The U.S. and its allies have been engaging in a significant military intervention to help Ukraine resist Russia’s brutal invasion for the past nine months. Not only have they given considerable financial, humanitarian and military resources — including sophisticated weapons systems — to Ukraine, but they also have embedded advisers with Ukrainian forces, allowed thousands of their citizens to join Ukraine as foreign fighters and provided a vast amount of real-time intelligence to the country.
While this intervention has enjoyed broad domestic support, it has its share of determined critics. Notably, much of the anti-war camp in foreign policy circles has loudly opposed vigorous U.S. intervention. Its criticism is simple: The U.S. has done this before. With Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, America’s recent interventions have been a parade of mission failures.
In each of these cases, the reasons for failure were similar. As has been highlighted by critics, the U.S. has shown that it is thoroughly capable of using military force to destroy hostile governments, from dislodging the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2002 to helping revolutionaries overthrow Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 2011. But what happens afterward?
