As with many things regarding the United States and its foreign and national security policies, the answer is “it depends.” It depends upon how the war starts. In 1999 Walter Russell Mead wrote a brilliant essay “The Jacksonian Tradition” in The National Interest in which he explored the character of U.S. foreign policy. He described America as a nation that is slow to anger but when sufficiently provoked the various political divides disappear as the nation manifests an overwhelming, nearly undisciplined, expression of vengeance. Mead explored campaigns against native American populations, Sherman’s march to the sea, and the fire-bombing of Japan even prior to the dropping of the two atomic bombs. When angered the United States can summon the will to fight, but can it sustain it?
The second “it depends” rests upon how long a commitment is expected to endure. When answering this question, it’s important to note that the U.S. maintains forces in Europe, Japan, and South Korea decades after conflicts in those regions were terminated. It also maintained a presence in Iraq for fifteen years, not an inconsiderable amount of time. Additionally, it maintained a defensible presence in Afghanistan for 20 years and was positioned to continue to do so at a relatively low strategic cost until the combination of strategic blindness and ignorance resulted in a botched withdrawal that has negatively impacted U.S. strategic credibility to the point that it invited the invasion of Ukraine. The earlier commitments, which remain in place, have been successful because earlier leaders were willing and able to speak “clearer than truth,” as former Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously said, to the American people, gaining their approval and long-term support for the efforts in Europe and Asia. Modern leaders across four administrations failed to make a coherent argument regarding the geostrategic importance of either Iraq or Afghanistan in words that would resonate with the current generation of voters, and thus the American position in the world has been decremented, especially vis-à-vis China, which always viewed our presence in Afghanistan with great concern.
So far as material capability to sustain operations, the United States remains at its core the wealthiest nation in the world, immeasurably blessed with raw resources and the most innovative economy on the planet. As the recent COVID crisis demonstrated, perhaps in a very negative fashion, when alerted to a threat the American people are willing to both sacrifice and spend to accomplish a strategic goal. Ironically the major challenge to the nation, the overhang of some thirty trillion dollars of debt with the resulting interest payments, may be aided by the rising inflation associated with the COVID stimulus as the inflation presents an opportunity to pay off substantial debts with substantively devalued currency prior to restabling a new economic equilibrium should the congress address spending. This may well be a case of the cure being worse than the disease though. The bottom line is, when properly led, the American people can sustain their commitments.
Dr. Jerry Hendrix, PhD, Captain, US Navy (Ret), Senior Fellow, Sagamore Institute
