I’ve noticed a tendency in the US to assume that everything that happens in the world is caused by internal US interests. That all international issues get re-cast in domestic political terms.
Did the US start the Libyan civil war? No, in fact the US was one of the last of the western militaries to get involved, after Canada, France and the UK. The US initially played a minor role.
Did the US instigate the Syrian civil war? Again, no, the US only involved when IS got involved.
I watched an interview with Tulsi Gabbard where she said the Ukraine War was caused by US corporations that profit from selling weapons. I mean what’s the theory, that Lockheed persuaded Putin to invade Ukraine? It’s absurd. I get that she hates the military industrial complex, and maybe she has many valid reasons, but in this case she’s delusional.
I’m not at all saying there aren’t factions in the US that do advocate military adventurism, and profit from it. That’s a real thing. The second Gulf war is an example, I’ll give you that one, but even in that case that was just one of many factors and I don’t think it would have been decisive by itself. Also yes, the west absolutely compromises principles for geopolitical and economic interests. But this idea that all foreign conflicts are a plot by the military industrial complex is a bit absurd. It’s not always all about you, guys.
I don’t disagree that it shows these issues, but identifying these empirically is one of the reasons the US likes to constantly inject itself into international conflict.
Why Some Wars (Like Syria’s) Get More Attention Than Others (Like Yemen’s)
Damage in a house after a Saudi-led airstrike last month in Yemen, whose war has not gotten much attention.
MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI / REUTERS
OCTOBER 1, 2016
The Interpreter
By AMANDA TAUB
It is a truth universally acknowledged by every war correspondent, humanitarian aid worker and Western diplomat: Some wars, like Syria’s, receive tremendous public attention, which can translate into pressure for resolution. But many others, like Yemen’s still raging but much ignored conflict, do not.
Some of the reasons are obvious; the scale of Syria’s war is catastrophic and much worse than Yemen’s. But attention is about more than numbers. The conflict in eastern Congo, for instance, killed millions of people and displaced millions more, but received little global attention.
Every country in the world has its own version of that dynamic, but it is uniquely significant in the United States.
The United States is the world’s sole remaining superpower, but Americans often seem so inward-looking as to be almost provincial. Foreigners often express wonder that American television news, for instance, spends fewer minutes covering the rest of the world than the rest of the world’s news shows spend covering America.
A result is that American attention seems both vitally important and frustratingly elusive.
But when the world asks why America has forgotten Yemen and other conflicts like it, that has the situation backward. The truth is that inattention is the default, not the exception.
Conflicts gain sustained American attention only when they provide a compelling story line that appeals to both the public and political actors, and for reasons beyond the human toll. That often requires some combination of immediate relevance to American interests, resonance with American political debates or cultural issues, and, perhaps most of all, an emotionally engaging frame of clearly identifiable good guys and bad guys.
Most wars — including those in South Sudan, Sri Lanka and, yes, Yemen — do not, and so go ignored. Syria is a rare exception, and for reasons beyond its severity.
The war is now putting United States’ interests at risk, including the lives of its citizens, giving Americans a direct stake in it. The Islamic State has murdered American hostages and committed terrorist attacks in the West.
And the war offers a compelling tale of innocent victims and dastardly villains. The Islamic State is a terrorist organization with a penchant for crucifixions and beheadings. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his patrons in Iran are hostile to the United States and responsible for terrible atrocities. And now Russia, which is at best America’s frenemy, is fighting on their side as well.
The Obama administration’s refusal to bomb Syria in 2013, and subsequently to intervene more fully, has also made this a domestic political dispute, giving politicians on both sides an incentive to dig in. This provided an appealing focal point for election-year political debates over Mr. Obama’s foreign policy and for how to assign blame for the Middle East’s collapse. Those debates have sharpened and sustained domestic attention on Syria, giving both the public and politicians reason to emphasize the war’s importance.
But it is rare for so many stars to align.
Yemen’s death toll is lower than Syria’s, and although Al Qaeda does operate there, Yemen’s conflict has not had the kind of impact on American and European interests that Syria’s has. There is no obvious good-versus-evil story to tell there: The country is being torn apart by a variety of warring factions on the ground and pummeled from the air by Saudi Arabia, an American ally. There is no camera-ready villain for Americans to root against.
A woman and child after an airstrike in Syria on Friday.
AMER ALMOHIBANY / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
The war’s narrative is less appealing to American political interests. Yemen’s Houthi rebels pose little direct threat that American politicians might rally against. On the other side of the conflict are Saudi airstrikes that are killing civilians and targeting hospitals and aid workers, at times with United States support.
No American politician has much incentive to call attention to this war, which would require either criticizing the United States and an American ally, or else playing up the threat from an obscure Yemeni rebel group. It is little wonder that, when several senators recently tried to push a bill to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its conduct in Yemen, they found only a few sponsors and the motion was tabled in a 71-to-27 vote."
In a democracy, we're all morally culpable for what our government is doing. In this case, the idea that our government is using our tax dollars to arm an ally that is intentionally targeting hospitals and aid workers, is extremely concerning. As the holocaust has shown, pleading ignorance is no defense against such crimes against humanity. I can only wonder what future generations will think about us when they look back on our apathy and implicit acceptance of such abominable behavior.
My entire point was America pokes around. You’re mentioning more cases. Yes. We do that. Sometimes, mostly around WWII, we did it well. Since Vietnam, the record has been crap. (Question mark for the first Gulf War.) Ukraine and Taiwan look more like the work our Greatest Generation did than the Boomer years.
The conflicts we hear the least about tend to be those we were least involved in. Myanmar. Tigray. Whatever the fuck South Africa is currently up to.
I deliberately left that out because it was to a large extent a proxy conflict once the US started delivering weapons to the Muhajirin in large numbers.
(Or at least there's a reasonable argument for that case and I didn't want it to distract from the key point).
I think World War 2, the Korean War, the first Gulf War and possibly the NATO engagements in former Yugoslavia benefited Americans. Furthermore, I place value on the deterrence broadcast by such actions. Look at any poll--war is popular.
Those are certainly important questions and the answer i like is probably USA shouldn’t meddle in other countries concerns. But I think it is true that at least some of the often listed examples of USA supposedly interfering in democracies are not quite black and white.
I mean Syria, Libya, Iraq are some recent examples. There could also be a discussion about Ukraine and how much did US help to topple the government there but that is a more speculative example. The middle eastern examples are quite clear cut. I do agree US is doing this less than during the cold war.
While I'm an advocate of the US entirely removing itself militarily from the Middle East, none of those properly qualify against the parent's point.
The parent referred to starting wars. The first one doesn't qualify at all.
The US and NATO have intervened in the two civil wars (along with numerous other countries; with France recently pleading with the US to remain in Syria). It's an overreach to claim the US started the Libyan Civil War or the Syrian Civil War, neither is true. The US was opportunistic in trying to squeeze Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad out (with Russia on the other side, trying to prop up the dictatorship). Those civil wars are the inevitable result of decades of extreme oppression by dictatorship, which will always end in armed revolution.
Interesting article. But it stops right where it could become interesting. It laments the fact that, for Americans, there is no distinction between those conflicts; it's just "Over There", and "the distinctions between the conflicts, the countries and their people, are lost."
But it's indeed a correct assessment. It's definitely "Over There", and Americans are not engaged simply because those wars (or battles) don't actually concern them at all. Those wars are not just deeply unpopular in the rest of the West; they're also unpopular in America. Obama wanted to bring the troops home; he couldn't. Trump said he wanted to do the same things (arguably he says a lot of things), and so far he has not done so. Cui bono?
Hey now. I said political involvement (other countries saying 'yes' or 'no'). Certainly the US has always engaged in trade and self defense. You've argued a straw man.
Basic history of the United States is that it was, broadly, a non-interventionist nation that refused to get involved in other nations wars. You are the one who has mischaracterized basic history.
"She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example."
Given the objectively and publicly known huge part of the US destabilizing other countries overtly and covertly, and similar stories from innumerable other powers throughout history, I would say it takes damn much energy from third parties to generate a conflict between people I would love to see a comment defending US actions, in a way that makes sense, using only its official public narrative. Every damn official point made for justification is full of holes and counter examples.
I will be the first one to lean heavily into the critical side on how the US has conducted foreign policy. I also agree that non-interventionism is the path the US government should take more often
Your example is prime one, the US policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a terrible one. We continue that style of foreign policy at our own peril
That said I do believe there are cases where the world should intervene and often does not because it is seen as an internal conflict, or there is no natural resource in that nation to exploit.
My point being that simply saying that all internal conflict is off limits, and all external conflict is within scope is far tooo simplistic, there may be some external conflict I would say the US has no business interfering with, and some that I think we should, and there are many internal conflict that I think we should and many I do not.
But when the world asks why America has forgotten Yemen and other conflicts like it, that has the situation backward. The truth is that inattention is the default, not the exception.
It's backward, but for a completely different reason. When has USA "attention" ever helped a war situation? "The world" should be careful what they wish for.
reply