Senate hopefuls a blur on national security

The issue of national security hasn’t gotten much attention in the Arizona U.S. Senate race.

It has been a backdrop in the contrasting personal narratives Martha McSally has sought to depict: her as a combat pilot; Kyrsten Sinema as an anti-war protester.

However, there has been very little focus on how the two candidates view the U.S. role in the world and particularly when U.S. military force should be used.

This is a serious oversight. Senators have much more influence over such matters than do members of the House. And Arizona has a history of producing senators with an oversize role on national-security issues: Barry Goldwater, John McCain and Jon Kyl.

Unfortunately, where the candidates stand on national-security issues is a bit of a blur. This is particularly true of Sinema.

Sinema was once an ardent pacifist, categorically opposed to the use of U.S. military force in any circumstances. She expressed this view as late as 2006.

Today, she says that is no longer her position. When asked in an Editorial Board meeting with

to name some circumstances in which she would approve of the use of military force, she named three in which such action was, in fact, not taken: Rwanda, Sudan and when Bashar Assad crossed President Barack Obama’s red line and used chemical weapons.

In other interviews, she has also mentioned Somalia. That’s a strange example to cite, since the U.S. did intervene militarily, and it didn’t turn out well.

None of these examples is a situation in which U.S. security interests were at stake. They are examples of humanitarian interventions, to prevent the slaughter of what Sinema described in the board meeting as “innocent lives.”

Sinema seems to see the U.S. military as a sort of international constabulary force, deployed not to advance American interests but to prevent disorder elsewhere from descending into mass civilian atrocities.

The problem with such a doctrine of humanitarian intervention is that there no limiting principle, as Supreme Court justices are prone to seek. The world is racked with disorder that threatens innocent lives. If advancing U.S. security interests isn’t to be a guiding principle, which atrocities do we prevent and which do we let occur?

I tend to be skeptical about the use of military force. I opposed the Iraq War, not on the grounds that it was immoral, but that it was imprudent.

After 9/11, however, there was an unambiguous national-security need to clear al-Qaida from the safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. And the Taliban made clear they would require the use of military force and dislodging them as well.

Sinema opposed military action in Afghanistan at the time. She has since said in other interviews that she would have approved it given her current thinking. But she demurred even on that in the Editorial Board meeting.

I believe that the neoconservatives — such as McCain and Kyl — have too expansive a view of where U.S. security interests are truly at stake, and are too ready to use military assets to advance those perceived security interests.

McSally would seem to come from that camp. But she has said some things to suggest that she may be at least somewhat more circumspect about the U.S. role in the world and the use of the U.S. military.

In Afghanistan, she is critical of what she describes as mission creep. We took military action to chase al-Qaida out of its safe sanctuary and depose the Taliban which harbored it. We stayed around to rebuild the country and prevent a return of a safe haven for terrorists who want to do us harm.

The former went well. The latter has gone poorly.

Unfortunately, since national security has not been much of an issue, McSally hasn’t had occasion to flesh out the lessons that she has learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, other than don’t show up at an anti-war rally in a pink tutu.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue. The U.S. has military forces stationed throughout the globe. The Islamist terrorist threat hasn’t really abated. Sources of potential conventional conflict are expanding. Hostile powers continue to develop nuclear capabilities.

National security shouldn’t be an afterthought in this election.