The Violence of Peace by Stephen Carter

Author:Stephen Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beast Books
Published: 2010-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

HOW AMERICA IS DIFFERENT

Like it or not, the United States remains the world’s policeman. President Bush, although the fact may be difficult to remember, campaigned in 2000 on the idea that the United States should be more “modest” in its foreign policy goals. Events changed his mind. President Obama sounded similar themes. And events seem to have caught up with him. “As for whether the U.S. is willing to carry on with the task of keeping peace in the world,” writes the historian Paul Johnson, “it really has no alternative.” President Obama, says Johnson, “will discover through bitter experience” what his equally optimistic predecessors learned: “that he has to be the lawman, that he must keep the world-town safe.”41

To understand why this is so, let us begin by distinguishing peacekeeping from warfighting, for the two are easily confused. Peacekeepers are supposed to do precisely what the name implies, enforce a peace already negotiated. All over the world are countries willing to send brave soldiers willing to do that difficult and dangerous job. This generosity contributes to a more stable world. But a force of peacekeepers can do its job only when a peace is in effect. The peace might be shaky, but the peace must exist. It is not the job of the peacekeepers to create it.

Consider that last point again: Peacekeepers can only keep the peace. Once stated, it becomes obvious. Peacekeepers cannot stop a slaughter. They cannot impose a peace when another country prefers to fight. That is a job for warriors: the point the Times overlooked. If you are trying to put forceful end to a genocide, you will likely need not a peacekeeping force but a warfighting force. Think about it. You are no longer being invited in to monitor the work the diplomats have done. You are in effect mounting an invasion where you are likely to meet resistance. For an invasion, you need an army. You need an army that can project force over a long distance, landing troops, supplying them, replenishing them, for what might be an extended period. Only a handful of nations any longer possess armed forces that can take significant military action half a world away.

Suppose, then, for the sake of argument, that we care about the horrors other governments do to their people, and that we care enough to use force to halt the horror. If we insist on not sending our own troops, what alternatives are available? An obvious answer—the immediate one my students come up with—is to assemble a coalition, combining the armed forces of several different countries into a single fighting force. Indeed, casual followers of things military might imagine that getting soldiers together on the battlefield is a simple matter: 5,000 of ours plus 5,000 of theirs creates an integrated fighting army of 10,000 soldiers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Imagine a basketball team that starts two professionals, a college journey-man, and two high school kids, and you begin to see the problem. Training matters.

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