyone should.) Which means if we all work together, as a country, we can save ten of thousands lives. (In fairness, early reports indicate this year’s flu vaccine may not be a good match for this year’s flu, but the CDC still recommends getting a flu shot.)

Will we? No, because people don’t understand statistics. Even our comedy shows, instead of parodying America's misguided fear of Ebola, are actually making us more afraid.

Lesson #2: We overhype the threat.

Ebola, it turns out, doesn’t pose much of a threat to cause a global pandemic. It “burns too hot”, meaning the disease replicates faster than the host can communicate it. In other words, it kills its victims too quickly. (It poses especially little danger to Western nations, since we don’t clean our own dead like they do in West Africa.)

And Ebola is unlikely to go airborne, as David Quammen told RadioLab, “To get to that point, would require a number of mutations that are infinitesimally unlikely...it would be like mutations that would allow a giraffe to fly.” (Min 52:00)

(Look for Pt. 2 of this post tomorrow.)

(To read the rest of "On Violence’s Most Thought Provoking Foreign Affairs Event of 2015: Iraq Redux", please click here.

And click here to read the entire “The (Opportunity) Costs of Security” series.)

Last week, I asked, “Did we consider the opportunity costs of the first Iraq War?” The answer was, “No.”

But I limited myself to only considering the opportunity costs of spending our “war capital”, the vague combination of American morale/enthusiasm for war. When we go to war we also spend real financial capital. War costs money. And that money has opportunity costs of its own.

The worst part of over-hyping of the ISIS threat is that it will lead America into another war without questioning the costs or considering these opportunity costs. According to some estimates, a new Iraq war could cost billions (with a B). (It’s already cost at least a billion dollars.)

How did it get so high? Well, every aircraft carrier costs millions to operate in a war posture. Every deployed soldier costs tens of thousands of dollars. Every contractor costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every cruise missile costs tens of thousands of dollars. Every plane in the sky requires extra maintenance. This totals out to nearly $300,000 for every hour were at war with ISIS.

And America might spend billions more to defeat ISIS. As I referenced last week, fiscally conservative Republicans suddenly become drunken soldiers at the strip club when it comes to fighting wars. So we need to have a conversation about opportunity costs. Here are my biggest candidates for how America could have spent a billion dollars instead of fighting ISIS.

Finally, a caveat: I only wanted to think about foreign policy spending, because frankly, we’d be here all day if we wrote about ways military spending could be converted into domestic spending. (Vaccinations, infrastructure, and so on.)

Paying Down the Debt

Somehow, when it comes to federal spending, wars and military spending don’t seem to count. Famously, the first war in Iraq was the first time America went to war and lowered taxes instead of raising them. As Eric C wrote in his comment on last Monday’s post, in 2008, whenever Republicans accused Democrats of raising the debt with proposed stimulus programs, all he could think about was constantly increasing defense spending, intelligence spending increases after 9/11, and the ginormous cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, without a dime raised in taxes to cover these costs.

An opportunity cost of the first Iraq war, in monetary terms, was not saving money for stimulus in case the economy crashed. Which happened five years after the first war started.

How much have the post 9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries cost so far? At least $1.5 trillion, according to James Fallows. According to Linda J. Bilmes, the price tag could reach up to $4 to 6 trillion, factoring in associated military costs and veteran's benefits.

But we shouldn’t live in the past. Let’s look to the future. And the very simple calculation every politician should make is whether it is more important for America to pay down its debt (now and in the future) or to fight another war in the Middle East. Maybe the current billion dollar price tag won’t break the bank, but it would help.

Leading the World in the Sustainable Development Goals

Later this year, the U.N. will replace the Millenium Development Goals--that were moderately successful--with the Sustainable Development Goals. The U.S. could really cement its leadership of the world by vowing to spend 1.0% of its GDP on foreign aid and development. (The current global target is 0.7% of GDP.) The U.S. currently spends 0.19% of its GDP on foreign aid. (Despite the perception that the US spends 25 to 30% of the federal budget on foreign aid, it spends about 2%.) We could even do it with business friendly tactics like direct aid, small business loans, and venture capital support. But the U.S. would rather spend a billion dollars on war funding than getting people out of poverty.

Or Leading the World on Climate Change

If you’ve been reading/following any of the Economist’s year ahead coverage, you know that later this year the world’s leaders are meeting in Paris for a summit on climate change. While the U.S. and China have taken a step on the path to confronting climate change by agreeing to terms, the U.S. could do even more by helping developing countries confront climate change. Financially, developing countries face a tougher burden developing green energy; strategically, this is the best way to stop carbon pollution.

Again, this would require hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, and it would require the Senate to ratify a treaty (more on that next week), but it is a real option. And it is possibly much more dangerous than ISIS.

Fighting Ebola

Finally, let’s close with a way we could have really helped people last year. What if I told you that Ebola could have been stopped before it became an epidemic. You would probably say, “Well, yeah, I read about that in the The New York Times, how poor communication led to an epidemic.”

And you’d be right.

Frankly, America has some of the best health care professionals in the world. If we had an extra billion dollars to spend on helping people abroad, I wish we’d spent much more, much sooner in Africa. Perhaps we could have tracked the spread of the disease more effectively, preventing the tragic lack of communication that led to the deaths of tens of thousands. We would have actually saved lives, built up good will, and come across as a nation interested in helping people.

Now that sounds like a smart way to spend money.

(Today's guest post is by Carrie Morgan. If you would like to guest write for us, please check out our guest post guidelines.

Quick note: The views of guest writers are not necessarily the view of Michael C. or Eric C. For our take, please check out the comments below.)

A lot has been written about the “civil-military divide” over the last few years. And while there have been a few prominent civilian voices on this subject (e.g. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran, whose book For Love of Country highlights the stories and sacrifices of post-9/11 veterans, and James Fallow, whose article “The Tragedy of the American Military” appears in this month’s issue of The Atlantic), most discussions of the “civ/mil” divide have been dominated by military voices. This makes sense, since the people experiencing the civ/mil divide most viscerally are typically the folks on the “mil” side of that divide. The majority of civilians aren’t even aware that the divide exists.

Of course, that isn’t to say that civilians don’t suffer from the existence of the divide, because we do. Millions of Americans have served in the military, and when their service is done, they leave the military and find a place among the rest of us. Knowing them--our neighbors and coworkers--and understanding their experiences in service to our country helps us understand our world and our place in it. The skills and insights our “citizen soldiers” bring to the civilian world enrich our democracy. When veterans and military folk are disconnected from the civilian community around them, we all lose.

Still, most discussions of the civ/mil divide remain dominated by military voices, and this one-sidedness is a symptom of the very problem these discussions aim to resolve.

Because they themselves have not served, the civilian community is largely ignorant of the challenges faced by military families and the difficulties service members face when transitioning to a life “off-post.” This gap in understanding is exacerbated by the perception by many in the military community that civilians don’t understand their needs or experiences and never, ever will.  

This gap seems especially evident after the release of the declassified report on the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” after 9/11. In the days after the CIA report was released, debates over torture’s effectiveness and propriety filled the airwaves and internet. Occasionally a voice from the military community pops up and says something like, “If you have no knowledge of or experience with interrogations or intelligence work, please spare me your opinion of the torture report.” This is a variant on a theme that goes something like this: “If you haven’t served in the military, then I don’t care what you think about the war/national security/the VA/etc.” There’s a Facebook group that calls itself “About Iraq/Afghanistan, If You Haven't Been There,Then Shut Up!” Such attitudes even show up in the political sphere, such as when the campaign manager for Rep. Tim Walz of Minnesota lashed out at a conservative critic in October by saying, “Washington, D.C., blogger Jim Hagedorn, who has never served a day in uniform, has zero credibility on national security issues.” Not only is such rhetoric intellectually specious (for the reasons stated in earlier On Violence posts here and here), it’s also obnoxious and utterly unproductive as a form of public discourse. As the wife of an Army vet and a longtime civilian supporter of veterans causes, I can’t help but feel such “if you haven’t served, then” statements as a slap in the face.

I understand where this frustration comes from. However, this “if you haven’t served, then” attitude is completely unhelpful in narrowing the civ/mil divide. In fact, it only makes that chasm wider, deeper, and more difficult to bridge.

At its heart, the civ/mil divide is about understanding and communication—or more accurately, a lack of it. Many civilians don’t know much about the military experience, and many military folk feel that civilians don’t understand them. The only way to cure this lack of understanding and foster empathy among the civilian community is to enable civilians to access military experiences, and the only mechanism for this to occur (short of drafting all 250 million non-veteran American adults into the military) is communication.

We can narrow the civil/military divide. It’s important for veterans, for those currently serving in uniform, and ultimately for our society and democracy as a whole. It won’t be easy, and it will take effort on both the “civ” and “mil” sides of the divide.

Communication is the key.

Will civilians listen? Some won’t, sure, but a lot of them will. While very few of us have donned a uniform, many of us know someone who has. Most of us are not veterans, but we have friends or family who are. Those links, those connections, form a basis for understanding—but only if both sides of the civ/mil divide are willing to communicate.

Veterans and military folks, I’m talking to you.

Don’t shut civilians out. Tell us what you think. Share your experiences and your viewpoints--please--but dialogue is a two-way street. We have to listen to one another. If a civilian friend, neighbor or coworker opines on a subject of national security, don’t dismiss that opinion out of hand simply because the speaker hasn’t served. If you disagree, fine--but instead of simply saying, “You’ve never served, so you don’t know what you’re talking about,” politely explain why. Open exchange will foster the empathy that will heal the chasms between us. That’s the only way this will work. If we can’t keep the channels of communication open, then the civ/mil divide will remain.

And that hurts us all, both “civ” and “mil” alike.

Carrie Morgan has written a novel, The Road Back From Broken, about the struggle of a military family affected by post-traumatic stress and war trauma. She lives in Orlando, Florida with her husband, a U.S. Army infantry veteran, and is working on a second novel. You can follow her on Twitter here and at her blog, "Wages of War."

At the end of 2012, Michael C was interviewed by Robert Tollast--who frequently writes on Iraq for the Small Wars Journal--for a piece in The National Interest, "Maliki’s Private Army". In hindsight, it’s kind of eerily predictive of Maliki’s future actions.