AS President Obama ponders over the proposal to send US arms to Ukraine, perhaps a little introspection and humility are in order.

Consider the fallout from recent American interventions. After over 13 years of brutal warfare in Afghanistan, US forces have been pulled out, leaving the field to the Taliban. Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives after the 2001 invasion of this broken country, very few of Washington’s war aims have been met.

In Iraq, the prospects for peace are even more remote. Toppling Saddam Hussein and defeating his army was the easy part. Years of a bloody insurgency have led to a disintegrating country, rife with ethnic and sectarian conflict. Large swathes of Iraq are under IS control while the Shia-Sunni bloodshed, unleashed by the US-led invasion, continues to take a heavy toll.

Libya has been completely destabilised by the US-led campaign to remove Qadhafi. Although a thuggish dictator, he had managed to hold his country together. Now, groups of heavily armed militants battle for power. The ongoing civil war has no end in sight.

Many Americans retain an unhealthy appetite for war.

Yemen today is in a state of turmoil, with Houthi tribesmen in control of the capital, and threatening to once again partition the country. They have seized control of the arms supplied by the Pentagon to fight Al Qaeda amounting to some $400 million.

And arms from Qadhafi’s arsenals are being sold from the Sinai to Mali, fuelling the conflicts there. In fact, one reason for the Islamic State’s military success lies in its capture of American arms supplied to Iraq.

Going back even further, American intervention in Vietnam prolonged an internal conflict and caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. I still recall the iconic photo of an American helicopter flying out of Saigon, with desperate civilians clinging to its undercarriage as the Vietcong advanced on the South Vietnamese capital.

So to suggest that the record of American intervention is a disastrous one would be no exaggeration. Although most Americans are reluctant to accept that their military has suffered a string of defeats, the reality is that time and again, US forces have had to pull out in the face of mounting casualties. Lebanon and Somalia are only two examples of quick US withdrawals when a number of troops were killed.

And yet many Americans retain an unhealthy appetite for war. Witness the pressure President Obama came under to launch air strikes against Syria last year. Hawks in Tel Aviv and Washington continue to criticise Obama for not ordering an aerial campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Perhaps the huge success of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper at the box office offers an accurate insight into the American fixation with war. Based on a book by Chris Kyle, a US soldier, the true story depicts the ‘heroism’ of a sniper as he slaughters scores of Iraqis at long distance. Apparently, each kill is accompanied by loud cheering in American theatres. The director and the author have erased all doubts and guilt from their human killing machine. All Iraqis are described as ‘savages’, thus making it easy for the audience to applaud their death.

Returning to Ukraine, the reality is that no American leader would have even considered getting involved in conflicts on the Soviet Union’s doorstep during the Cold War. Thus, although there was widespread sympathy for the Hungarians in their uprising in 1956, Washington watched silently as it was brutally crushed by the Red Army.

Older readers will recall how John Kennedy reacted to Moscow’s clumsy attempt to instal missiles in Cuba. The world was poised on the brink of nuclear devastation as the two superpowers faced each other in those tense days in 1962.

So to imagine that Russia will accept the Washington-inspired coup against an elected pro-Moscow president on its borders, and the arming of his pro-West successor, without reacting to the provocation is to ignore Russian sensitivities and history. Either that, or the idea is to deliberately goad Putin into further escalating the conflict.

The reality is that there are no vital American interests at stake in the region. Ukranian voters do not constitute a significant voting bloc in America; there is no oil; and there are no shipping lanes to protect. And most importantly, American corporations and banks have no financial stakes there.

So why go down this route at all? The answer probably lies in the US desire to cut Putin down to size. The Americans have been infuriated by Russia’s refusal to endorse an anti-Assad resolution in the UN Security Council authorising military action. The current collapse in oil prices through US and Saudi actions is clearly aimed at hurting Russia.

Since the Second World War, the US has been involved in literally scores of overt and covert operations and shooting wars. Most of these interventions have ended badly. Isn’t it time for Obama to pause and reflect before launching yet another misadventure?

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn February 7th , 2015

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