To this, the reply will doubtless be that spreading freedom is a core American interest. The problem is that we proclaim this goal loudly but pursue it sparingly, inconsistently and selectively, comforting ourselves with the bromide that just because we cannot promote freedom everywhere (this excuses the thumb twiddling in the face of the bloodletting in Syria, but not Cambodia, Rwanda or Congo) doesn’t mean we should shirk when there is an opportunity to do so somewhere. The zeal for promoting freedom through military intervention reflects foreign-policy thinking that is alarmingly divorced from the changed domestic circumstances in which we find ourselves, to say nothing about the logic of solvency. The commonplace retort that we spend less than 5 percent of our GDP on defense and that Libya-like operations are insignificant is weak. The more important measure, at a time when many social programs are being cut, is defense spending and related items as a proportion of total discretionary spending: it’s now 50 percent. Moreover, seeing the price tag of interventions misses the point that they have implications for overall American strategy and thus for total defense expenditure. To paraphrase Everett Dirksen, billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we’re talking real money.

Image by James Gordon