Team America: World Police

In Iraq, the U.S. intervened and occupied, and the result was a costly disaster. In Libya, the U.S. intervened and did not occupy, and the result was a costly disaster. In Syria, the U.S. neither intervened nor occupied, and the result is a costly disaster.

--  link

I think ideological pacifism is wrong. There have to be many cases where the right application of our military can make the world a drastically better place. But how confident can we really be in whether any given idea is one of those cases? Isn't this an area where we have to admit human beings just haven't figured out how to predict the results of our actions yet?

I struggle with how to think about this issue. Since the upside of getting military intervention right could be so high, I don't want to take a stance that prevents us from figuring out how to achieve that massive potential upside.

But to a large extent, it seems like we have to have a strong default pacifism in practice. Not because we should believe any given intervention is going to have worse results than not intervening - but precisely because we don't know. Either choice is like rolling a die. The number it lands on is massively important. But going to war means spending tons of money, killing a bunch of innocent people (our own people and accidents in the other country), and then rolling the die, while choosing not to intervene is just rolling the die without doing that. Which one sounds better?

Also there was an interesting poll recently that asked "international relations experts" and the general public questions about when a U.S. military intervention would be a good idea. In general, the experts were far less likely to support it than the general public. For instance, to the question "Would you support or oppose taking military action if it were certain
Iran was close to producing a nuclear weapon?", 63% of the public supported it, whereas only 22% of the experts did. I found that really surprising! Also, less than 10% of the experts thought that the recent Iran nuclear deal would have a negative impact.