From Overseas Press

Is America addicted to war?

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-04-12 14:46

"Is America addicted to war?" asks Stephen Walt, professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in a commentary published by Foreign Policy in April.

Americans think of themselves as peace-loving despite the fact that the United States of America started out as 13 small colonies expanding all across the continent at the expense of the native population and the fact that it fought more than 10 genuine wars and engaged in countless military interventions during the past century. In the 21st century, the US first launched a war in Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Libya. President Barack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has actually made things worse. Here, professor Stephen Walt gives us his top five reasons America keeps getting into foolish fights.

For a start, it is "because we can," according to Walt. The US has a "remarkably" strong military capability. "When you've got hundreds of planes, smart bombs, and cruise missiles, the whole world looks like a target set."

Second, "the US has no serious enemies." After the Cold War, the United States doesn't have a "peer competitor." Its favorable geographical position keeps the homeland safe, so Americans can go abroad "in search of monsters to destroy."

The third factor, argues Stephen Walt, is America's all-volunteer force. "By limiting military service only to those individuals who volunteer to do it, public opposition to wars of choice is more easily contained."

The fourth reason is that the US foreign-policy establishment is determined to do "something." Dominated by either neoconservatives or "liberal interventionists," American foreign policy makers are just keen to make wars, despite their differences in rationale. They only care about their political projects and forget that the world might be better if Washington did a little less.

Finally, no less important, "Congress has checked out." Since World War II, the authority to declare war has gradually slipped into the hands of the US president. The enshrined system of "checks and balances" has all but stopped functioning, and the use of military power is now solely left to the US "president and some ambitious advisers." It helps explain "why the supposedly peace-loving United States keeps finding itself in all these small but draining wars."