This article was written by two Fall 2011 Fellows in PSA’s Congressional Fellowship Program.  All CFP articles are produced by bipartisan groups of Democrat and Republican Fellows that were challenged to develop opinion pieces that reach consensus on critical national security and foreign affairs issues.

Guns, Butter, And Band-Aids: A Three-Tiered Approach to Foreign Policy

In the early hours of a tropical morning in January 2010, the Baltimore-based U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort docked two kilometers off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti equipped with military, U.S. Public Health Service, nongovernmental organization, and international organization personnel ready to respond to the raw wounds of the island nation still trembling from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that had struck only days earlier. Despite initial doubts from the Pentagon that the ship was needed as another member of a swiftly-deployed fleet of similarly-equipped Navy and Marine vessels to the island[1], the U.S.N.S. Comfort quickly became a household name for U.S. military relief efforts due to the ship’s remarkable capability to quickly provide wounded Haitians a stable, secure place to receive desperately needed medical care. Not to be understated were the colossal efforts of the U.S. Agency for International Development.  This agency was designated to spearhead the U.S. intergovernmental agency response to the tragedy, which deployed disaster assistance personnel within a day of the crisis’ occurrence and continues to rebuild Haiti nearly two years later. Monitoring on-the-ground developments in Haiti, the U.S. Department of State preserved its strong tradition of diplomacy with the Haitian government and the international community; thereby assuring the distressed country that it had an ally in its long fight to recover, rebuild, and thrive.

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This article was written by two Fall 2011 Fellows in PSA’s Congressional Fellowship Program.  All CFP articles are produced by bipartisan groups of Democrat and Republican Fellows that were challenged to develop opinion pieces that reach consensus on critical national security and foreign affairs issues.

For the vast majority of Americans, watching the last American boot leave Iraqi soil is nothing short of good riddance. The numbers have become seared in Americans minds: Nearly nine years. Nearly a trillion dollars spent. Nearly 35,000 US soldiers wounded. Nearly 4,500 US soldiers dead.

The long-term effect of the Iraq War is pretty obvious—a national sentiment for retrenchment—a streak of isolationism that is being espoused by both sides of the political spectrum. It’s hard not to watch Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry warn against “military adventurism” without comparing him to his predecessor.

But despite the desire to go inward, the simple fact is that if there was any hope for the US to go on the sidelines, that’s changed forever with the onset of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring has reminded the world of the danger of failed states. With long-time dictators losing power, militant Salafists (not solely Al Qaeda) are looking to fill the vacuum.

But the Arab Spring also comes with a new challenge—a new type of interventionism.

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Graeme Bannerman is a PSA Board Member and scholar at the Middle East Institute, where his work focuses on US-Arab relations, regional security, the peace process, and the history of the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asserted recently that critics of the Libyan mission “have been proven wrong.” Now, with the death of dictator Muammar Qadhafi, the secretary’s view is supported by the overwhelming majority of Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

But this won’t be the first time that Washington may be proven wrong. Even conceding the unlikely outcome that the Libyans overcome their tribal, regional, and political differences to establish a democratic state, the long-term costs of U.S. involvement are likely to far outweigh the benefits.