Invading Iraq or trying to create democracy in Libya or getting Finland to join NATO is, basically, some attempt to create stability at a distance - as misguided and chaotic as the results may be. Engaging in actual, direct war the way Putin has would be unthinkable; it would be like taking your pants off at a dinner party.
[edit] I should clarify that the invading Iraq part of the above statement was meant as a bit of jest; obviously that was precisely what Putin has done.
[edit #2] the article's flaw isn't that it (rightly) locates the source of both peace and war in the profit-making capacities of companies and governments; the flaw is in its fanciful belief (and the subject of the piece) that this has somehow led to a neutered military situation of which the present Russian losses are proof. They are no proof, and the situation is more dangerous and ambiguous than ever, partially as a result of the ongoing neutering of one of the three important millitaries in the world at the hands of the most powerful alliance. Wish that it were not so, but this destabilizes what had up until now been a grouping that was mostly driven by profit.
But Libya was not in jest.
We didn't seek to conquer it, occupy it, or annex it. We did seek to support a popular uprising against a vicious dictator [edit: Something that we've unfortunately over-promised and failed to deliver on too many times, e.g. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Kurdistan, Hmong people, any war where the Pentagon seizes on a "third way"], but we did that based on a doctrine that security for ourselves needed democracy abroad, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. Let me make the alternative case for a second: Helping democratic movements in the ME/NA was a misguided proposition, as obviously the region has zero history of popular governance and the only actual alternative to authoritarian rule there on the ground is, and has always been, hardcore 7th century Islamism which is among other uglinesses and human rights abuses, deeply unfriendly to us. And therefore it was a fool's errand to overthrow any dictator in the ME, because they were the ones keeping the street quiet.
Okay, now that I've made that case, here's the case for helping overturn Qaddafi and try for Libyan democracy: He was murdering his own people. He had done, and he would do it again. And given the climate, his state would become again a breeding ground for terrorism as it had been in the 70s and 80s.
Personally, I think it was stupid, but I don't think it was wrong in the sense that Russia invading Ukraine was wrong - precisely because I don't think propping up a dictatorship is morally valid, the way Russia was propping up Ukraine before 2014 and the way it still does in Belarus and all the former Soviet states.
What I'm saying is that the moral decisions are frequently poor strategic decisions, and they rarely work in concert, but the failure of one doesn't nullify the other; nor do our strategic failures provide justification for the moral failures of others. If something is wrong then replicating it would also be wrong, no?
