The Super-Weary

The U.S. does not want to fight more wars. What are the implications for Germany and Europe?

On a recent domestic flight to Knoxville, Tenn., the captain of the aircraft publicly welcomed two soldiers returning from Afghanistan, expressing thanks to them for their service to the nation. The 150 passengers aboard the flight responded with applause. Last Saturday, when President Obama ended his witty speech at this year’s correspondent’s dinner with a tribute to service members, the journalists stood respectfully.

These are everyday scenes in the United States. What a paradox — Americans love their soldiers, but they hate the wars they fight. They draw a fine distinction between dishonorable wars and the honorable soldiers who fight them. According to surveys the military is more popular than ever before, yet two-thirds of those surveyed think the U.S. should not have fought the Iraq War. A majority thinks the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible, and they also want no war with a dictator like Assad who murders his own Syrian people nor with an Iran striving for nuclear armaments: 6,500 U.S. soldiers dead, tens of thousands more wounded, at least $2 trillion spent and no victory in either Iraq or in Afghanistan to show for it — that is the bottom line after 12 years of U.S. wars.

The greatest military power in history now questions military solutions and avoids them wherever possible. There are few global political facts more meaningful than this one. Yet in Europe, in Germany for example, that fact goes nearly unnoticed. Perhaps Europe does not want to say goodbye to the cliché of the belligerent superpower, mainly because its leaders fear having to do more themselves as the U.S. does less.

This week, Germany’s Thomas de Maizière — defense minister of a nation that is even more tired of war after not fighting nearly as many as the U.S. — visits the U.S. He arrives in a country that wants to avoid future wars by depending on its allies to shoulder more of the burden.

Significantly, he is visiting the U.S. for two reasons — drones and “red lines.” Finding increasing favor with the Americans, the drones represent, in a sense, the new version of warfare: They enable non-wars to be fought with non-soldiers.

But how can a nation that is tired of war still pose a credible deterrent to war? That is where the red lines enter the picture. Obama has already drawn one: The world will not stand for the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, but now Syria has apparently used such weapons and somehow that is acceptable. One may consider that response right or wrong, but Obama’s response to Syria’s action has definitely drawn attention, particularly from Iran. The U.S. has also drawn a red line in front of Iran saying it will never permit it to develop nuclear weapons capability. But what if it does? That question is being asked by many, particularly by Israel. Maizière started off his visit by saying he is not drawing any red lines — certainly not publicly, in any case.

Is this the new look of a non-military U.S.? New? Basically, the U.S. has never been a militaristic nation and certainly never warmongering. The inflation of all things military under the Iraq warrior George W. Bush, the hubris and the fatal belief that the Arab world could be made democratic at the point of a gun are a historical exception at best. When the U.S. was founded 200 years ago, a battle raged over whether there a standing army should even exist. It was feared that such an army could become too powerful besides being a gross waste of taxpayer money. The idea was that the military should be kept as small as possible. If going to war became a necessity, reservists would be called up, mercenaries hired, the National Guard mobilized, and young military-age men drafted by means of a lottery. During World War II, some 12 million individuals served in the armed forces, but by 1950, after the great demobilization, there remained only some 1.5 million.

The wars in Vietnam and Iraq confronted the U.S. with the moral ambivalence of military power. World War II and the Korean War are memorialized in Washington with monumental columns and heroic martial figures chiseled in stone. In contrast, the trauma of Vietnam is remembered with a relatively hidden black marble wall on which are carved the names of the nearly 60,000 soldiers who gave their lives. It is not a heroic setting. In Vietnam, the U.S. lost its almost naïve belief that it fought everywhere for good and was invincible. Three decades later, the march to Baghdad, Fallujah and Kirkuk offered a reminder that a war of occupation is neither easily nor quickly won, not even with the most modern technology and superior firepower. The fight is never brief nor cheaply won, and it always exacts a high price from those fighting it.

In both those wars, the American people felt their president, George W. Bush, deceived them. Untruthfully, he claimed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction posed a danger to the world. Bush’s lie will prove costly to the U.S. if it ever wants to prove that Syria has crossed a red line.

The fact is that Syria has become a test case for Iran and for the question of how seriously the president’s threats should actually be taken. Jerusalem, Damascus, Tehran and Pyongyang in North Korea will closely be watching Obama’s every move over the coming weeks. But not just them — many in America will be asking themselves whether Obama is just bluffing, or does he really intend to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability even by military force, if necessary.

Charles Kupchan, the noted author and professor of international relations at Georgetown University, is convinced that the U.S. has become more tired of war than at any time in decades. So what happens in a worst case scenario if Israel’s security is threatened? Kupchan believes Obama would risk a war in that case. He calls it an unavoidable war of necessity.

Really? Bruce Riedel of the liberal Brookings Institute thinks otherwise. He advised Obama on his new Afghanistan strategy and thinks the president is bluffing. He thinks initiating aggressive action against Iran with military attacks would be folly, as would starting a war of choice. The former intelligence official enumerates possible Iranian responses to such a move, including Iranian reprisal attacks against Israel, cyberattacks on U.S. software systems, global terrorist attacks, and the start of uprisings in Lebanon, Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Which theory is right? No one knows. Nor can anyone know because answering that question removes Obama’s threat potential. A bluff can only work as long as it is credible. Considering Obama’s hesitation vis-à-vis Syria, Riedel would appear to be right. Considering Obama’s proven record of standing up to Iran, Kupchan’s theory may be correct.

In terms of war weariness, there is astonishing agreement between Democrats and Republicans. In the 2012 election campaign, Mitt Romney fired the opening shots in the television debate on Islamic radicalism by saying, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.”

Like Obama, he rejected large-scale intervention and advocated for surgical air strikes using unmanned aircraft instead. That is the one point of security policy consensus in a nation where consensus is almost nonexistent.

But should the U.S. withdraw and leave a gap in the Near and Middle East? Who would fill it? That is the question that leads directly to all the internal and external contortions that the German defense minister will have to go through. The question came from a West Point cadet to de Maizière: As personnel losses declined in modern warfare, the willingness to send in more troops has also declined. How — the cadet wanted to know — will it be possible to increase support for further involvement? It is a difficult question, and it can be assumed it was well-thought out. Here, where elite military leaders are forged, they leave little to chance.

The defense minister’s response was that during the Cold War, the military served as a deterrent rather than an active force. Since then, the public had to be made aware that the use of military force produces casualties as well. It is a hard lesson, de Maizière said, that makes involvement anything but popular. In the end, people have to learn to live with that fact without accepting it as the norm.

Holocaust memorials, Syria, drones — these are the sensitive subjects Germany’s defense minister, himself the son of a former German Army inspector general, had to negotiate during his two-day visit to the U.S.

In the morning, de Maizière participated in the 20-year anniversary of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The event started with a parade of 36 flag bearers, representing the 36 divisions that liberated Germany from Nazi rule. Survivors were honored, including the liberators. Reuniting camp survivors and their rescuers is important to Americans. One thing came out of that meeting that did not seem hollow because it created and actualized a moment connecting military and democracy, death and doing good, and it all seemed to fit somehow.

Author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel stated that a hero is often just someone who acts humanely. Bill Clinton said that at the opening of the museum 20 years earlier, Wiesel had said that Franklin D. Roosevelt was certainly one of those who did good, but added that he had also failed in that he did not react quickly enough to the evil Hitler was causing. Wiesel understood immediately, said Clinton. He recounted that Wiesel was telling him in “very eloquent language” to “get off of my rear end and do something about Bosnia.” Clinton’s pathos impressed everyone in the audience, de Maizière included, but did it inspire new resolve or merely awaken a moral nostalgia?

In his speech, which he considers a keynote speech, de Maizière told the soldiers that, while they may have sacrificed their hair when they joined the army, they did not sacrifice their identities, adding, “You are soldiers because you are German citizens and not vice-versa.” That, in brief, is the concept of self-understanding in the German military. At the same time, it is also a very carefully packaged reminder to Americans that says yes to education and no to transformation.

But even that very civilian orientation of the German military has begun to crumble, and the limits are less clearly defined, since the army is now engaged in combat. In his speech, de Maizière quoted Gen. Eisenhower, a West Point graduate who said:

“Because, therefore, we are defending a way of life, we must be respectful of that way of life as we proceed to the solution of our problem. We must not violate its principles and its precepts, and we must not destroy from within what we are trying to defend from without.”

It is a highly pertinent issue. Here, de Maizière deviated from his prepared script and noted: “There will be no automatic war. Don’t believe this.”*

His intention here remains open, and it is not because of linguistic problems that de Maizière’s statement is unclear: On the one hand he admires American resolve, but on the other hand, he also seems to see it as a bluff. Apparently, he is highly skeptical of what the outcome of a Syrian invasion would be, hence he prefers no red lines.

What the defense minister means cannot be determined exactly, but it may be summarized as follows: He believes setting up a no-fly zone would be more complicated than those favoring one imagine it would be. He is in agreement with the U.S. position of no boots on the ground, but if chemical weapons are found and are to be permanently forbidden, that can only succeed by committing troops.

When de Maizière talks of red lines, his words themselves become weapons — stealth language, through which he is able to conceal more than he reveals. Right in the middle of his visit, word came out that he had broached the subject of purchasing unmanned drones from the U.S. The minister cautiously commented that he did not expect an answer to that question until sometime in May, at which time it could be examined in detail.

Who should fill the gap left if the U.S. withdraws from the Middle East remains, therefore, unclear. Only one fact seems certain: It will not be Germany.

*Editor’s note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.