The criticism aimed at President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, former Senator Chuck Hagel, for possible reluctance to use force highlights a deeply troubling and largely unnoticed problem in our public psyche. We have slowly, and unknowingly, slipped into a mindset of perpetual war. Peace has become such an anomaly that we have forgotten that the use of force was once viewed as a last resort.
What we need is a national effort to shift the peace and security conversation in America. To help foster that dialogue and advance our national thinking, NAFSA is working with The Alliance for Peacebuilding, The Peace Alliance, and 3P Human Security to prompt the nation and its policymakers to confront the question of whether the United States is in fact more secure in a world of permanent war.
We need a national conversation on peace and the ignorance of a fear-based policy that is too focused on counter-terrorism and reliant on overuse of military force. Asked whether he thought that Hagel’s combat experience in Vietnam would make him more cautious in the use of force, Vietnam veteran and author Tim O’Brien said in a Jan. 31 interview on PRI’s The World:
When I hear that (one) is being criticized as possibly too cautious, I want to yell at the top of my lungs. How can one be too cautious? You can’t be too cautious. What else should you be cautious about if not killing people? And not having your own people die?
When someone like Hagel has had personal experience in combat, as an enlisted man,“I think you return from an experience like that with the knowledge that bullets and bombs and artillery shells can kill the enemy, but…can also manufacture an enemy. A bullet strikes a 6-year old kid in the head…the multiplier effect is enormous. It can be counterproductive, not achieving the goals you want but instead manufacturing problems,” O’Brien said.
For much of our nation’s history, peace in fact was the norm, and war was an aberration. However, after the September 11 attacks, this changed, without debate or conversation.
As NAFSA Senior Adviser for Public Policy Vic Johnson aptly put it, “The construct of counter-terrorism has overturned decades of policies that viewed a more peaceful world as a fundamental U.S. security objective. The same counter-terrorism polices have also denigrated and marginalized the international institutions (which are largely U.S. creations) that for decades were considered indispensable for supporting American values and security. As a result, huge swaths of issues are swept into the counter-terrorism rubric, and once they reside there, we are relieved of responsibility for calibrating our responses. It becomes axiomatic that we will pay any price to fight and defeat terrorism and address our suspicions that another attack is just around the corner.”
Whenever I talk with those who serve in the military, they are often the biggest champions for peace and for seeking nonviolent solutions to the world’s conflicts. As O’Brien said, “War can have the effects that are precisely the reverse of your intentions.”
We seem to unconsciously be sliding further into a mindset in which we question whether a potential nominee for the Secretary of Defense will be quick enough to use force. In honor of the men and women who serve in defense of our nation, I would think that caution should be praised, not questioned.
Jill Welch is the deputy executive director for public policy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Jill: this places NAFSA squarely alongside academic networks and advocacy NGOs that one would not ordinarily associate with our mission. It’s an interesting development having seen only the occasional motion raised at conference business meetings in the past 35 years which have tried to place us against a particular war or foreign policy which some of us felt was , in our view , not in the country’s interests-nor in line with our work with international students , etc. I don’t recall resolutions passed opposing our recent wars or particular administration policies- for example, opposing use of drones. Are we going to see this happen in the future?
I did not take away a clear reason why the Board now believes we should take a stand against a”mindset” of perpetual war. Is this now the official position of the association? Is this your personal point of view?
I personally agree with this post. But will NAFSA now speak out officially against or for particular aspects of foreign policy-such as taking a position against use of drones in Pakistan?
Beautifully written. I recently saw a pie chart (see link below) that startled me. It lends credence to what you are saying, although it also seems to illustrate that this latest period (2001-present) may just be continuing a longer-term trend.
https://www.upworthy.com/daymn-how-many-years-has-america-been-at-war-since-1776
Very thought provoking. The 25-year period from 1975-2000 – a coming of age period for many Generation Xers – was one of relative peace (or rather, lack of engagement in war) while the Millennium Generation has growth up perpetually at war; albeit a changed type of war where the loss of American lives is relatively low. The ability to strike a target from a remote location several thousand miles away may it even easier to accept being at war. Furthermore, the wars of the last decade have had little effect on the average lives of those growing up in the US. The numbers among us who experienced and remember the horrors of war is dwindling and limited to those who served on the front and those who lived through these times. It should alarm us that the decision to go to war has so little effect on the decision makers and we cannot accept this new reality with such indifference. So just how do we encourage our current and future leaders to exercise and praise caution instead of tossing it aside or questioning it?
And why was there so little campus protest in the past decade against either of the two current wars we’ve been in? In the one large demo in DC against the Iraq war, it was no where close to the scale of even the smallest anti-Vietnam War protest…There has been a sea change in the show of support and respect for those who serve –but I do think the all-volunteer fighting force has allowed our society to distance itself from the moral choices which were forced upon every young male [and it was that in the 60s and 70s] when we had a draft.
Jill,
Actually, I had thoughts very similar to yours when I watched the grilling they gave Senator Hagel in his Senate confirmation hearings. Not only is it immoral to maintain continual warfare which is not necessary for our own defense; but in addition, the U.S. Government is now at the point at which it can no longer afford to maintain continual warfare. Looking back on U.S. history, for much of that history the USA was an isolationist country, doing all in its power to avoid foreign conflicts. Look at the titanic efforts the USA waged to stay out of WWI and WWII. We reluctantly joined those wars because we were attacked and could no longer avoid involvement in the conflicts. No one seems to remember that now. Somehow, we have now become the world’s policeman, a burden which no country should have to bear–and a burden which we cannot bear forever. I know it’s a dangerous world; but we have to use some common sense here.
Of course, given the realities of human nature, some sort of conflict is inevitable. However, is continual warfare the answer? Continual warfare breeds implacable enemies who will one day find the means to hurt us. No one is invulnerable. And, continual warfare will bankrupt us.
I am with you, Jill.
Good luck.
Lowell G. Hancock