The recent insurgency attacks in Iraq have led many in and outside of the United States to question whether the U.S. has reneged on its obligations to Iraq.
In the United Kingdom, Tony Blair — who was prime minister when the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was made and who recently denied that the Second Iraqi War was the rationale behind the current insurgent raids — argues that the West must intervene in Iraq, as the militants “are not simply fighting Iraqis and they are also willing to fight us and they will if we don’t stop them.”
Meanwhile, the White House has announced that there will be no military intervention in Iraq until the Iraqi government shows that it is willing to address the political and governance problems plaguing the nation — including allegations that the Sunni and Kurdish minorities are underrepresented and repressed. This is despite the fact that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s targeting of Baquba, which is just 40 miles from ISIS’s declared target of Baghdad, has forced the U.S. to deploy troops to the region. While the declared primary objective of American forces is to facilitate the evacuation of American personnel stationed in the area, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has acknowledged that airstrikes are being considered.
The situation has led American officials to talk to Iranian officials in Vienna about Iraq as a sideline to negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. While no military cooperation was discussed, the notion that the U.S. would talk to Iran on matters of state security reflects how entangled diplomacy and political alliances concerning Iraq have become. (Iran is a Shia-majority nation, similar to Iraq, and is a major backer to the nation. The U.S. and Iran have not engaged in any mutual aid talks since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.)
Questions regarding the United States’ continuing role in Iraq — including whether allegiances to Saudi Arabia and Israel may have contributed to the decision to invade Iraq — have led some to re-examine the question of American isolationism.
Until World War I, the primary stance the U.S. took in regards to international diplomacy was that the nation should have no permanent alliances. In his farewell address to the American people at the end of his second term as president, George Washington wrote, “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.
“Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
This notion was picked up by Thomas Jefferson. In his inaugural address, Jefferson stressed “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Later, under James Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine codified in 1823 that the U.S. would only respond if its interests were threatened.
The U.S., in practical terms, did not play a role in international affairs until the Spanish-American War of 1898, when the U.S. seized and occupied the Philippines and purchased Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain for $20 million.
However, Theodore Roosevelt’s involvement in the Panamanian Revolt in order to secure construction rights for the Panama Canal started a slide in non-interventionism that ultimately led to the U.S.’s involvement in World War I. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points — in which he said a “general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike” — led to the formation of the League of Nations.
While there had been a significant effort between the World Wars to return the U.S. to isolationism, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 ended non-interventionism as a political policy of the U.S. However, there are some who argue that the nation’s first approach to international allegiances was the correct one.
Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas argues that true peace cannot occur if the nation can easily be dragged into fights abroad that do not concern America. Responding to U.S. Special Operations Forces commander Adm. William H. McRaven’s April 2013 testimony before the Senate Armed Services emerging threats subcommittee, “On any day of the year you will find special operations forces [in] somewhere between 70 and 90 countries around the world,” Paul wrote in a blog entry:
“Why? To what end? And most importantly, where is the authorization? On whose permission does the US Special Forces Command conduct war in 70 to 90 countries at any given time? Are there stacks of hidden declarations of war somewhere that no American knows about? The constitution gives the president no power at all to make war on any given day in 70 to 90 countries, to use secret forces to undermine domestic political currents in favor of movements and politicians that the US elites judge to be “in line” with their interests. Again it is the sign of a nation that has lost its way.”
Many of these operations referenced by Paul are treaty obligations, joint military operations or international “peacekeeping” operations. Most are condoned or permitted because they create a use for the military and justify the enormous funds allocated to maintain it.
While it is unthinkable under the current global circumstances for the U.S. to withdraw militarily from the world stage, why this is remains a valid question.