Editor’s note: Big Tent Ideas always aims to provide balancing perspectives on the hottest issues of the day. Below is part one of a column series from Chuck DeVore presenting his analysis of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. You can find a counterpoint here, which was originally republished from IM—1776, where Erik Prince presents his analysis of U.S. foreign policy in that era.
There’s a lot to unpack in Erik Prince’s sprawling 4,600 word May 2 opinion piece in the Daily Caller entitled, “Neocons Almost Killed America. Here’s How Patriots Can Fix It.” So, I’ll take on his three contentions in two parts, starting with the areas we find some agreement on: that America’s post-Cold War foreign policy has been a disaster and U.S. military spending is grossly inefficient.
We’ll save Prince’s third argument, that U.S. foreign policy missteps pushed Russia into China’s arms, for a second response. (RELATED: MORGAN MURPHY: Double America’s Navy)
Prince’s effort is ambitious, and there’s a lot to recommend in it. Viewing it with more granularity, one could reasonably assess that Prince should get credit for batting .400 — which is .400 better than the D.C. defense and foreign policy elite he criticizes.
But when recommending solutions, one must first correctly identify the source of the problems — and here’s where Prince’s analysis shows weakness.
Prince cites the failure of American military interventions since the end of the Cold War in 1991. He correctly assigns the emphasis on nation building as a key reason for failure.
Instead, he says that military intervention, to the extent that it should be used, should take the form of punitive expeditions. In other words, go in, kill those who need killing, and leave the smoking rubble as a warning to others not to mess with America. I agree.
Had we done this in Afghanistan after 9/11, and even in Iraq, for violating UN resolutions that put the lives of U.S. military personnel at risk, America would have saved thousands of servicemembers’ lives and limbs, and some $3 trillion — of which, perhaps half, might have been used to modernize our military to better deter the People’s Republic of China.
But in critiquing America’s post-Cold War interventions, Prince incorrectly ascribes the string of failures to “neocons” — a group of foreign policy practitioners and theorists who, while they had their time in the sun, have mostly passed from the stage.
During the late Cold War period, neocons referred to Democrat staffers who were anti-Soviet but liberal on domestic policy. As the Democratic Party lurched left during the 70s, neocons largely found themselves without a political home until a few ended up serving in the Reagan administration. Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Richard Perle were among the more prominent neocons, and I had the pleasure of working with Perle during my time as a young Reagan appointee in the Pentagon.
But the impulse to nation........