Obama Sends More U.S. Troops to ...Uganda?
By TED GALEN CARPENTER SHARE
The Obama administration seems determined to demonstrate that there is
no place in the world so geographically remote or strategically and
economically irrelevant that U.S. military intervention won't take
place. Any doubt on that score was eliminated earlier this week when
the administration deployed another 150 Special Operations Forces
personnel (along with CV-22 Osprey aircraft) to help the government of
Uganda track down rebel warlord Joseph Kony. The new deployment
augments the 100 troops Washington previously dispatched to the region
in October 2011. At that time, the administration assured skeptics
that the mission was strictly limited in nature. Clearly, it has now
become somewhat less so, and one must wonder whether there will be
future deployments to enlarge Washington's military intervention.
Make no mistake about it, Kony is a repulsive character. Among other
offenses, his followers have drafted children as young as 12 into the
movement's armed ranks, and there are numerous allegations of other
human rights abuses. But no rational person could argue that Kony's
forces pose a security threat to the United States. And under the
Constitution, the purpose of the U.S. military is to protect the
security of the American people, not engage to quixotic ventures to
rectify bad behavior around the world.
The willingness of the U.S. officials to send Special Operations
personnel, who have been trained and equipped at great expense to
American taxpayers, on such a mission underscores a growing problem:
the unwillingness or inability of U.S. leaders to set priorities in
the area of foreign policy. America's security interests can (and
should) be divided into four broad categories: vital, secondary or
conditional, peripheral, and barely relevant. Each category warrants a
different response.
Unfortunately, in recent decades, U.S. leaders have had a tendency to
lump almost everything into the "vital interest" category. The
reality is that for any nation, truly vital interests are few in
number. National survival is obviously the most important one, but
the preservation of political independence, domestic liberty, and
economic well-being from external threats all are part of the mix as
well. When vital interests are threatened, maximum exertions and
sacrifices are justified.
But that ought to be the great exception, not the rule, when it comes
to the conduct of America's foreign policy. Even an effort to protect
the next highest category, secondary or conditional interests,
requires a rigorous cost-benefit calculation. Secondary interests
are assets that are pertinent but not indispensable to the
preservation of America's physical integrity, independence, domestic
liberty, and economic health. An example would be the goal of keeping
a key strategic and economic region such as Western Europe or
Northeast Asia from being dominated by a hostile major power. The
defense of secondary interests justifies significant, but nevertheless
limited, exertions-especially if they involve military measures.
The cost-benefit calculation shifts even more in the direction of
restraint when the matter involved is one of peripheral interests.
That category consists of assets that marginally enhance America's
security, liberty, and economic well being, but the loss of which
would be more of an annoyance than a significant blow. The existence
of an unpleasant regime in a mid-size country in Latin America
(Venezuela comes to mind) is an example of a threat to a peripheral
interest. Russia's crude coercion of Ukraine is another example. It
may be asking too much for Washington to be indifferent to such
matters, but there is nothing at stake that normally requires more
than a diplomatic response.
Many situations in the world do not rise even to the level of
peripheral interests. They instead fall into the category of barely
relevant (or often entirely irrelevant) matters. Whether Bosnia
remains intact or divides into a Muslim-dominated ministate and a Serb
republic, or whether East Timor is well governed, can and should be a
matter of indifference to the United States. It is highly improbable
that such developments would have a measurable impact on America's
security, liberty, or economic health. Washington ought to confine
its role to one of routine diplomatic involvement on the margins--and
sometimes not even that.
Joseph Kony's activities in Central Africa are a textbook example of a
largely irrelevant development. That conflict certainly does not
warrant the expenditure of defense budget dollars, much less putting
the lives of American military personnel at risk.
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&hl=en-CA&u=http://www.cato.org/blog/obama-sends-more-us-troops-uganda&q=Obama+Sends+More+U.S.+Troops+to+...Uganda%3F&sa=X&ei=HCQ3U4qzJ4jmrQHctoGYCQ&ved=0CBsQFjAC
--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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