The perils of military intervention

Going to war always has long-term consequences, often unintended

So, Canada has commemorated the centenary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. This is altogether fitting and proper.

While Vimy goes down in the history of the First World War as a remarkable tactical victory it was not a strategic victory and it did not mark a decisive turning point in the war.

That moment of historic change actually happened three days before the Canadians stormed Vimy, on April 6, 1917. On that day the United States declared war on Germany. This was the turning point in the war.

With the Americans in the war the allies now knew that with time the United States would be able to field an army in Europe of over one million men.

In a war of attrition this would be one million men more than the Germans and Austro-Hungarians could match. This meant that, in time, the Axis powers would be bled white, forcing them to eventually capitulate to the victorious Allies.

And this is what happened in the fall of 1918. Having withstood the last great German offensive of the war in the spring, the Allies went over to the offensive in August, 1918, and this attack broke the German and Austro-Hungarian ability to resist. On Nov. 11, the Armistice was signed.

Why does this history matter now? Because there are lessons to be learned.

Decisions to go to war can be decisive. The American declaration of war in April, 1917 guaranteed Allied victory the following year just as the American entry into the Second World War in December, 1941 assured the Allied victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan by 1945.

But going to war always has long-term consequences, often unintended. The American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, quickly toppled the Taliban from government in that country but in no way ridded that benighted country of the presence and influence of the Taliban. After some 15 years of fighting Afghanistan remains very much a failed state and a breeding ground of jihadi terrorism.

The joint American/British invasion of Iraq in 2003 also witnessed the easy toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein but with these Allies in no way able to put Iraq back together again as a stable state let alone one with any semblance of democratic and civil institutions. The chaos in Iraq, as in neighbouring Syria and its civil war, led to the rise of ISIS in 2013/14.

And now we are facing renewed prospects of American military intervention in both Syria and North Korea. In both cases war hawks may offer seemingly convincing reasons for going to war. Protecting innocent civilians and ridding the world of a blood-thirsty war criminal in the first instance, and preventing a crazed madman from attaining intercontinental nuclear missiles in the latter.

But wars in both Syria and the Korean peninsula are fraught with perils. Military intervention in Syria could soon pit American against Russian forces, and if the Americans depose the Assad regime there is no guarantee that would end the Syrian Civil War.

And any American attack on North Korea could easily lead to North Korean retaliatory strikes against South Korea and Japan costing thousands of lives. And what would China do?

As a general rule international negotiation is preferable to armed conflict. And 1917 may offer one last lesson. What if the United States had not entered that war then? It’s very possible that without the support of the Americans the French and British would have opened peace talks with the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in 1917. Peace feelers already existed between these countries.

The neutral Americans could have acted as mediators pushing for a return to the status quo of 1914. No punitive Treaty of Versailles, no Adolf Hitler, no Second World War.

“Decisions to go to war can be decisive.”