How to end a war?
At the group blog “Tapped,” Matthew Yglesias writes:
[T]he hawkish “domino theory” view of Vietnam proved to be largely correct in that lots of the bad consequences they thought would follow from losing the war really did happen. Pro-Soviet regimes took over not only South Vietnam, but Laos, Cambodia, and Burma. The Soviets were emboldened and sponsored a revolutionary movement in Central America that took over Nicaragua and seriously destabilized Guatemala and El Salvador. And while I forget the details, they also mucked about with no small degree of success in Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia. Anti-apartheid movements vaguely aligned with the Soviet Union gained strength in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The pro-Soviet governments of Syria and Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War and the Soviet-aligned PLO became a major player in Lebanese politics and launched a variety of audacious international terrorist attacks.
It’s not, in other words, that losing the war turned out to be fine and dandy. The 1970s and early 1980s proved to be a period of aggressive action by Soviet and Soviet-aligned forces; the United States was frequently on the defensive; our credibility as a great power came under question; and, generally speaking, there were all kinds of problems. But we coped. Richard Nixon went to China and reconfigured great power politics. The USSR badly overreached in Afghanistan and Jimmy Carter inaugurated support for anti-Soviet forces and a U.S. military buildup that Ronald Reagan continued, placing an enormous burden on Moscow.
But most fundamentally of all, the market liberal democracies of North America, Japan, and Western Europe simply continued to function better as politico-economic systems, a reformist government came to power in the USSR, Reagan took advantage of that to work with Mikhail Gorbachev, and eventually it all worked out to a happy ending except for the Afghans and all the dead people in Central America.
In fact, people — notably, women — are still dying in Central America because the consequences of the so-called “Cold” War have yet to be acknowledged and addressed.
We’ve moved on to a “clash of civilizations,” having lived through “the end of history,” and are now confirming whether or not there really is a “war on terror.”
But for many, many people unlucky enough to have been born in the Third World, the wars triggered by Soviet aggression and U.S. retaliation continue to this day.
How do you remove weapons already in circulation? How do you transform soldiers into civilians?
How can you begin to address poverty and inequality, corruption and exploitation in a society that is still, fundamentally, psychologically, at war?
Perhaps, if the U.S. had addressed these issues in Central America, if the European Union were to address these issues in Africa, if Japan and Australia would deign to address these issues in Southeast Asia — perhaps, the current war in Iraq would have transpired differently.
As is, I fear, we appear to be lighting more and more fires. First world citizens, particuarly those who are working class, only ever smell the smoke — namely, in the form of immigration. And while the attacks against Americans on U.S. soil which took place on September 11, 2001 were certainly more than “smoke,” the term “blowback” never really caught on in the aftermath. I suppose reckoning with that term would imply acknowledging a fire that few Americans remember having lit — to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Today the responsible and reasonable voices in the U.S. are calling for a American withdrawal from Iraq — the only political disagreement appears to be over when and not how.
The developed nations, for all their science and philosophy, for all their wealth and machinery, are not very good at ending wars. If we acknowledged this as a problem, we might avoid them with more courage in the future.
This is a particularly vexing problem when the wars in question do not involve clearly defined parties — who signs the treaty? And how do you end a war that never officially started?
It is now well known that Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President George W. Bush that invading Iraq would entail breaking that nation state, adding “You break it, you bought it.”
But who will enforce that contract? It appears many in the U.S. are quite willing to try to put a broken Iraq back on the shelf, the pieces held together with spit and chewing gum.
If the U.S. had to seek at least the ceremonial blessings of the United Nations before invading Iraq, shouldn’t it have to do likewise when evacuating its military from same?