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Quagmire: Why the United States "Loses" Against Insurgencies
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remarking that television promotes intervention and then “immediate disengagement when events do not go according to plan.”
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Conclusion
Americans have a strong tendency to view civil war interventions as failures. The two recent exceptions where the U.S. public judged a civil war mission as a success were Iraq in 1991 and (at least initially) Afghanistan in 2001. But it is doubtful whether either mission was perceived as a civil war intervention. In 1991, the U.S. was viewed as staying out of the civil war. In 2001 in Afghanistan, the conflict was perceived in large part as an inter-state war fought against a terrorist regime for purposes of self-defense. As the Afghanistan mission shifted towards nation-building, so predictably, did belief in U.S. success decline. This paper offered two competing explanations for the quagmire mentality. The first explanation holds that such beliefs are a reasonable reaction to repeated failures. There is some truth in this: the U.S. has had a more difficult time winning clear-cut victories in civil rather than in inter-state wars, and was certainly defeated in its largest intervention - in Vietnam. But overall, the second explanation is more compelling: Americans perceive civil war interventions as failures despite a fairly positive record. Every post-Cold War U.S. civil war intervention has been at least a partial success. In Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, success on the ground went largely unrecognized at home. The quagmire image implies that nation-building is very dangerous for the U.S., but nation-building missions in Germany, Japan, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo produced a combined total of four U.S. combat-related deaths.
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If anything, the record in the 1990s suggested that the U.S.
was getting better rather than worse at achieving its goals in civil wars. The quagmire mentality is not a reflection of reality, but has emerged instead for three major reasons: (1) American values promote metrics for success that are difficult to achieve; (2) memories of Vietnam reduce American confidence that they will win analogous wars; and (3) elites and the media deliberately or inadvertently promote negative evaluations. Americans tend to establish an unfairly high metric for success in civil war interventions based on U.S. ideals, and at the same time, elicit considerable doubts about whether the U.S. will satisfy this metric based on recent history. American leaders are seduced by the need for short-term support into offering idealistic or bullish rhetoric, which heightens expectations, thereby worsening long-term evaluations of the mission. In addition, the incremental economic, social and political progress evident in civil war interventions does not usually satisfy the American media’s demands for rapid and visible results. These are not the only factors shaping perceptions. For example, symbolic images of U.S. soldiers’ bodies being desecrated in Somalia, according to Entman: “activated the anti-interventionist, quagmire schema” among Americans
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Sharkey, "When Pictures Drive Foreign Policy".
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Dobbins, America’s Role in Nation-Building, p. 153.
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| | Authors: Tierney, Dominic. |
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25
remarking that television promotes intervention and then “immediate disengagement
when events do not go according to plan.”
135
Conclusion
Americans have a strong tendency to view civil war interventions as failures. The two
recent exceptions where the U.S. public judged a civil war mission as a success were Iraq
in 1991 and (at least initially) Afghanistan in 2001. But it is doubtful whether either
mission was perceived as a civil war intervention. In 1991, the U.S. was viewed as
staying out of the civil war. In 2001 in Afghanistan, the conflict was perceived in large
part as an inter-state war fought against a terrorist regime for purposes of self-defense. As
the Afghanistan mission shifted towards nation-building, so predictably, did belief in
U.S. success decline.
This paper offered two competing explanations for the quagmire mentality. The first
explanation holds that such beliefs are a reasonable reaction to repeated failures. There is
some truth in this: the U.S. has had a more difficult time winning clear-cut victories in
civil rather than in inter-state wars, and was certainly defeated in its largest intervention -
in Vietnam. But overall, the second explanation is more compelling: Americans perceive
civil war interventions as failures despite a fairly positive record. Every post-Cold War
U.S. civil war intervention has been at least a partial success. In Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia,
and Kosovo, success on the ground went largely unrecognized at home. The quagmire
image implies that nation-building is very dangerous for the U.S., but nation-building
missions in Germany, Japan, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo produced a combined total of four
U.S. combat-related deaths.
136
If anything, the record in the 1990s suggested that the U.S.
was getting better rather than worse at achieving its goals in civil wars.
The quagmire mentality is not a reflection of reality, but has emerged instead for three
major reasons: (1) American values promote metrics for success that are difficult to
achieve; (2) memories of Vietnam reduce American confidence that they will win
analogous wars; and (3) elites and the media deliberately or inadvertently promote
negative evaluations. Americans tend to establish an unfairly high metric for success in
civil war interventions based on U.S. ideals, and at the same time, elicit considerable
doubts about whether the U.S. will satisfy this metric based on recent history. American
leaders are seduced by the need for short-term support into offering idealistic or bullish
rhetoric, which heightens expectations, thereby worsening long-term evaluations of the
mission. In addition, the incremental economic, social and political progress evident in
civil war interventions does not usually satisfy the American media’s demands for rapid
and visible results. These are not the only factors shaping perceptions. For example,
symbolic images of U.S. soldiers’ bodies being desecrated in Somalia, according to
Entman: “activated the anti-interventionist, quagmire schema” among Americans
135
Sharkey, "When Pictures Drive Foreign Policy".
136
Dobbins, America’s Role in Nation-Building, p. 153.
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