I want to start by quoting from a Republican congressman’s speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. He gave this speech in opposition to his own Republican President’s decision to keep troops in Iraq. I quote him because his speech essentially sums up my opinion. This Congressman stated:
“The fundamental question is: What is the United States’ interest in Iraq? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask, how can the U.S. presence stabilize the region?… The longer we stay in Iraq, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.
“What can we expect if we withdraw from Iraq? The same as will happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any event.”
These are the opening paragraphs of a speech I gave in February 2008 at the World Affairs Council.
I went on to say:
Who was this Congressman? It sounds as if it could have been antiwar Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. Well, actually, it was a different presidential candidate named John McCain. I cheated in one little way: I substituted “Iraq” for “Lebanon.” The year was not in the 2000s; it was 1983. The President was not George W. Bush; it was Ronald Reagan. McCain had voted against President Reagan’s decision to keep American troops in Lebanon as part of a multinational “peacekeeping” force.
I quote John McCain, not to embarrass him – he’s plenty capable of doing that for himself, such as when he summed up his foreign policy on Iran with a Beach Boys song. Rather, I quote him to point out, with the notable exception of the previous speaker’s talk, how sensible thinking seems to be lost in our mainstream political discussion of foreign policy.
In my speech, I applied Friedrich Hayek’s thinking in his classic 1945 article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” to foreign policy, something that, as far as I know, Hayek never did.
There’s a transcript of my speech here.
READER COMMENTS
Ray
Aug 26 2018 at 1:09pm
Thank goodness we didn’t listen to McCain and abandon Iraq.
BC
Aug 26 2018 at 1:43pm
One reason that Hayek may not have applied his thinking to foreign policy is that, quite often, the alternative to foreign intervention is not, in fact, that foreign individuals will marshal their local knowledge. Instead, some other governmental entity could impose its will, also ignorant of distributed, local knowledge. For example, we know that China has expansionist ambitions throughout the Indo-Pacific, most notably in Taiwan and the South China Sea. We know Russia has expansionist ambitions in Eastern Europe including the Ukraine and also intervenes in the Middle East, notably in Syria. Absent US-led engagement in these regions, I see no reason to believe that Chinese or Russian intervention will better harness the local knowledge of individuals residing there.
Importantly, even governmental entities that originate locally do not necessarily make better use of local information. After all, Hayek’s point was that (even locally originating) governments should not intervene domestically. “Local” information refers to information *distributed across individuals* that cannot be possessed by any central entity, including entities of local origin. So, for example, I am quite doubtful that an ISIS regime would make better use of local information in the Middle East even though ISIS is local to that region.
So, to apply Hayek to foreign policy, we should ask which policies are most likely to allow individuals and firms to harness all of their distributed, local knowledge. Those policies are the ones that limit intervention by all governments, not just by our own but also by any authoritarian/interventionist governments that might emerge in our absence.
To be clear, I am *not* arguing for foreign intervention. Rather, I am arguing against the notion that Hayek’s thinking implies that US foreign intervention necessarily will lead to worse results than non-intervention. One has to consider what would emerge in the alternative.
Jon Murphy
Aug 26 2018 at 11:26pm
Part of Hayek’s point is we don’t know a lot of what we think we know. There are vast inter-relations of information and knowledge that is so dispersed no one person has it.
Mark Brady
Aug 27 2018 at 4:42pm
It’s too bad that John McCain didn’t embrace what he said in 1983 when confronted with the Yugoslav war and the events of the twenty-first century.
Gerald
Aug 28 2018 at 11:18am
So the idea is that, per Hayek’s theories relating to markets, the U.S. should not have, for example, assisted with Britain’s struggle against Nazi Germany? Was is really so difficult to gain the requisite information to determine which party was worth supporting in that conflict? With the allowance that I may be a bit dense, if that is the point, I don’t get it. I’m no warmonger, but this pacifism notion does not seem very realistic.
Rebes
Aug 30 2018 at 12:51pm
I think you miss the point of David’s speech. He didn’t object to taking sides, I would think particularly in a situation as clear-cut as WW II (which, BTW, was brought to the US’s doorsteps, rather than the US unilaterally entering it). He is objecting to our military presence inside a country with the objective to accomplish some domestic goals for that country. Your objection to David’s position will be more convincing if you can point at examples where that has worked well. I can’t, while we can all point at a long list of miserable failures (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.).
BC
Sep 1 2018 at 1:34am
“He is objecting to our military presence inside a country with the objective to accomplish some domestic goals for that country. Your objection to David’s position will be more convincing if you can point at examples where that has worked well.”
Post-WW2 Japan and W. Germany, South Korea, Taiwan. Arguably, the US also intervened somewhat in Texas vs. Mexico, which seems to have worked out well for Texas. One can make at least a defensible case that the US invasion of Panama in 1989 turned out ok. According to Wikipedia, “since 2010, Panama has been the second-most competitive economy in Latin America, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index….Most Panamanians supported the intervention.”
The US invasion of Grenada in 1983 was controversial at the time. It was criticized by Canada, privately by even Margaret Thatcher, and condemned by the United Nations as “a flagrant violation of international law”. It did, however, restore democratic elections, and the invasion date is now a national holiday in Grenada called Thanksgiving Day [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Grenada]. As I state above, it’s not always the case that the existing local government is the one that will most allow individuals and firms to make use of their local information. In the case of Grenada, this point seems to have been missed even by the “international community” and “international law”.
Luis Espino
Aug 29 2018 at 5:18pm
Acknowledging that all of this is rhetoric. Could one not argue that by abandoning Lebanon then, Hamas was emboldened and therefore all that ensued is a consequence? Has anyone consulted with the majority of the Lebanese, or for that matter Iraqis?
The only certain conclusion we can reach of all this is that our intelligence community is really not that intelligent.
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