War hawks within the GOP’s ranks love to say that Barack Obama’s lack of military intervention into the Ukraine is a sign of a weak and inept U.S. But conservatives should be looking to shed the war hawk feathers and embrace active non-intervention.

On March 15, Forbes reported that anti-Russian war hawk John McCain joined forces with Senator Dick Durbin, to call for U.S. military support in Ukraine. Conservative war hawk and writer Bill Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard for the week of March 24 that Americans are using war-weariness “as an excuse to avoid maintaining our defenses or shouldering our responsibilities.”

As a conservative, I have to say that I’m with libertarians on this for once. The U.S. is already way too overextended across the planet and marching into the Ukraine with soldiers and weapons would be a bad look for the U.S. Finally, there are much better ways we can go about this situation as a nation than through war and violence.

As Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. both have stated, violence is the ultimate sign of weakness. The fact that Putin had to literally invade another country just to stop it from going toward the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization only shows how weak and fearful Putin and Russia felt.

These fears aren’t illegitimate. The fact is, the U.S. is all over Russia’s backyard. Many of Russia’s neighbors are already pro-West and pro-U.S. Some, like Georgia, are already knocking on the door of NATO, begging for membership. It also wouldn’t be a bad bet to say Ukraine is probably right behind them after seeing what just happened in Crimea. In terms of geopolitical victory, the U.S. has been beating Russia quite handily in Eastern Europe without firing a single shot after the 90’s. Intervening would be not only costly but it would only reaffirm Putin’s drive to militarize Russia and Eastern Europe.

Our country doesn’t have to intervene or invade a nation to get what they want. Sanctions, like what President Obama just passed on Wednesday, are a great way to reinforce American power without needlessly bombing a nation. The ruble, Russia’s currency, has already lost significant value and the already weak and natural resource-dependent Russian economy is taking a hit.

Power is the ability to influence others to do what you want — guns and bombs are simply a means, not an end. The bipartisan sanctions passed show American economic strength and they show American soft power, a type of power that only become more useful in the future as full scale invasions of nations becomes more and more expensive.

We can’t confuse non-intervention with being passive. They are not the same and this false dichotomy can lead to some very deadly black-and-white thinking. The current strategy the U.S. government uses is one of non-intervention, but it is highly active. The economic sanctions in order hurt Russia behind the front lines by actively working with the international community to isolate Russia and show the Putin administration that this isn’t OK.

Conservatives need to remember that a common stereotype of the U.S. is that we’re all neo-con, war mongers who get off to bombing nations poorer than us. This mentality is highly unpopular with the American people, especially millennials. The war hawk is a dying bird in the U.S. — Rand Paul’s foreign policy of non-interventionism seems to be the future.

Remember, we can show American power without lobbying for the destruction of human life. By protecting life, it only makes us appear stronger as the world’s shining example we work so hard at trying to be.

Rami Jackson is a sophomore entrepreneurship major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @IsRamicJ

 

Published on March 20, 2014 at 1:00 am