TAMP ‘EM UP SOLID:

What Public Opinion Says About the Use of Nuclear Weapons (Jacqueline L. Hazelton, MIT Press Reader)

The U.S. public is widely assumed to believe that nuclear weapons use is bad. But new research by Joshua Schwartz, an assistant professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology, finds high support for their use, even when foreign countries press the nuclear “button.” […]

Surprisingly, my research finds high support for hypothetical nuclear use, even when foreign countries press the nuclear “button.” In four survey experiments involving members of the public in the United States and India, support for hypothetical nuclear use is the same when an individual’s own country hypothetically uses nuclear weapons as when a foreign allied or partner country hypothetically uses nuclear weapons. For example, in one study on the U.S. public, support for a hypothetical nuclear attack against Iran was no different when Israel carried it out compared to the United States. Overall, I found that the use of nuclear weapons is not taboo in the United States and India. But support is lower when the public considers a non-allied or non-partner country’s hypothetical use of nuclear weapons.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED:

The Iraq War was a Success (Simon Maass, June 13, 2024, Providence)

In terms of its objectives, Operation Iraqi Freedom was a clear success. Saddam Hussein was deposed, tried and executed with ease. “We achieved our goals,” as John Bolton put it. Even so, the Iraq War is usually characterized as the poster child for American failure in foreign affairs, a perception based on questionable assumptions. […]

Eli Lake lists several indicators of Iraq’s progress since the invasion. In the two intervening decades, the country’s GDP ballooned approximately tenfold, while life expectancy, literacy rates, and the prevalence of cell phone plans also increased. According to the World Bank, Iraq’s GDP per capita declined from 2000 to 2003, but rose quite swiftly thereafter – that is, it actually started to grow following the invasion. Currently, it is nearly at an all-time high. The suicide rate remained roughly unchanged by the war, while infant mortality continued to diminish.[…]

As Alan Dowd writes, “it pays to recall that Saddam murdered 600,000 Iraqis.”If one includes deaths incurred during his war of aggression against Iran, that figure is reasonable. Human Rights Watch famously estimated the number of people “disappeared,” then killed, by the Ba’athist regime at “between 250,000 and 290,000 people.” This number was based on just the government’s major sprees of detentions and killings.

David French compares Iraq to neighboring Syria, which also had a Ba’athist dictatorship. That tyranny was not overthrown. When the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, Syria was plunged into a civil war which has made the country “a charnel house.” We can supplement this point with some numbers. According to the UN, the decade from 2011 to 2021 saw over 350,000 deaths in the Syrian Civil War. Combined with Iraq Body Count’s figure, this implies that, despite having a smaller population, Syria experienced more deaths from falling into civil war than Iraq experienced from an American invasion. This illustrates that the lack of American intervention does not mean many people will not suffer. Furthermore, the Syrian Network for Human Rights currently estimates that “Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias” are responsible for 87% of the war’s civilian casualties. Note also that Syria’s population plummeted after its civil war began, whereas Iraq’s kept rising fairly smoothly after the invasion.

The critics generally prefer dictators keeping their Third World populations quiet to messy democracies.

SHOULD HAVE QUIT AT OXYMORON:

Republicans Are More United on Foreign Policy Than It Seems (Matthew Kroenig, APRIL 13, 2024, Foreign Policy)

Some observers might object that a Trump-Reagan fusion is an oxymoron, given that the leaders’ world views and personalities are so different, but they have much in common. Both were outsiders to Washington. Both were Democrats and entertainers before they became Republican politicians, and both were castigated as unserious and even reckless. Nevertheless, they became the most influential Republican presidents in recent decades, and one cannot make sense of Republican policy today without understanding them both.

Conservatives and progressives have fundamentally different beliefs about the nature of the international system and the role the U.S. government should play in world affairs. As conservatives, members of both wings of today’s Republican Party agree that it is the duty of the U.S. government to secure American interests in a dangerous world. By contrast, progressives tend to prioritize cooperation with other nations to address shared global challenges, such as climate change and public health.

On defense policy, conservatives share a broader commitment to the United States showing enough strength that no adversary dare challenge it—to attain the goal of peace. In this view, force should be used sparingly and decisively. Today’s Republicans support a strong national defense and oppose both what they perceive as the Biden administration’s excessive caution, such as overwrought fears of escalation in ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, and neo-conservatives’ extended military interventions.

Actually, conservatives/liberals are irreconcilable with the Left/Right precisely over the notion of American interests. We believe with the Declaration that all men are entitled to self-determination while the Identitarians care only for themselves.