The Sawicky doctrine of war-fighting:

. It should not be enough for some other nation to be an enemy, for it to have nuclear weapons, for it to be a tyranny, for there to be idle U.S. troops not engaged in some other war, for it to abuse its subjects or its neighbors, for it to be universally despised, for the U.N. to vote for its demise. My three exceptions would be 1) self-defense (in the face of an imminent, manifest, tangible threat, or act of aggression), naturally; 2) the threat of genocide, or 3) the near-guarantee of very great benefits at very low cost.

Here’s a question about this. If aggressive war is wrong (which clearly seems to be an underlying theme here), and wars of self-defense are justified, why isn’t it appropriate for a rich and powerful country like the United States to go to war in order to help defend a smaller, less-powerful country against acts of aggression committed by a third country? I’m not saying it’s always a good idea for the US to come to the defense of others, but the Sawicky Doctrine seems to hold that it’s always wrong to do this. Why would you think that?

UPDATE: In comments Max substantially concedes the point, “As long as that is what occurring, I don’t have a problem with that.” Obviously, the concept of defending others is open to abuse, particularly on the level of rhetoric. Then again, the concept of self-defense is likewise oft-abused in that virtually every war is soaked in the rhetoric of self-defense, often on absurdly far-fetched theories, but we still don’t abandon the concept. I should say that Max’s (2) strikes me as too lax in some ways and too strict in others.

Returning to Reuel Marc Gerecht, the essential thing anyone who wants to justify this war as some kind of nice guy method of helping Iraqis out needs to grapple with is the extraordinary opportunity costs involved in fighting it. David Leonhart writes about this today, here’s John Quiggin’s take, and here was mine.

It’s not a coincidence that the administration’s pre-war cost estimates — anywhere from $0 to $50 billion — were so badly off-base. Nobody in their right mind would have agreed ex ante to spend over $1 trillion (so far!) in order to take out Saddam Hussein. The venture was sold as something that would be cheap and easy because it only made sense under the theory that it would, in fact, be cheap and easy. Indeed, I assume most of the prime movers behind the war actually believed it would be cheap and easy. This, after all, is the typical failing of the militarist. Diplomacy, compromise, patience, etc., all seem too hard better to reach for the easy answers of the bombs and tanks. In reality, there’s nothing easy about it.

The other thing to be said about counterinsurgency is that times change, and ideas and technology change with them. During the high tide of Victorian imperialism (also the time of America’s conquest of the Philipines) the gap in military technology between imperialists and the imperialized was enormous. Britain’s colonial service operated on the sensible slogan that “whatever happens we have got / the maxim gun and they have not.” Subjugated peoples had an extremely difficult time acquiring firearms, especially top-notch ones, and ammunition. The weapons of the day broke a lot and were difficult for indigenous peoples to repair or replace. The modern insurgent has recourse to the AK-47, which is cheap as shit, and thanks to modern transportation technology easy to get wherever you’d like. It’s a perfectly good gun, it’s easy to maintain, and you should read all about it in Larry Kahaner’s book.

Obviously, something like the modern American military still has large technological advantages, but they’re much smaller (for these purposes — today’s Air Force could destroy a whole country with nuclear ICMBs if it was ordered to) than the advantages enjoyed by rich countries today. What’s more, literacy is much more widespread and, combined with broadcast media, means you have much deeper and wider levels of political consciousness than you did in the past. Ideas — western ideas, really — about nationalism, self-determination, autonomy, etc. have spread past the point where people are wiling to accept foreign domination.

Here’s the scoop on this business — counterinsurgency campaigns sometimes succeed, normally when you have a state repressing an internal insurgency. Very, very, very rarely you see a foreign power successfully crush an insurgency and then organize a “decent interval”-type pause before departing (see Britain in Kenya, South Africa). You have essentially no instances of foreign power demonstrating an ability to stay put over the long haul.

Stepping back, you need to ask yourself questions about goals. I mean, say we did have a method at our disposal for crushing the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq and entrenching SCIRI or the Sadrists in power in Baghdad — why would we do that? Would would it accomplish? Just “winning” doesn’t do anything unless you’ve picked a battle worth winning. I’d love to see Iraq become a shining democracy, but (a) it’s not going to happen and (b) counterinsurgency has nothing to do with it.