Read Erik Goepner’s and Trevor Thrall’s post at War on the Rocks to understand why I am perennially disappointed in American foreign policy:
President Donald Trump has expanded every aspect of the war on terror he inherited from his two predecessors. In his first nine months Trump has ordered a renewed surge in Afghanistan, increased the tempo of drone strikes, and granted the military greater autonomy. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control or contest more districts than at any point since 2001. And last week four American soldiers died in Niger, an increasingly active front in the war on terror. Americans are now fighting — and dying — in at least eight different countries across the Middle East and Central Asia. The deaths of American forces are a particularly sobering reminder of the war’s high costs and should prompt people to ask whether the costs are worth it.
Unfortunately, the evidence of the past 16 years clearly indicates that the answer is no. Enough time has now passed since 9/11 to reach two important conclusions. First, the threat posed by Islamist-inspired terrorism does not justify such a mammoth effort. Second, the aggressive military strategy the United States has pursued since 2001 has not only failed to reduce the threat of terrorism; it has likely made things worse.
which is basically the gospel I’ve been preaching for the last 25 years. A good rule of thumb for what our foreign policy should be is look closely at what American presidents have done over the period of roughly the last quarter century and do the opposite. I’d push the timeline back farther than that to include the entire post-war period but at least we stood by and watched the Soviet Union collapse without actually going to war with it.
