Check out Daniel Larison's short piece in the The Week. Money quote:
Today, we are at the end of an era defined by conservative internationalism, a creed both exceedingly ambitious in its goals and extremely parsimonious in the resources provided to reach them. For the past 30 years, conservative internationalists have largely dominated national security debates; even internationalist Democrats have been influenced by them or been forced to mimic their arguments. During and after Vietnam, conservative internationalists wished to preserve an active, "forward" foreign policy while avoiding the political costs such a policy entails. Consequently, they turned to air power, missile defenses, covert operations, and short wars to minimize both American casualties and public backlash. In short, conservative internationalists found a way to insulate an activist national security state from the people it was supposed to serve….
…In recent years, it was common for liberals to ask why President Bush never asked for collective sacrifice in support of a war effort that his administration routinely described as vital, even "existential." As Zelizer explains, Bush couldn’t have done so without undermining a pillar of conservative internationalism—the "promise of minimal sacrifice." In reality, the sacrifice is not so small, but it is made to seem small by pushing the fiscal costs of war into the future and carefully hiding the human costs from public scrutiny. The pain is buried in abstract projections of future deficits and in the quiet stoicism of the professional military.
Today, we are at the end of an era defined by conservative internationalism, a creed both exceedingly ambitious in its goals and extremely parsimonious in the resources provided to reach them. For the past 30 years, conservative internationalists have largely dominated national security debates; even internationalist Democrats have been influenced by them or been forced to mimic their arguments. During and after Vietnam, conservative internationalists wished to preserve an active, "forward" foreign policy while avoiding the political costs such a policy entails. Consequently, they turned to air power, missile defenses, covert operations, and short wars to minimize both American casualties and public backlash. In short, conservative internationalists found a way to insulate an activist national security state from the people it was supposed to serve….
…In recent years, it was common for liberals to ask why President Bush never asked for collective sacrifice in support of a war effort that his administration routinely described as vital, even "existential." As Zelizer explains, Bush couldn’t have done so without undermining a pillar of conservative internationalism—the "promise of minimal sacrifice." In reality, the sacrifice is not so small, but it is made to seem small by pushing the fiscal costs of war into the future and carefully hiding the human costs from public scrutiny. The pain is buried in abstract projections of future deficits and in the quiet stoicism of the professional military.
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