All these actions should prompt us to ask whether the principle of non-intervention should simply be jettisoned. When one looks back at American history, though, there may be at least some support for non-intervention. Yes, Americans must acknowledge that independence from Britain was won in part because of French military intervention. But it was Britain's decision not to intervene in the Civil War -- a choice London made after many stern Russian warnings to stay out of the conflict -- that contributed mightily to the Union prevailing. To these events one must add the clear preference of the founding fathers to avoid wars overseas. Indeed, in the wake of the Revolutionary War, and for some time after, the "standing army" was kept under 1,000 soldiers, most of whom patrolled the frontiers. Foreign intervention was something in which the Founders had little interest.
These sentiments were profoundly felt among the body politic, and American intervention came in World War I only after German U-boats began to wage a particularly savage form of unrestricted submarine warfare. In World War II, the United States stayed out until directly attacked at Pearl Harbor; even then, after the day of infamy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt could get a declaration of war only against Japan. War with Germany had to wait the few days it took for Hitler to declare war on the United States.
The American ethos of non-intervention began to erode during the Cold War, when decisions were all too often taken to intervene in nations where the Russo-American rivalry was being played out. But after the collapse of communism, and even now in these times when there seems little that can stand in the way of American interventionism, cautionary voices are still heard. Ron Paul may have received far too few votes to make a difference in American presidential politics, but his message of non-intervention still resonates deeply throughout the land.
So maybe it's a good idea to hold on to the non-intervention principle. After the debacles American foreign policy has suffered over the past decade, the notion of non-intervention offers important ethical and intellectual handholds for those who would urge caution upon their political and military leaders. The principle also keeps pace with the sense of the vast majority of other nations -- who prefer non-intervention -- which will help to shore up the kind of unity that will prove crucial if progress, prosperity, and peace are to have a chance in the future. Such unity will also be much needed on those (hopefully rare) occasions when intervention is appropriate -- as in keeping another Rwanda-like genocide from ever occurring.
In the world of Star Trek, the Prime Directive served as a check, but not an unthinking ban, on intervention. And so there were many interventions and counter-interventions. My favorite was in the original series, the episode "A Private Little War," when Captain Kirk ordered Scottie to make some flintlock muskets for the bow-hunting hill people of a planet where he had once tarried because the Klingons were arming the other side with these relatively advanced weapons. Kirk intervened, but only after much soul-searching, and in a proportionate way that established a balance of power and at least kept the Prime Directive in mind.
Would that all interventions in our world were undertaken as thoughtfully.
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