Caging the dogs of war: how major U.S. neoimperialist wars end.

• Author: Higgs, Robert
• Position: Etceteras ... - Essay

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

--Frederick Douglass, "The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies," August 3, 1857

All wars end, but someone must bring them to an end: someone in authority must order the men to stop fighting, or the fighters themselves must decide to stop fighting even if doing so requires that they disobey standing orders. Either way, someone makes a decision to bring the war to an end, and we may presume (in conformity to the precepts of methodological individualism) that the actor makes the decision only because he believes that it serves his interest, however he may conceive of that interest. In general, in our day nations do not go to war spontaneously, nor do they lay down their arms spontaneously. National leaders make those decisions, and they make them in their own interest.

Any other view is romantic and obscurantist, notwithstanding the torrents of propaganda by which leaders and their court intellectuals attempt to represent themselves as "servants" of the nation, as embodiments of "the national will," or as executors of "the public interest." Even if political and military leaders were inclined to put the public's interest ahead of their own, they would have no way to identify such a foggy and multifaceted entity. Each individual has many interests; different individuals have different sets of interests; and nobody has discovered a defensible method of aggregating all these interests into a single "social interest." Although we may feel confident that for the great multitude, peace is preferred to war, other things being equal, even this claim is contestable. Anyone who circulates in American society knows full well that many Americans love war and killing, and, other things being equal, they would be delighted to have the U.S. military constantly engaged in slaughtering people around the world. Fortunately, such individuals count no more heavily than their peace-loving neighbors so long as they do not hold positions of high political authority. "The people" do not directly decide questions of war and peace, and even their indirect effect on the decision process is usually tenuous and variable. As a first approximation, the realistic political scientist may take for granted that in this country "the masses don't count." In most cases, they can be brought to acquiesce in anything the movers and shakers dictate that they do, notwithstanding a modicum of grumbling and disobedience at the margins.

Although some people recognize that specific, self-interested leaders make the decisions that plunge a nation or another large social group into war, many fewer people employ this insight systematically in seeking to understand why wars end. Too often, people simply presume that one side unequivocally "defeats" the other, and therefore the other capitulates because it has no capacity for further fighting. Rarely, however, is this depiction accurate. Even in horribly damaged and occupied societies, individuals may continue to fight in some fashion, if only as loosely organized civilian insurgents or guerillas combating an occupation force. In 1945, for example, the Germans and the Japanese might have continued to fight in various ways, and, indeed, the U.S. authorities were surprised when they did not do so. (1)

In Iraq during the U.S. occupation of the past five years, resistance has been stout, if temporally fluctuating and spatially shifting. Given the circumstances there, it seems unlikely that the resistance fighters will give up completely until U.S. and other foreign forces leave the country. Therefore, if the war is to end--rather than to continue indefinitely, as Senator John McCain is pleased to contemplate--that end will come only when U.S. leaders determine the war's continuation no longer serves their interest. (I am setting aside the possibility of a general mutiny in which the U.S. armed forces refuse to continue fighting. Although this event is conceivable, I cannot foresee its occurrence in the prevailing circumstances.) Therefore, the question becomes: What events might bring the U.S. authorities to conclude that stopping the war serves their interest?

We have two important precedents for the ending of a major U.S. neoimperialist war: the Korean War and the Vietnam War, especially the latter. Although neither case provides a perfect analogy, comparisons may still be worthwhile as we try to identify the events and influences that bring U.S. political leaders to perceive that continuation of such a war no longer serves their interest.

The Iraq War: A Catastrophic Success

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. --Matthew 6:21 On the campaign trail in October 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney created a small stir when, speaking of the Iraq War, he declared: "I think it has been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been accomplished overall" ("Vice President" 2004). In view of the rampant violence raging in Iraq, the widespread devastation of the country's human and material resources, and the dim prospects for its future peace and prosperity, Cheney's statement seemed bizarre, and the Democrats seized on it as still another example of the disconnect between the Bush administration and reality. Yet, on closer inspection, we can see that the war has indeed been a huge success, though not in the way that the vice president intended to claim.

In a characteristically unwitting way, President George W. Bush himself stumbled upon a resolution of the seeming paradox when he told Time magazine in the summer of 2004 that the war had proved to be a "catastrophic success." By that oxymoron, he sought to convey the idea that in the invasion, the U.S. military forces had overcome the enemy unexpectedly quickly, "being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day" (qtd. in Gibbs and Dickerson 2004). Although this hypothesis seems far-fetched as an explanation of the nature and extent of the ongoing resistance waged against the U.S. occupation forces and their collaborators in Iraq, the term catastrophic success does express the character of the war precisely. We need only bear in mind that the catastrophe afflicts one set of people, whereas the success accrues to an entirely different set.

Moreover, to appreciate the war's success, we must keep in the forefront of our thinking its perpetrators' instrumental rationality. We must ask: Who bears the responsibility for launching and continuing the war? What are these individuals trying to achieve? And have they in fact achieved these objectives? Having answered these questions correctly, we shall be obliged to conclude that the war has been a huge success for those who brought it about, however disastrous it has been for many others, especially for the unfortunate people of Iraq.

A short list of the war's perpetrators must include the president and his close advisers; the neoconservative intriguers who stirred up and continue to stoke elite and popular opinion in support of the war; the members of Congress who abdicated their exclusive constitutional responsibility to declare war, authorized the president to take the nation to war if he pleased, and then financed the war by a series of enormous appropriations from the Treasury; certain politically well-placed persons in the munitions, petrochemical, and financial industries; and members of other interest groups who have chosen to support, sometimes for reasons based on religious beliefs, a war that they perceive as promoting Israel's interests or as bringing about the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Each of these responsible parties has gained greatly from the war.

President Bush sought above all to be reelected. In his 2004 campaign, he made no apologies for the war; indeed, he sought to take credit for launching it and for waging it relentlessly since the invasion. Vice President Cheney also campaigned actively on the same basis. Bush and Cheney's efforts yielded them the prize they sought.

In reshuffling his cabinet for a second term, the president...