The recent discussion, sparked by Dafna Rand’s *Foreign Affairs* piece, highlights how Washington continues to talk itself into conflicts, even when seemingly attempting self-reflection.
The conversation, as captured on *Fair Observer*, centers on “The New Forever Wars: How America Gets Stuck in Conflicts,” an article by Dafna Rand, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. It’s a title that, at first glance, promises a degree of introspection from within the very foreign policy establishment often criticized for perpetuating these conflicts. The context is familiar: two decades of interventions, counter-insurgency campaigns, and stability operations that have yielded little stability and considerable cost, prompting a belated reckoning with U.S. strategy.
Rand’s article, published in *Foreign Affairs*, isn’t just another op-ed lamenting endless wars; it’s a conceptual framing from a major D.C. think tank, signaling a shift in how the establishment *itself* is beginning to articulate its challenges. This isn’t an interview in the conventional sense, but a published argument from a prominent voice, ripe for parsing what it truly reveals about the institutional mindset.
What landed
The very premise of Rand’s article — that America “gets stuck in conflicts” — is, in a perverse way, its most revealing element. It’s an admission, albeit couched in passive voice, that the U.S. isn’t always the master of its own strategic destiny. For a senior fellow at Brookings to acknowledge such a systemic failure, rather than merely attributing setbacks to tactical missteps or insufficient resources, marks a significant, if overdue, shift in public discourse from within the beltway. It implies a recognition that the problem isn’t just *how* America fights, but *why* and *where* it chooses to fight in the first place.
The article’s strength lies in bringing this often-unspoken truth into the mainstream of foreign policy discussion. It suggests a growing awareness that the U.S. is not simply choosing to engage in conflicts, but rather finding itself ensnared by them, often through incremental escalations or the pursuit of ill-defined objectives. This framing moves beyond the traditional hawkish vs. dovish debate by positing a structural issue, a kind of gravitational pull towards entanglement, rather than just a series of policy choices. It nudges the conversation from blaming individuals to questioning the very operating system of U.S. foreign policy.
Furthermore, by labeling them “The New Forever Wars,” Rand’s piece implicitly challenges the notion that the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq have been fully absorbed. It suggests that while the specific battlefields might shift, the underlying pathology of prolonged, inconclusive engagement remains. This kind of candid assessment, coming from a respected institution, lends a certain gravitas to the discussion, making it harder for proponents of intervention to simply dismiss concerns as isolationist or naive. It’s a concession that the emperor, perhaps, is not quite as clothed as previously assumed.
What doesn’t add up
While Rand’s acknowledgment of America getting “stuck” is welcome, the framing itself raises questions about the depth of introspection. The passive voice, “gets stuck,” conveniently absolves decision-makers of direct agency. It presents these conflicts as almost an unavoidable force of nature, rather than the cumulative result of specific policy choices, institutional incentives, and often, an unwavering belief in American exceptionalism and military might. There’s a noticeable tension here: if America “gets stuck,” who, precisely, is doing the sticking?
This choice of language also subtly sidesteps a more direct accounting for past decisions. It’s a softer critique than one that might identify specific doctrines, individuals, or institutional biases that actively *drive* the U.S. into these protracted engagements. For an institution like Brookings, which has often played a role in shaping the very policies that led to “forever wars,” this framing could be seen as an exercise in managing the narrative, rather than a full-throated mea culpa. It points to a problem without assigning clear responsibility, which, in turn, makes it easier to propose solutions that don’t fundamentally alter the power structures that perpetuate the issue.
Moreover, the focus on “how America gets stuck” implies a technical problem to be solved, rather than a potentially moral or ethical one. It risks reducing the complex geopolitical dynamics and the immense human cost of these conflicts to a mere strategic puzzle. The foreign policy establishment, through articles like this, attempts to demonstrate self-awareness, but often within parameters that maintain its own legitimacy and authority. The “new forever wars” might demand new tactics, but the underlying impulse to intervene, to project power, and to shape the global order through military means seems to remain largely unchallenged. One might wonder if the article, despite its title, is less about truly ending forever wars and more about finding a “smarter” way to wage them. It’s a familiar dance: diagnose a symptom, propose a tweak, and keep the broader system running.
Monday morning, this article won’t stop a single drone strike, but it does shift the intellectual battlefield. The very fact that a Senior Fellow at Brookings is wrestling with “forever wars” means the conversation has moved from the fringe to the mainstream, forcing policymakers to contend with an uncomfortable truth they once easily dismissed. The challenge, as always, is whether this intellectual acknowledgment will translate into genuine strategic re-evaluation, or simply become the latest, wryly acknowledged excuse for why Washington keeps finding itself knee-deep in conflicts it supposedly never wanted.
Source: OnTheRecord