Michael Shurkin
One of the odder bits of dogma one frequently encounters in policy circles is the idea that conflicts have “no military solution.” For example, on 12 November 2024, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield asserted before the UN Security Council the following regarding Sudan’s civil war:
There is, quite simply, no military solution to this crisis. None. All countries should cease providing military support to the belligerents. And every one of us must continue to press the parties to return to the negotiating table with the aim of ending this conflict.
Taken at face value, the statement is not remarkable. But this is far from being the only time a senior U.S. diplomat or any other senior diplomat has made this assertion about seemingly intractable conflicts. A simple google search with the terms “State Department” and “no military solution” turns up such nuggets as the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad insisting on 3 August 2021 that there was “no military solution” to the Afghanistan War. He was echoing a State Department spokesman’s statement in 2011 that there was “no military solution” to the Afghanistan War. On 12 September 2022, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken opined that there was “no military solution” to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Similarly, on 9 November 2022, another State Department spokesperson said that there was “no military solution” to the war in Libya. On 7 December 2014, a Washington Post columnist took the Obama Administration to task for insisting there was “no military solution” to no less than three conflicts (Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine). On 1 June 2006, Richard A. Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, affirmed that there “is no military solution” to the conflict in Sri Lanka between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil rebels.
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