Counter Argument "Rescuing Interventionism?"
The history of humankind is full of violence. The nature of any human being presupposes the ability of adapting to any surroundings in order to survive. Therefore, people learned to survive and continued the kind in the impossible to live in environments with extremely low and high temperatures and other conditions. Modern daily living requires adaptation of another kind. People mastered the skills and knowledge that help to survive, get food, and feel safe. However, people still have not learned how to absolutely suppress violence in the subconsciousness. From the ancient times until today people have died or were injured by the hand of their own kind. People conquered each other by various means from attacking neighbors by sticks to launching missiles from the other continents to solve particular tasks – get something from the other formations would it be resources or any other interest.
Everything has reasons. Violence was an integral part of everyday living at the dawn of human era. The necessity in food, protection from predators, and competitors for food required from the first people to be violent. Therefore, their children perceived such behavior as normal and absorbed it as the model for the further development. Evolutionary changes in human behavior, further sophistication of social relationships, and development of the brain led to the eventual unaccepting of violence in a society as the mechanism of solving problems. However, it is accepted on the governmental level, especially in terms of bringing liberation to the countries considered by someone as not free – from tyranny, fear, oil, gas…
It is possible that the problem is deeper than some people think. Despite the fact that civilized people have laws and mechanism to resolve any argues between two abstract individuals and the entire governments and international formations like the UN and NATO not using violence, people still harm each other intentionally or hiding intentions behind the good will. The problem could be hidden in people themselves and countries they built during the ages of development – the past and present time shapes the behavior of modern aggressors (or liberators?). Violence in the past was a common thing for the people of that time. It became normal for most people today. Noteworthy, it became a normal practice for the most developed countries in terms of pursuing own interests in countries all over the globe.
Modern external policy of the United States of America can be described as peacekeeping. On paper, it is the desire to promote and strengthen democracy (of western type, of course) across the globe to make people free and happy. However, the way this policy is implemented can be called nothing but Interventionism (Boundless). The U.S. government intervenes into internal affairs of other countries covering it by the everlasting struggle for human rights, freedoms, prosperity of people, etc. There are numerous examples of such interventions for the past twenty years: Yugoslavia (1992-94), Bosnia (1993), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-?), Iraq (1998, 2003-?), Somalia (2006-?), Libya (2011-?), and others (Grossman). The list is not full. Interventionism justifies each of these conflicts involving the U.S., directly and indirectly.
The idea of intervening into affairs of sovereign states was developed after WWII in the United States in order to withstand the growing influence of communists (Boundless). It was not just military doctrine of getting involved into various conflicts in order to contain communist ideology. Active participation in rebuilding Europe, major roles in UN and NATO, various police actions all over the world were the parts of intervening policy of the U.S. right after the resolving of the greatest conflict in the human history (Boundless). Back then, probably the appropriate countermeasure helped to contain the spread of communists’ ideology and allowed to balance the situation in political, military, and economic meaning .
However, modern intervening looks more like implanting Western civilization and its ideals to every country that has something useful for the U.S. Andrew Rawnsley in his article The right and the wrong lessons to draw from Libya's liberation protects such policy of the U.S. and states that humanism and desire to help Libyans were the two major driving forces of the revolution (Rawnsley). He says that dictator must have been stopped by any means and that none of the American solder stepped onto the land of Libya. Of course, it was joint operation of the British, French, and the U.S. governments, where the first two countries were involved directly, using their military forces, while the American Army stood aside as a supportive consultant (Rawnsley).
On the other hand, is not it obvious that the U.S. government was the ideologist of this “liberation” pursuing own, pragmatic goals? Rawnsley’s mistake in this case is to appeal to humanism and disinterestedness of the U.S. and propagate the magnanimity of the interventionism doctrine as the major contributor to the liberation of Liberian people. It is unimaginable combination of words and actions behind them in the light of the intervening history of the U.S. army and various Special Forces, led by the American government. It sounds like a joke, actually. Major logical flaw of Rawnsley is in the effort to create the image of such a liberator with good intentions after the century (!) of police actions, military operations, and suspicious interest of the U.S. Interventionism doctrine to the countries with rich natural resources or strategic geopolitical position. People, who have even the slightest idea of what happened in the world for the past decade would never buy this story - that is for granted.
