Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

By Jacob M. Jordan

“…Trade with all nations, and entangling alliances with none,” as the non-interventionist mantra attributed to Thomas Jefferson goes. It is important from the outset to realize that any perception of condescending sarcasm is not intended. The notion of the tenuous and fragile United States preoccupying itself at the turn of the eighteenth century with the interests of other sovereign countries would have been foolish. In other words, the United States, being completely devoid of any political or symbolic capital, needed to assure the development of its own sovereign identity before even considering obligating itself to defend that of any other nation.

Perhaps Jefferson intended for his maxim to be perpetuated ad infinitum, or maybe only until the fledgling United States solidified its place. Whatever the case, in an era in which an instantaneous destruction of millions is a hair-trigger reality, the absolutist’s call for non-intervention foreign policy needs to be reevaluated. The somewhat desperate reliance upon the Cold War concept of Mutually-Assured Destruction—or MAD—is itself rendered obsolete in a world in which national entities can pass on nuclear material to suicidal non-nationalist who believe self-sacrifice is not just one avenue to effect change through violence, but the preferable way. When it comes to amorphous groups of alienated individuals whose ideal of a compromise is seen unequivocally as being a matter of eschatology, dialogue is an exercise in futility. Seriously consider this next series of questions: Before the inevitable catastrophe inevitably occurs, from whom or where does Congressman Paul suppose the first trans-national terrorist (be it a group or an individual) will acquire nuclear material? Will al-Qaida throw up its hands in desperation and begin mining for its own uranium? Suppose that al-Qaida did get its hands on fissionable material without the assistance of any nation. It would still be necessary to process the material—a task which requires the resources on national scale.

The central point is that, in order for a terrorist group to carry out a nuclear attack against the United States, the assistance of a sovereign nation will necessarily be a part of the operation. Ostensibly, it is important for the United States to focus its diplomatic, intelligence-gathering and military efforts on what we might call the “choke point” of nuclear states—any nation which has nuclear operations that could be that necessary liaison between the ambitious terrorist with the raw material and a smoldering New York City. “Interventionism” is neither inherently good nor is it necessarily bad—history is rife with examples of both. Hitler’s invasion of Poland was a form of intervention, as well as the U.S. providing food to Soviet-occupied Germany in the Berlin airlifts. Many view intervention strictly as a military affair, in which one nation forcefully imposes itself on a sovereign nation, when in reality, intervention can take many forms—be it economic (through the use of sanctions), the circulation of propaganda, covert operations, and so on. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, a military venture which relied upon a contrived arrangement of data, is of the most blatant form.

The thrust of my argument is that intervention is demanded in an age in which the technology exists to annihilate millions in seconds. That threat was fabricated in the case of Iraq. Vietnam is also a treasure trove (deservedly so) for those who believe intervention to be unacceptable. I can provide a much longer list, however, of historical debacles in which interventionism (or more of it) could have prevented the extent of tragedy. The Nazi Germany example is clear enough. Prior to and apart from Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated agreement with Hitler, one could have viewed Hitler’s earlier remobilizing of Germany’s military as a call for the United States to aggressively intervene. A disaffected WWI veteran now ran Germany. Upon rearming the country, Hitler began invading the surrounding nations. Initially, his seizure of territory was sanctioned by Europe, then frowned upon, and finally retaliated against. In the beginning, Hitler cloaked his intentions with the justification of correcting domestic interests; namely, the re-absorption of German populations back into Germany. At several points, a variety of intervention opportunities presented themselves to the world—most prominently, a multi-lateral reevaluation of the Versailles Treaty, assassination, or the military-enforcement of the terms. Such notions were not plausible, however, because Germany had a right to its own ethnic and sovereign issues. I digress. The contemporary global threat facing the United States is not invasion or a war of attrition. It is the flicking of a switch by a single person that will obliterate staggering numbers of lives in a matter of seconds. For one moment, suspend the temporal, practical, or logistical objections and imagine: On top of his recently-accomplished invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was enriching uranium that might be used for a nuclear bomb. Does not something turn in your stomach when you imagine an organized call for a non-interventionist policy?

At the moment you are reading this, there is a political leader who hosts Holocaust-denial conventions within his country. Unlike Germany’s Fuhrer, however, whose intentions were initially obfuscated because of his stated desire to restore Germany’s native population, the man we are speaking of openly proclaims that he wants to efface his neighboring country’s existence. Several decades ago, he took part in the ambush of the U.S. embassy in his country. To this day, the Americans who were held hostage at gunpoint still identify him as one of the participants. Did I mention he is operating nuclear facilities which process weapons-grade uranium? What’s that? Oh, I apologize. I did not even consider that the nation’s population may have power needs that demand the use of nuclear technology. I must have mistaken this man’s country for the one sitting on the world’s third-largest oil reserves. Where there is smoke, there is fire.