https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/u-s-invasions-vintage-neo-con-thought/

The U.S. response to Turkey’s invasion of Syria is remarkably different from its response to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. If we examine these two situations, we gain a clear picture of how the leaders of the U.S., Democrat and Republican, justify their own aggression to themselves and attempt to persuade others of their rightness. We will see that vintage neo-con thought underlies the rationalizations.

For two days, the U.S. assisted Turkey’s invasion of Syria. This is a non-event to the White House. The White House press briefing of Aug. 30 barely mentioned Turkey. And then only “that the United States welcomes the overnight calm between the Turkish military and other counter-ISIL forces [Kurds] in Syria.” No term even remotely linked to a cross-border invasion was mentioned.



NATO has still said nothing. If pressed, the U.S. and NATO can always claim Turkey acted in self-defense to preserve its border and point to earlier terrorist attacks in Turkey. Turkey has sold it as a preemptive strike against Kurd ambitions, an anti-ISIL move, and an anti-terrorist move.

Two allies of the U.S. in its war on ISIL, Turkey and Kurds, are enemies of one another. The U.S. and NATO have let the U.S. military announce policy: “The U.S. will continue to support Kurdish Syrian militia that Turkey has pledged to wipe out in its offensive into Syria, Army Gen. Joseph Votel said Tuesday.”

States engage in hostilities across borders at times. It is characteristic of states. They are called by many names: invasions, incursions, interventions, operations, strikes, raids, hits, armed conflicts, punitive expeditions, attacks, military campaigns, extraterritorial operations and even wars.

Votel says that for two days the U.S. provided air cover for Turkey’s military activity in Syria; it stopped when it became clear that it was larger in scope, something closer to an invasion. The U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia’s outright and extensive invasion of Yemen since it began 17 months ago. NATO and the U.S. have invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. All of these have been large-scale cross-border invasions.

The Russian military intervention in Ukraine has been, while non-negligible, still modest by comparison, and against a very different historical context and geo-political background. It is striking that the U.S. has responded to that intervention by its support of Ukraine, by making stern demands on Russia, by instituting sanctions and by taking the unrealistic position that Russia invaded Crimea. “Obama said Russia’s annexation of Crimea must be met with condemnation — ‘not because we’re trying to keep Russia down, but because the principles that have meant so much to Europe and the world must be upheld.'”

Obama basically asserted U.S. unity with Europe. He asserted that Ukraine is in the sphere of Europe, not Russia, and therefore in the U.S. sphere. He sought to identify the principle of border sanctity in Europe with a worldwide principle.

But Obama’s statements are misguided nonsense and hypocrisy, sugar-coated with an idealistic tinge. The U.S. is indeed kicking Russia while she is down and perceived as weak. The U.S. is indeed making a power play with Ukraine being the region in play. The U.S. regards Europe and Ukraine as its “interests”, and Obama even elevates the world to nearly the same status as a U.S. interest. Arguing that the U.S. is “exceptional” and a vital world leader without which the world will descend into instability adds frosting to the rationalizing cake.

It is precisely because of this extraordinarily ambitious and expansive view that the U.S. can attack one country after another, under Clinton, Bush and Obama, without thinking that it’s doing anything wrong. To the U.S. policymakers, these invasions are the same as attacking Mexico in the Border War (1910-1919) and in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). It becomes morally easy for the leaders of the U.S. to cross foreign borders and attack other countries when they think that these invasions are somehow in self-defense or necessary because its interests are involved or vital to world order.

These three rationalizations are vintage neocon thought. If the U.S. is indispensable to the world and the world’s only superpower, then the world is its backyard, so to speak. There is no place or event anywhere that cannot become or be seen as or made into a cause for a U.S. border crossing. U.S. interests can be interpreted as expansively as the Constitution’s commerce clause has been. Self-defense becomes an infinitely expansible concept.

Americans might conceivably turn against the foreign wars if they would replace these three ideas by others. I can only present some brief comments. The U.S. is not indispensable to the world order. The world’s peoples are ultimately the world’s power. No one people has a claim to be a superpower and to have a responsibility to act as such or as the world’s policeman or moral arbiter.

U.S. interests are limited. They are not to do good throughout the world. They are not to create a new world order. The protection of the rights and property of Americans is the first and most important purpose of our government. The main interests of the state (the U.S.) are to maintain its capacity for that protection and to advance its skill and efficiency in administering such protection. The government as constituted is to provide justice for Americans. It is to be a government of Americans, by Americans and for Americans. This is a more than sufficient mission and challenge.

Self-defense doesn’t mean attacking other nations under a doctrine of preemption. It doesn’t mean fomenting revolutions or supporting them. It doesn’t mean installing leaders sympathetic to the U.S. Self-defense involves counter-measures, the application of reasonable force to prevent our injury.

11:52 am on August 31, 2016

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