Where Should the USA Intervene Abroad?

When discussing United States foreign policy, the hackneyed principle of “moral consistency” is often brought up. This clichéd credo is repeated tirelessly and without shame in discourse about the U.S.’s foreign policy and its role in the global community.

The proposition of “moral consistency” is as follows: since the U.S. cannot fix all the problems of the world, why should it even attempt to solve any of them?

I find this principle to be a dismal excuse to extirpate U.S. action abroad. Even if the U.S. cannot resolve all the world’s problems, it is morally indebted to alleviate or amend some of these calamities, particularly those it has had some influence in exacerbating or inciting.

Look at the proposition for war in Iraq – the Bush administration began and carried out Operation Iraqi Freedom with benign intentions. The disastrous, or perhaps even criminal, poor planning in the early- and mid-stages of the intervention are another issue. But why then did the U.S. intervene in Iraq and not, for example, Rwanda?

We must take into account the U.S.’s past support for the heinous Saddam Hussein: during the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. stood in solidarity with the totalitarian dictator by supplying him with one percent of his weapons to utilize against Iran, training Iraqi soldiers, and essentially giving Saddam the “green light” to invade and subsequently force Iran into a catastrophic war with his Iraq.

Considering this representation of U.S. foreign policy, should the U.S.’s responsibility not re-double in order to repair the dire situation here than anywhere else? Surely cleaning up a mess it has created is more moral than leaving the disaster to aggravate.

Even if the U.S. cannot do everything, why should it do nothing? At the very minimum, it should bear responsibility to correct its consequences from previous mission blowback and realpolitik blunders.

It should commit to this aspiration not because it can, but because it ought to. And in principle, the U.S. should choose its battles more wisely in the future. The American people are becoming increasingly impatient with monetary spending on U.S. action abroad.

Joseph Suh is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist