Why Are We Still in Endless Wars?
By: Jacquie Devigne
Tags: Foreign Policy, United States, War, Trump, USA

Prolonged wars are largely unpopular, so why are they so difficult to end?

Photo by Diego González on Unsplash

For nineteen years and counting, the War on Terror — the Endless or Forever Wars, as they are known by critics — has led to military interventions such as the 2003 invasion in Iraq, the longest war in America’s history in Afghanistan, and conflicts in lesser-known fronts such as Kenya and Niger. Troops remain in active war zones such as Syria. The United States also provides military aid to Saudi Arabia for its war effort in Yemen.

There is bipartisan agreement, however, that the endless wars must conclude. The liberal electorate is not hungry for war, and President Donald Trump’s administration has indicated a desire for the troops to come home. “We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought,” Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller wrote in his initial message to the department on November 13th. His boss campaigned in 2016 on withdrawing from the endless wars and bragged in his acceptance speech during the 2020 Republican National Convention that, “I have kept out of new wars and our troops are coming home.”

In one sense, Trump’s boast is accurate. He recently announced troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. However, his statement is also misleading. Trump has not withdrawn the last troop from any country. He began his administration by sending more troops to Afghanistan, and he initially increased the troop presence in Iraq. Trump also sent service members to Saudi Arabia as a bulwark to Iran. He withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal and ordered an airstrike against Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which risked opening up a new front in the War on Terror.

These wars are so unpopular, even with our current president. Why are they endless?

Partisan Politics

When the United States first invaded Iraq in 2003, the war was largely unpopular by the American left, leading to the largest anti-war protest in the world. The Iraq war was a large issue in the 2004 presidential election and probably was the leading factor in Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign in 2008.

Despite his campaign promises and his Nobel Peace Prize, Obama was not a dove. He withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011 and then brought them back in 2014 as ISIS started seizing control of major cities in the country. He launched military strikes in Libya. He implemented drone programs in Pakistan and Yemen. He sent troops into Syria. He announced a surge of troops into Afghanistan. Obama was a wartime president for every moment that he held office.

And yet, even as battlefields spread across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the anti-war protests had largely died down. Many of the liberals who attended anti-war protests distrusted George Bush but largely approved of Obama.

Partisan politics worked in Trump’s favor as well. Trump’s foreign policy has always been chaotic. While he campaigned on ending the forever wars, he also announced that, “I’d just bomb those suckers. I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left.” Trump can tailor his message to meet the moment, allowing him to be both a peacenik and a warmonger.

Members of Trump’s own party see what they want to see in him. At the 2020 Republican National Convention, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) praised Trump for his strength, citing the airstrike against Sulaimani and the increased military budget. At the same convention, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) appreciated Trump for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, where troops still remain to this day. Paul reminded viewers that Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq but conveniently did not mention Trump’s continuation of the same war.

This is not to say that military interventions would have ended had Hillary Clinton won in 2016 — she also has hawkish instincts, having voted for the Iraq war and supported air strikes in Libya — but at least libertarians would not have thanked her for ending wars that remain ongoing.

Reduced Impact

Historically, prolonged wars are unpopular. Abraham Lincoln’s defeat in the 1864 election was a foregone conclusion until the Union army captured Atlanta two months prior to election day. Ninety years later, Harry Truman sought a conclusion to the Korean War as support for the war plummeted. The anti-war protests were a defining cultural movement during the Vietnam War.

Governments funded previous wars by implementing a draft, issuing war bonds, and raising taxes. Americans have not been asked to make such sacrifices in the past twenty years. Our current wars are fought by an all-volunteer force who tend to be recruited from military families and from areas surrounding military installations; funding these wars has lead to increasing national debt. The majority of Americans are insulated from the consequences of the endless wars.

As a result, fewer Americans are even aware that we are still at war. Just prior to the 2018 midterms, 42% of likely voters were unaware that American troops were still in Afghanistan. There were no questions about any of America’s war zones in the 2020 presidential debates. With little public awareness, the wars have quietly been allowed to continue.

Ramifications of Withdrawal

While starting these wars have been easy, and continuing ongoing conflict has been largely ignored by the American public, withdrawing from war has been difficult.

Obama discovered this first when he withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011. Though he campaigned on his opposition to the war in Iraq, he felt compelled to send troops back in as ISIS began seizing control of large areas of the country. Toppling Saddam Hussein was straightforward; building a new government that is capable of quelling insurgents is laborious.

Trump recognized a similar quandary. When he announced that troops would withdraw from Syria, there was outcry from service members themselves about abandoning Kurdish allies. Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned in protest to the withdrawal announcement. In the end, however, American forces were not pulled from Syria altogether, but rather reassigned to protect oil fields in the country.

Trump and President-elect Joe Biden will see this same pattern in Afghanistan. Trump has announced his intention to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by Christmas. How will Biden react to the Taliban winning military victories against Afghan security forces? How will the world react when Taliban members kill infant Hazara babies and inflict extreme acts of violence against women? The hard-fought gains in Afghanistan may be quickly lost.

All of these factors — partisan American politics, reduced impact on the majority of Americans’ lives, and dire ramifications of rapid withdrawal — will continue when Biden assumes the presidency in January. Unless these factors change during the next presidency, there are no indications that the trajectory of the endless wars will change in the years to come.