Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World. - Review - book review

Parameters, Winter, 2000 by Dr. John Garofano

By Richard N. Haass. Revised edition. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. 298 pages. $18.95 (paper).

As the Cold War wound down, it appeared to many that the use of military force by the United States would become a rare event, limited to vital areas such as the Persian Gulf and the Korean peninsula. Just a decade later it is clear that we will continue to face a wide array of situations in which air, naval, or ground forces may be used to uphold vital, important, and humanitarian interests. If anything, the decisions will become increasingly complex as we struggle to deal with ethnic strife, the proliferation of weapons of mass and more focused destruction, and dictators with stamina. When and how the United States should decide to use force are the subjects of this excellent aid to decisionmakers.

The book begins with a brief treatment of the historical roots of the current debate on intervention. Haass summarizes the just war writings of Aquinas and St. Augustine, the international law and political theorists of later centuries, military strategists since Napoleon, and recent theorists of limited war in the nuclear age. This is a useful background to the subsequent discussion of the "intervention debate" from Weinberger and Shultz through to the Clinton Administration and its critics. An excellent series of appendices contain the text of some of the more important speeches described in this section.

Chapter Two provides brief descriptions of US interventions from the Iran hostage mission to Haiti. The author then introduces in Chapter Three the "vocabulary of intervention" that he will use for the remainder of the book. This includes the concepts of deterrence, preventive attacks, compellence, punitive attacks, peacekeeping, warfighting, peace-making, nation-building, interdiction, humanitarian assistance, rescue, and various indirect uses of force including the provision of arms, training, and intelligence.

This approach is helpful for two reasons. First, it demonstrates the wide range of situations and decisions confronting a great power today. Loose talk about "peace operations" or the use of force against facilities for producing weapons of mass destruction, for example, can obscure the wide range of tools available to the policymaker. The author's discussion of each discrete instrument also points to the complexities of marrying military with diplomatic efforts to influence what are frequently non-rationally motivated actors. Second, the discussion of all these instruments--categorized as Operations Other than War (OOTW) by the US military--makes it clear that one should be cautious in generalizing about when and how to use force. Since we have relatively limited experience with any given type of the use of force (he discusses 12 cases in Chapter Two and 12 instruments in Chapter Three), conclusions must be tentative and attentive to the many factors that determine success or failure.

Haass remains aware of these constraints while also seeing the necessity to generalize if one is to offer guidelines to policymakers. Chapters Four and Five therefore offer suggestions and warnings regarding, respectively, when and how to intervene. He states that interests are "only a guide" in determining when to use force, and we may properly intervene on behalf of interests that are less than vital. Furthermore, military force may not be the best way to secure an extremely important interest; conversely, it may be a "cheap and easy" way to secure one that is only moderately important. Finally, military force is only one option. "If war is an extension of politics, it is also only one way of pursuing political ends, and needs to be weighed against the others."

This approach echoes that espoused by President Bush near the end of his term, when Haass, now director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, was a senior director on the National Security Council and an assistant to the President. Bush and Haass both believe that force should be considered for important as well as vital interests, when it can be effective, when the objectives are clear, when the benefits outweigh the costs, and where it can be limited. Haass further notes the need to anticipate the adversary's response, and illustrates how this was not done in several cases, to which we might now add Kosovo.

The author also argues for avoiding several potentially fatal missteps. One is the requirement for an exit date, which will embolden adversaries and, we should add, stultify domestic debate and hamstring presidential prerogative. Another is the desire to act only where public and congressional support is guaranteed; he believes success will breed support, and in any case skillful leaders will create support when necessary. He offers as a useful rule of thumb "that the need for advance, formal congressional support...increases in proportion to the scale of the proposed intervention." There are also warnings against allowing the media to determine when to intervene. Although it will probably affect how force is used, a good leader will effectively shape and limit the media's influence. Finally, he makes a convincing argument that it is difficult to use force to change dramatically the internal politics of many countries. He draws on successes and failures in Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia, the Philippines, and Panam a to make his point.