Rubens: Endless War Blowback At The Ballot Box

I ran for U.S. Senate in both 2014 and 2016 for several reasons, foremost my differences with both my Republican and Democratic rivals relative to endless failed nation-building wars. I supported Donald Trump for President primarily because he expressed a greater preference during the campaign than Hillary Clinton for military restraint and use of force only where U.S. national security was at stake.

“Our friends and enemies must know that if I draw a line in the sand, I will enforce it. However, unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct,” said Trump in April, 2016. “You cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy. A superpower understands that caution and restraint are signs of strength.”

Trump may well have defeated Clinton for exactly this reason.

A new paper by political scientists Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen found that Trump’s greater vote share than Mitt Romney’s in 2012 can be explained by the “casualty gap,” differences among the states and counties in rates of battlefield death and injury during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

“Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House,” write the paper’s authors.

The model corrects for county-level differences in college education, income, racial composition, percentage rural and percentage veterans.

Nearly 7,000 American soldiers have given their lives in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than one million American soldiers have suffered injuries such as from burns, breathing problems, limb loss and PTSD. Kriner and Shen find that this pain is concentrated geographically. Ten percent of counties suffered war casualty rates at least seven times greater than half of counties.

To insulate themselves from political blowback, Beltway hawks of both parties have sought to make endless war invisible and painless to the general public by putting its costs on the national credit card and by substituting bombs and contractors for American ground forces.

Former U.S. Senate candidate says by embracing endless war, Beltway hawks have insulated themselves from political blowback.

The interventionists who have promoted the past 16 years’ endless failed wars should take careful note that the party most associated with the consequential death and injury is punished at the ballot box. Where war is necessary to protect national security, Congress must vote to declare it and explain a strategy for victory and exit.

Former state Sen. Jim Rubens, R-Hanover, ran for Senate in 2014 and 2016.