Empire State of Mind The Illiberal Foundations of Liberal Hegemony

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Empire State of Mind
The Illiberal Foundations
of Liberal Hegemony
F
CHRISTOPHER J. COYNE
AND ABIGAIL R. HALL BLANCO
The global reach of the U.S. military is truly staggering. Consider that “[t]oday
US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the . . .
continents. The US military is the world’s largest landlord, with significant
military facilities in nations around the world with a significant presence in Bahrain,
Djibouti, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan,
in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the
UK” (Bilmes and Intriligator 2013, 9). In addition, the U.S. Central Command is
currently carrying out various military-related activities in at least twenty countries in
the Middle East. Further, the United States “has some kind of military presence in
Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan,
Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E.
[United Arab Emirates], Uzbekistan, and Yemen” (Bilmes and Intriligator 2013, 9).
This list does not even include the U.S. government’s significant presence and influence
in Africa: “[T]he US Africa Command . . . supports military-to-military relationships
with 54 African nations” (Bilmes and Intriligator 2013, 10). Consider further the U.S.
government’s use of special-operations forces. A recent review of the global use of
special-ops forces concludes that “[d]uring the fiscal year that ended on September
Christopher J. Coyne is F. A. Harper Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at George
Mason University and co-editor of The Independent Review.Abigail R. Hall Blanco is assistant professor
of economics at the University of Tampa.
The Independent Review, v. 21, n. 2, Fall 2016, ISSN 1086–1653, Copyright ©2016, pp. 237–250.
237

30, 2014, [they] deployed to 133 countries—roughly 70% of the nations on the
planet” (Turse 2015).
Yet another indicator of the U.S. military’s global reach is the prevalence of bases
around the world, as cataloged in the Department of Defense’s annual Base Structure
Report. For fiscal year 2014, the department operated more than 470 bases in foreign
countries and an additional 4,000 bases in the United States and its territories (2014, 6).
The department’s total real estate portfolio is significant, consisting of “more than
562,000 facilities (buildings, structures, and linear structures), located on over 4,800
sites worldwide, and covering over 24.7 million acres” both domestically and interna-
tionally (2014, 2). Other estimates of U.S. bases on foreign soil are even greater. For
example, David Vine calculates that “today there are around eight hundred U.S. bases
in foreign countries, occupied by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops” (2015, 3).
The U.S. military’s massive boot print is not a recent phenomenon. The United
States has been engaged in a state of permanent war for decades, and the U.S.
government has been intervening in global affairs for centuries (see Shoup 1969;
Johnson 2000, 2004; Bacevich 2002, 2010; Kinzer 2006; Dudziak 2012; Duncan
and Coyne 2013a, 2013b; Posen 2014). Attempts to catalog U.S. interventions
abroad have documented hundreds of cases starting in the late 1790s (see U.S.
Department of State 1967; Goldwater 1973; Collins 1991; Torreon 2014).
Deepak Lal captures the U.S. government’s activist foreign policy in the conclu-
sion that “[t]he United States is indubitably an empire. It is more than a hegemon, as
it seeks control over not only foreign but also aspects of domestic policy in other
countries” (2004, 63). There is no reason to think that this deeply engrained mental-
ity will change anytime soon. In recent comments regarding the Department of
Defense’s fiscal year 2015 budget request, Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox
stated that “[t]here is just too much to do in the world, and we need clever ideas on
how to be everywhere, do everything with fewer forces across the entire joint force”
(qtd. in Lyle 2014).
What mentality does the proactive and militaristic foreign policy of the U.S.
government require? We answer this question by identifying the defining characteris-
tics of the interventionist mindset. The U.S. government’s current grand strategy in
foreign policy has been described as “liberal hegemony” (see Ikenberry 2012 and
Posen 2014). From this perspective, the U.S. government uses its position of global
power to exert influence over others while promoting Western liberal values, includ-
ing constitutional democracy, the rule of law, economic freedom, individual rights
and freedoms, and an appreciation of the forces of spontaneous orders (see Posen
2014, 5–6). The U.S. military has been the centerpiece of this strategy of liberal
hegemony, which requires “a sustained investment in military power whose aim is to
so overwhelm potential challengers that they will not even try to compete, much less
fight” (Posen 2014, 5).
We point out the inherent tension in this position. Proponents of the current
U.S. grand strategy claim a commitment to liberal values. However, successfully
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implementing the strategy requires, attracts, and reinforces a mentality fundamentally
at odds with liberal values. The adoption and reinforcement of this mentality is incen-
tivized by government bureaus that reward those who successfully implement the
government’s foreign-policy strategy. Within this system, those who rise to the top will
tend to be those who are most comfortable and willing to engage in illiberal behaviors
toward foreign populations.
We proceed as follows. The first section discusses what constitutes foreign inter-
vention, the core characteristics of the interventionist mindset, and how this mentality
is at odds with liberal values. The second section explores the internal incentives of the
government apparatus used to design and implement foreign policy that reward the
adoption and reinforcement of the interventionist mindset. And we conclude our
argument in the third section.
The Interventionist Mindset
For our purposes, the term foreign intervention refers to the use of the discretionary
power held by members of one government to achieve some desired end in another
society (Coyne and Hall 2014). At the core of foreign intervention is the desire by the
intervening party to impose a desired state of affairs on another population. The
specific desired end will vary depending on context, but the key point is that foreign
interventions by their very nature are at odds with the prevailing status quo. If they
were not, the intervention would not be necessary in the first place.
Where there is a disjoint between the intervener’s desires and the target popula-
tion’s desires, mechanisms of social control will be required to raise the cost of resis-
tance and ensure compliance. Examples of the tools of social control used by the U.S.
government in past foreign interventions include surveillance, curfews, segregation,
bribery, censorship, suppression, imprisonment, torture, and violence. Given the nature
of foreign intervention as well as the type of activities required for success, a certain type
of mindset is required that includes some mix of the following characteristics:
1. Extreme confidence regarding the interveners’ ability to solve complex problems
in other societies.
Foreign interventions require the belief that a small group of elites can redesign
entire societies according to a grand blueprint. Moreover, it requires the belief that
this blueprint can be implemented in the desired manner. According to this logic, all
issues are to be treated as technical engineering problems, which can be resolved with
appropriate resources in the hands of the intelligentsia. The very idea of externally
driven “nation building” perfectly captures this extreme sense of confidence because
it assumes that entire nations, including all of the complex institutions necessary for a
well-functioning society, can be designed and built by outsiders.
One of the implications of treating the world as a simple rather than complex
system is that interventionists downplay or completely ignore the possibility that their
actions create perverse unintended consequences. This neglect is evident in the recent
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U.S. government intervention in Libya. The original U.S.-led intervention in Libya in
2011 was hailed as a success because it helped depose Muammar Gaddafi without any
U.S. military boots on the ground. Although the operation was supposed to be the
model of a limited, humanitarian foreign intervention, it resulted in chaos and insta-
bility both in Libya and in the broader region.
Consider two headlines from the New York Times that capture the lack of
appreciation for the possibility of negative unintended consequences. In 2011, the
newspaper ran an article titled “U.S. Tactics in Libya May Be a Model for Other
Efforts” (Cooper and Myers 2011). As mentioned, many policy makers and pundits
at the time hailed the intervention as a success and model for subsequent interven-
tions. Four years later the headline was “ISIS’ Grip on Libyan City Gives It a Fallback
Option” (Kirkpatrick, Hubbard, and Schmitt 2015). Today, many of the same inter-
ventionists who advocated for intervention in Libya and elsewhere are now calling for
further interventions by the U.S. government to combat ISIS with no consideration
for subsequent unintended consequences.
2. A sense of superiority regarding scientific knowledge, preferences, and righteousness.
Interventionists believe that their vision is superior to the status quo; otherwise,
an intervention would be unnecessary (see Brenner 2014). This sense of supremacy is
multifaceted and is predicated on the belief that the interventionists (a) possess supe-
rior technological knowledge to foreigners, (b) possess preferences that are preferable
to and desired by those intervened upon, and (c) possess the moral right and duty to
spread their superior knowledge and preferences. Together, this overarching sense of
superiority reflects an attitude of condemnation toward the preferences, choices, and
ways of life of others, which are necessarily viewed as inferior.
3. Limited compassion and sympathy toward foreigners.
Interventions are typically complex and are motivated by a variety of goals.
These goals often include humanitarian goals to the extent they align with the inter-
veners’ broader aims. Even where humanitarian motives exist and where associated
benefits are generated, interventionists often have limited compassion and sympathy
toward the target populace.
Consider the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Part of the justification for
these interventions was improving the well-being of citizens in each country. And on
some margins, interventions have indeed generated improvements for certain groups.
This is not surprising given that the U.S. government spent significant sums of money
on the occupations, which included an array of humanitarian programs. Despite these
improvements and benefits, concern for the well-being of Afghan and Iraqi citizens
is limited.
As U.S. general Thomas Franks once remarked when discussing the number
of people killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, “[W]e [the U.S. government] don’t
do body counts” (qtd. in Tirman 2015). This attitude of indifference toward
deaths caused by intervention neglects the fact that while enemies can be killed
during foreign interventions, so too can innocent civilians. In addition to fatalities,
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foreign interventions can also impose other, nonlethal costs on innocent civilians,
including displacement, the onset and spread of disease, and psychological harms.
These costs counter any of the aforementioned humanitarian benefits generated
by interveners.
This characteristic is also evident when those in the intervening country discuss
the costs of war. There is a tendency to focus narrowly on the lives lost and monetary
costs incurred by those in the intervening nation. Excluded are the heavier costs that
fall on the intervention’s target population (see Tirman 2015). This approach not
only severely underestimates the total costs of intervention but also reinforces a moral
apathy toward harms imposed on human beings in the target country.
4. Comfort with the use of a wide range of often repugnant means to impose
externally determined and desired ends on others.
The interventionists are so confident in their vision for other societies that they
are comfortable using a variety of means to implement them. The means employed
typically include some combination of soft power—the ability to attract and per-
suade—and hard power—force and coercion. In some cases, the latter entails extreme
forms such as torture (McCoy 2006), long-term incarceration without due process
(Slahi 2015), and the killing of innocent civilians (Physicians for Social Responsibility,
Physicians for Global Survival, and Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
2015), who are dismissed as “collateral damage.” Where such extreme tactics are
employed, the interventionists fail to appreciate that they have adopted the most
vicious methods and characteristics of those they condemn and combat.
In addition to directly adopting ruthless techniques of social control, the U.S.
government has also historically partnered with brutal authoritarian regimes in order
to achieve short-term goals (Carpenter and Innocent 2015). In doing so, the mem-
bers of the political elite seem indifferent, if not entirely oblivious, to the significant
costs imposed on innocent people in terms of human rights violations. In general, in
order to succeed, the interventionists must be willing to consider employing any and
all means available under the belief that “the ends justify the means.”
5. A lack of self-awareness and the inability to self-reflect in the face of rejection
or failure.
Where an intervention is met with resistance or outright rejection, the interven-
tionists often blame the target population for being ungrateful and do not consider
the possibility that the intervention was not desired by those being intervened upon
(Brenner 2014). During a speech in 2005, President George W. Bush stated that “we
[the U.S. government] gave the Afghan people a chance to live in a free and demo-
cratic society” (2005, 992). Almost a decade later, in 2014, President Barak Obama
similarly noted that “[w]e gave Iraq the chance to have an inclusive democracy” (qtd.
in Ernst 2014). The implication of these statements is that Afghans and Iraqis should
be grateful to the U.S. government for bestowing upon them these opportunities
through military invasion and occupation. This attitude also suggests that the failure
of interventions has nothing to do with the intervening government but rather is the
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result of the foreign population’s failure to take advantage of the opportunities
provided to them by their interveners.
6. Great confidence in a massive, bureaucratic, public–private complex to carry out
interventions in foreign societies.
Foreign interventions are designed and implemented by numerous, overlapping
government bureaucracies. This massive bureaucratic network partners with the pri-
vate sector to produce goods (i.e., the military-industrial complex) and deliver ser-
vices abroad (e.g., Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.). Interestingly, and perhaps ironically,
those on both sides of the U.S. political spectrum take issue with various aspects of
this relationship when it comes to domestic issues. Yet both political parties seem to
ignore their respective complaints when it comes to foreign policy.
Although those on the right are purportedly skeptical of “big government”
domestically, they are entirely comfortable relying on an immense and largely uncon-
strained government apparatus when intervening abroad. Likewise, those on the left
claim to be skeptical of “big business” and the various favors and privileges it secures
domestically, yet they are often more than willing to endorse foreign interventions that
entrench and extend corporate cronyism in the form of lucrative contracts and salaries
that allow well-connected private parties to benefit at the expense of taxpayers. This
unquestioning confidence in the far-reaching bureaucratic apparatus to carry out foreign
interventions neglects the epistemic constraints that bureaucrats face (Coyne 2008;
Duncan and Coyne 2015) as well as the perverse incentives that contribute to waste,
fraud, and corruption in military contracting (Coyne, Michaluk, and Reese 2015).
7. The deep-seated conviction that order requires state imposition and control.
Absent government control and planning, interventionists see disorder and chaos
in the world. Moreover, it is not just control by any government that is required for order
but rather control by the “right” government as determined according to the interven-
tionists’ preferences. This mentality has a long history in the United States and can be
traced back to 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt declared that “[c]hronic
wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized
society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized
nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the
Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of
such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power” (qtd. in
Beschloss 2003, 137). Over time, the U.S. government has extended its reach well
beyond the Western Hemisphere in the name of promoting global order and stability.
The entrenched belief that order is contingent on government design and
control neglects the importance of spontaneous orders—the emergent orders that
are the result of people pursuing their diverse ends rather than of conscious, central-
ized planning. Instead of viewing societies as complex, constantly evolving entities
that consist of numerous emergent phenomena, interventionists treat society as a
grand science project that can be rationalized and improved upon by enlightened
and well-intentioned engineers. This treatment neglects the long tradition of
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spontaneous-order thinking that emphasizes that significant and crucial parts of the
world in which we all live—that is, economic, legal, social arrangements—are not the
result of human design but rather emerge from the actions of dispersed individuals.
These organic orders cannot be designed because they do not fit a single, general form
across contexts (Ostrom 1991, 242).
8. Strong condemnation of other governments engaging in foreign inter ventions.
Interventionists believe they possess the knowledge, resources, and moral justifi-
cation to carry out foreign interventions. They do not extend this same reasoning,
however, to non-ally governments that engage in similar foreign interventions. In stark
contrast, interventionists meet foreign interventions by other governments with public
condemnation. This attitude was most recently evident in the U.S. government’s
response to the Russian government’s invasion into Ukrainian territory in 2014. U.S.
secretary of state John Kerry publicly condemned the invasion, calling it an “incredible
act of aggression” while ignoring the impressive list of U.S. military interventions
discussed in the opening lines of this paper. Seemingly oblivious to the ongoing U.S.
occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, he went on to note that “[y]ou just don’t in the
21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely
trumped up pretext” (qtd. in Dunham 2014). Interventionists view their own actions as
noble, righteous, and justified but similar actions by others as exactly the opposite.
These eight characteristics are fundamental to the mental schema associated with a proac-
tive, interventionist foreign policy that seeks to reshape other societies. It is a general
mindset, and not all of the constituent characteristics will necessarily be possessed by
each and every individual involved in the numerous aspects of foreign interventions.
Although foreign interventions are often justified as promoting liberal values,
the components of the interventionist mindset are inherently illiberal. They discard
the rule of law by empowering a small group of political elites with significant discre-
tionary and unconstrained power over the lives of others. They downplay or reject the
recognition and respect for other people as human beings deserving of individual
sovereignty. They elevate “the government” and “the nation-state” above the indi-
vidual and emphasize the collective both domestically and internationally. And they
ignore or reject the importance of spontaneous orders by operating under the pre-
tense that order is possible only through state-produced social control.
Embracing this illiberal mindset, either implicitly or explicitly, is necessary for
success in foreign interventions. To understand why, it is necessary to appreciate the
organizational logic and resulting incentives of the government apparatus used to
implement foreign policy.
Why the Illiberal Get on Top
In his discussion of economic planning in the 1930s, Frank Knight noted that plan-
ning authorities would have to “exercise their power ruthlessly to keep the machinery
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of organized production and distribution running” and that “[t]hey would have to
enforce orders ruthlessly and suppress all disputation and argument against policies”
(1938, 868–69). He went on to argue that “the probability of the people in power
being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level
with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of
whipping-master on a slave plantation” (869). F. A. Hayek made a similar argument
in The Road to Serfdom (1944), emphasizing that under a regime of government
planning the worst people in society are the most likely to rise to positions of power.
The reason why is that planning grants significant discretionary power to those who
are tasked with making decisions about the allocation of resources. Who, Hayek
asked, is likely to flourish in a system characterized by wielding such power over
others? Like Knight, he answered that “the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely
to be more successful” in such a system (1944, 135). That is, those who feel com-
fortable exercising power and control over others are likely to advance in a system of
unconstrained discretionary decision making.
Knight and Hayek were pointing out that irrespective of the type of person who
enters the system, success ultimately requires that they behave in a certain manner. The
incentives created by planning will initially attract the type of people who already behave as
Knight and Hayek described or will require otherwise good people to act in an unscrupu-
lous manner to flourish in the system. An individual’s inability to act in a paternalistic
and authoritarian manner will lead to his or her replacement by someone who can act
in the required way. A similar type of logic can be applied to foreign interventions.
Those involved in foreign interventions will either already possess the interven-
tionist mindset discussed in the previous section or will be incentivized to acquire it in
order to successfully fulfill bureaucratic mandates and objectives. As noted, not all of
the characteristics described here will necessarily be held by each and every person
involved in foreign interventions. The extent of the required mentality is dependent
largely on each person’s place in the organization because “[f]unctions within the
bureaucracy [are] arrange[d] hierarchically, so that higher authorities always control
those with less power at lower levels, and decisions and policies always sift from the
top down” (Willers 1977, 45).
In the context of foreign policy, those farther up the decision-making hierarchy
will tend to possess more of the defining characteristics of the interventionist mindset.
They are the ones who decide where and when to intervene and the specific tech-
niques and strategies for carrying out those interventions. Those farther down the
hierarchy, the cogs in the interventionist machinery, will tend to possess fewer of these
characteristics but will have to possess at least some of them in order to succeed in the
government bureaucracy that is implementing the intervention. They will tend to be
specialists in certain areas and will possess or acquire those aspects of the interven-
tionist mentality required for their jobs.
Three related factors incentivize the widespread adoption of the interventionist
mindset under a proactive foreign policy. First, those in government bureaus are often
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actively indoctrinated with an unquestioning attitude toward the orders provided
from above. For example, Colonel James Donovan notes that U.S. military training
“stresses the fundamental obligation to serve the nation loyally and without question
to carry out the policies and orders of the President, who is Commander in Chief,
and the orders of his appointed officers” (1970, 39). John Conrad Willers empha-
sizes that those entering bureaus quickly realize that “[s]uccess within bureaucracy
requires not only skill and expertise and knowledge but also above all, an apparent
devotion to the bureaucracy and unquestioning loyalty to its goals” (1977, 45).
Former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger recognized a
similar dynamic when he noted that once one is embedded in the foreign-policy
bureaucracy, “[s]erving the machine becomes a more absorbing occupation than
defining its purpose” (1969, 18). In other words, success requires adopting and
perpetuating the mindset necessary to succeed. Under the U.S. government’s pro-
active foreign-policy strategy, this mindset aligns with the characteristics described in
the previous section.
The second factor incentivizing the adoption of the interventionist mindset is
the desire for personal advancement within government bureaucracy (Shoup 1969).
As in any organization, those employed in government agencies advance their careers
by developing the appropriate skills and reputation and by signaling these abilities to
key decision makers. General David Shoup notes that in the U.S. military establish-
ment “[p]romotions and the choice job opportunities are attained by constantly
performing well, conforming to the expected patterns, and pleasing the senior officers
(1969, 54). Similarly, Colonel Donovan emphasizes that in order to advance, the
bureaucrat “must become known as a faithful disciple of his service. In order to
promote the organization and its success, he has to compete for goals other than
dollar profits, within the fields of operational doctrines, service doctrines, roles and
missions, defense appropriations, new weapons programs, and service prestige”
(1970, 80). This incentive generates peculiar and often undesirable outcomes in the
context of foreign interventions.
In the context of for-profit markets, professional competition is desirable precisely
because the process, both within and across organizations, yields beneficial outcomes
for private consumers. That is, competition tends to generate new and better products
at lower prices as entrepreneurs and producers compete to develop skills that are
conducive to satisfying customer wants so that they can outcompete alternative entre-
preneurs and producers. In the context of government-led foreign interventions, how-
ever, the nature of professional competition is dramatically different.
In this setting, the “customers” are those in positions of power in the interven-
ing government. Those tasked with carrying out the intervention will satisfy their
customers by going above and beyond to achieve the goals of the operation. This
behavior entails efficiently controlling foreign populations to secure cooperation and
to dampen, suppress, or altogether eradicate any resistance. Interveners will therefore
face the incentive to act entrepreneurially to develop, implement, and refine a range of
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social control techniques to satisfy their political customers at the expense of the
target population.
These dynamics were evident in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, where loose
bureaucratic guidelines and mandates, combined with unclear rules regarding what
legally constitutes torture, led to the abuse and torture of prisoners to secure “action-
able intelligence” in order to satiate the overly broad commands of those farther up
the hierarchy (Coyne and Coyne 2013). More broadly, the incentives surrounding
foreign interventions can result in “narrow professionalism,” whereby a fierce com-
petition to efficiently and effectively regulate others leads to a willingness to engage in
otherwise unthinkable acts of social control to achieve the ends of those in power in
the intervening government (Rejali 2007, 457–58).
Finally, internal mechanisms beyond the indoctrination techniques discussed
earlier incentivize conformity and weed out those who fail to fall in line by adopting
the established mindset. Robert Merton notes that successful bureaus require “a high
degree of reliability of behavior, an unusual degree of conformity with prescribed
patterns of action” (1940, 562). He goes on to argue that the personalities of those
working in the agency will tend to conform to these patterns of action because “there
are definite arrangements in the bureaucracy for inculcating and reinforcing these senti-
ments” (562–63). When people fail to conform to the dominant mindset, there are
sorting mechanisms in place.
The Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) model in management studies pro-
vides insight into the tendency toward conformity and reinforcement of an organiza-
tion’s cultural traits (Schneider 1987; Schneider, Goldstein, and Smith 1995). The
ASA framework suggests that an individual is initially attracted to an organization
based on the perceived fit between his or her personal characteristics and the culture
and environment of the organization. During this “attraction phase,” people will tend
to self-select into those organizations where they believe they will mesh and succeed.
The “selection phase” refers to the formal and informal channels internal to the
organization for screening and offering employment to potential candidates. Organi-
zations will attempt to filter and employ those people who fit with the organization’s
culture and mentality. Finally, the “attrition phase” refers to people’s tendency to
leave an organization in which they do not fit. They may leave voluntarily, be penal-
ized, or be terminated for inadequate performance. The underlying logic is that
employees will be unhappy and underperforming where their personal characteristics
sufficiently diverge from those required for success in the broader organization.
One of the implications of the ASA framework is that absent some kind of signif-
icant shock to an organization’s culture, such as a change in mission or grand strategy,
the organization’s overarching ethos and attributes will tend to be self-reinforcing
over time. Those attracted to the organization in the first place will have personality
traits that tend to align with the organization’s culture and mentality. Even if the
selection process is imperfect, those who do not fit will tend to exit the organization
due to lack of personal happiness or to underperformance. The result is a tendency
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toward homogeneity around the existing culture, contributing to its perpetuation. In
terms of foreign policy, this culture is one of proactive intervention on the part of the
U.S. government. Those who possess or who are willing to adopt and develop the
requisite interventionist mindset necessary for success will be initially attracted to and
succeed within the bureaus involved in designing, implementing, and executing foreign
interventions in other societies. Those who lack this mentality or fail to adopt it either
will be sorted out before employment or will fail to advance if they are hired.
Conclusion
Those in control of the U.S. government have provided numerous justifications for past
foreign interventions, including some mix of empathy with the suffering, the spread of
freedom and democracy, the need to fix broken societies, and retaliation against actual
or potential threats or enemies. Some of these interventions have succeeded in their
goals. Many have failed. Our central point is that, irrespective of the motivation or
outcome, foreign interventions require a certain mindset that is at odds with liberal
values. The degree to which these values are abandoned will vary with context. But as
the U.S. government’s recent actions at the Guanta
´namo Bay detention camp and Abu
Ghraib prison make clear, the interventionist mindset can lead to the use of extremely
vicious and repugnant techniques of coercion and control against other human beings.
Recognizing the illiberal foundations of liberal hegemony has an important
implication. Even if we assume the best-case scenario regarding the intentions of
those who control U.S. foreign policy, they must still adopt illiberal means, at least
to some degree, to achieve their otherwise noble ends. That is, even under the first-
best scenario, where the intervenors’ intentions are benevolent and other regarding,
foreign interventions face a fundamental tension in that they require the adoption of
illiberal means to achieve liberal ends.
Of course, there is good reason to believe that this best-case scenario is not
descriptive of reality. Given the insights of public choice economics regarding the
operation of government and the national security state, it is more accurate to ease
this best-case assumption to allow for the possibility of more narrowly self-interested
motivations on the part of interveners. Under this scenario, the noble rhetoric of
humanitarian intervention and the desire to spread liberal values is simply cover for
the true motivations behind foreign interventions, which often produce illiberal
outcomes. In this case, interveners will have abandoned liberal values not just as a
means, as in the best-case scenario, but also as an end. When this occurs, the U.S.
government is acting as an illiberal hegemon that threatens the very liberal values it
purports to protect and advance through foreign interventions.
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