Militarized Rivalries Lead to Atrocious Wars

The best way to steer clear of making such errors in the future is to stop defining U.S. foreign policy around such expansive global missions.

Michael McFaul wants the “successes” of the Cold War in a rivalry with China but without the horrifying atrocities:

A visit to the Vietnam Memorial in DC this week was a sober reminder of our tragic mistakes during the Cold War. If we are destined to return to great power competition with the PRC this century, let's repeat our successes but also avoid our mistakes from the last cold war.

Defenders of post-WWII U.S. foreign policy often try to have things both ways by touting the successes of the postwar era while treating the disastrous wars as “exceptions” or “mistakes” that don’t tell us anything about the merits and wisdom of the larger strategy. It is already bad enough that a monstrous and illegal war like the Vietnam War is counted as nothing more than a “mistake,” but to make things worse there is no attempt to reckon with why it happened. There is not much chance of avoiding such “mistakes” when there is no recognition that these “mistakes” are a direct, predictable result of an overall aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.