Non-interventionism is, as you probably know, a philosophy that says the US should not be involved in other countries unless it directly benefits us. It has recently gained traction among both right-wingers and progressive leftists, preached from the pulpits by everyone from Rush Limbaugh on the right to Kyle Kulinski on the left. Each side may have different reasons for believing in non-interventionism, but the core ideology is the same: America should never get militarily involved in another country unless it poses a direct threat to our own, and usually only our own, national security.
That may seem like a benign, logical philosophy to you. But not to me. To me, that philosophy is immoral, selfish, and contrary to both human nature and what our country stands for. It is why I call it “Ayn Rand-style foreign policy”, because it is based on the idea that one should never show empathy or compassion to others who require it.
Now, we can all agree that it serves neither the US’s interests nor the world’s interests to spontaneously get involved in every single crisis plaguing the world today. But, when a serious humanitarian crisis unfolds, and the damage stemming from it is clear and present, we cannot and should not stand by and do nothing, even if we as a nation are not threatened directly by it.
Today’s non-interventionists constantly attack our military for “offensively” and “illegally invading” countries that “didn’t attack us”, to quote Kyle Kulinski, a notable left-wing non-interventionist. People like Kulinski may have good intentions, but their philosophies are inherently selfish.
There are some circumstances where inaction is compliance, and that is no more clear today than with the crisis currently unfolding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In the North Kivu region of the DRC, an armed Islamist rebel group called the Allied Democratic Forces is committing mass atrocities against civilian populations, burning down villages, abducting children, crucifying dissidents, and beheading prisoners. The Congolese military is both too poor and too corrupt to deal with the insurgency on their own, so the UN has sent peacekeepers to help combat the ADF.
But the UN Peacekeepers themselves are coming under assault from the ADF, and they have lost well over 100 men in the last five years from ADF attacks. To make matters worse, the densely populated city of Beni, which is located in North Kivu, is currently undergoing an ebola outbreak. This outbreak is the first one inside a major city, and it has the potential to be the deadliest in modern history, both due to the population density and the fact that Beni is right in the middle of the ADF insurgency.
Health workers trying to administer critically needed vaccines and health treatment are constantly attacked by ADF insurgents, and the virus is spreading faster than they can contain it.
Clearly, the UN and Congolese army cannot contain this outbreak on their own. So what could we do? Well, the United States has military technology that far outpaces both the UN Peacekeeping force and the Congolese army. We have stealth bombers, special forces, state-of-the-art weapons, and a fleet of aircraft to deploy them. The ADF, while formidable, is run through a series of camp networks in North Kivu. While virtually impervious to ground troops, they are very vulnerable to air attack. If we were to commit strategically targeted airstrikes on the camps, we would decimate the ADF. Without the camp network, the ADF will be unable to properly coordinate operations. Attacks on aid workers would decline, if not cease, and maybe this Ebola outbreak could be contained before it infects more people than the several hundred it already has.
But, unfortunately, the US has neither the political support nor the willingness to become involved in the Congo. Why? Well, for one, we don’t have any investments at stake in the region. But another reason is that, if we were to become involved, it would undoubtedly trigger a furious backlash from non-interventionists.
They would say, as they always do, that the US has no business “offensively invading countries that didn’t attack us”. They would decry “US imperialism” and call anyone who supports such an operation a “warmonger” or “chickenhawk”. I know they will do this. I have been called such things for suggesting interference in the Congo and in other places.
The tragedy is, a non-interventionist policy has severe consequences. In Rwanda, for instance, we stood by when Hutu nationalists, propelled by violent propaganda, committed the mass genocide of more than one million Tutsi civilians. We had the military capability to immobilize the Rwandan military and stop the genocide, but we didn’t. In the end, over a million people died for absolutely no reason.
We made the same mistake in Afghanistan. When the Taliban government established a brutal theocracy in Afghanistan, they committed numerous atrocities against women, Hazra minorities, and non-Muslims. We stood by and did nothing for four years, and, in the meantime, famine, disease, and starvation killed hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians while the oppressive Taliban regime continued to carry out massacres and mass beheadings of civilians. We didn’t get involved, in fact, until our own country was attacked in 2001 by Afghan-based terrorists.
We made yet another mistake in 2011 when, under pressure from anti-war groups and non-interventionists, President Barack Obama pulled American troops out of Iraq before they could finish stabilizing the region. What happened afterwards? Well, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant emerged, and immediately began capturing large swaths of land in both Iraq and Syria. ISIL was, and still is, the most formidable terrorist threat facing the planet at this point. They committed genocides against the Kurds, Yazidis, Coptic Christians, and Shia Muslims. They committed terrorist bombings targeting civilians. They oppressed women, executed people for apostasy, and tortured, raped, or beheaded hundreds of people, including several US citizens.
When President Obama finally decided to intervene once again in Iraq, non-interventionists AGAIN lost their minds. They screamed about an “illegal occupation” at the hands of the US, completely ignoring the threat posed by ISIL, even though, by this point, ISIL had not only executed American citizens but had coordinated numerous terrorist attacks against other countries such as France, Britain, and even the United States.
But even THAT didn’t seem to matter for the anti-war and non-interventionist crowd. They still want us to pull out of Iraq, even though ISIL, though severely damaged, is far from neutralized. They still intend to make the very same mistakes that led to the rise of ISIL in the first place.
And, tragically, we are making the same mistake in the Congo. The seriousness of this conflict cannot be underscored enough. This is a deadly serious situation. Thousands upon thousands of lives hang in the balance, as does the political stability of not just the Congo but the entire region of Central Africa. If we don’t act now, the ebola crisis, coupled with the ADF insurgency, will spread far beyond the DRC. It could potentially be the greatest disaster ever witnessed in this century.
So, yes, I believe the United States has not just an obligation, but a moral duty to help fix the planet. We are all one race. We are all human. We are all one community, and it is our moral prerogative to help others who are in need, especially when it is clear they will not receive sufficient help from anyone else. Failure to do so is not only selfish and heartless, but it is self-destructive and detrimental to everything this country and our values stand for.
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