An F/A-18F Super Hornet prepares to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz Sept. 3, 2013 in the Red Sea. U.S. Navy/Getty Images

Decisions about what action the United States should take against Syria will decisively affect Syria and much of the Middle East. The biggest impact, however, may be felt inside the US.

The negative reaction in Congress and among the American people to President Obama’s proposal of military intervention has been sharp. U.S. receptiveness to Russia’s proposal to sequester Syria’s chemical weapons shows how eager Washington is to avoid a military response.

Neither this turn nor the potential “no” vote in Congress would represent a full rejection of Obama’s plan. It would, however, be something extraordinary — even historic. It would suggest that a substantial percentage of Americans believe that a proposed war is a bad idea. In the context of American history, this is almost unthinkable.

War is woven into the fabric of American life, and Americans usually embrace it. A century ago, this was because many considered war an exuberant, cleansing, manly endeavor. Theodore Roosevelt, who famously declared that he would “welcome almost any war,” exemplified this view. “All the great masterful races have been fighting races,” Roosevelt declared, “and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may retain, no matter how skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art, it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best.”

Advances in the technology of destruction and killing made it difficult to sustain belief in war’s beauty or nobility. The idea of manifest destiny gave way to something more sophisticated called liberal internationalism, corporate globalism or, in Henry Cabot Lodge’s formulation, “the large policy.”

The first organization founded to promote this ideology, the Council on Foreign Relations, emerged after World War I and took as its motto a Latin word, ubique, which means “everywhere.” That word was intended as the succinct answer to a host of great questions: Where does the U.S. have vital interests? Where must it seek to shape the course of events? Where does it have enemies? Where must it be ready to fight?

Because the U.S. possesses such overwhelming military force, it naturally seeks to use that force. This has led inexorably to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy. American leaders have always acted on the assumption that in the end, they have recourse to all the coercive power they need to achieve any geopolitical goal.

Castro is bad? Invade Cuba. The leader of a tiny Caribbean island is executed? Invade Grenada. Noriega is defiant? Invade Panama. Don’t like Milosevic? Bomb Yugoslavia. The Taliban collaborates with our enemies? Bomb Afghanistan. Saddam is defiant? Invade Iraq.