The Scaredy-Hawks Strike Again

Most of what Mead calls “foreign interference in the affairs of the nations of this hemisphere” is what other people would call the exercise of sovereignty by our neighbors.

Walter Russell Mead hyperventilates:

Monroe had it right. The safety and security of the U.S. require that no hostile powers turn the Western Hemisphere into an arena of geopolitical rivalry. To prevent foreign interference in the affairs of the nations of this hemisphere [bold mine-DL], the U.S. must work with neighbors to prevent failures of governance from creating chaotic conditions in which hostile powers can fruitfully meddle.

The hawkish tendency to panic about the most minor and predictable developments never fails to amuse. The U.S. routinely meddles in the affairs of other nations, many of which are very close to states that Washington deems adversaries and rivals, and the hawks cheer on that meddling and demand more of it. Then when the adversaries and rivals respond in kind and do a small fraction of what the U.S. has done in their regions, the same people wail and gnash their teeth as if the world was about to come to an end. Hysterical overreaction is never a good guide to foreign policy, and this is unfortunately all that these scaredy-hawks have to offer.

A more sober and serious approach would acknowledge that other major powers are going to make the attempt to gain influence among our neighbors just as the U.S. has done with theirs, and it would require us not to panic about this. If there is any threat here at all, it is a very modest and manageable one. If the U.S. doesn’t want these states to make inroads in this hemisphere, it would do well to reassess the policies it has pursued in this hemisphere and how those policies have contributed to the region’s instability and crises.