TO ARGUE THAT AMERICA SHOULD BE far more cautious about intervening abroad is not to say that it should never intervene, however. Quite the contrary. America’s willingness to intervene in support of a beleaguered ally is a sine qua non for maintaining its alliances. Without a credible willingness to do so, the United States will find that it has no allies. Indeed, worldwide uneasiness with current American policy is not a result of the fact that America is too eager to intervene, but rather that it seems too eager to minimize the demands of its commitments on its defense resources. The release of the defense budget for 2015 has only reinforced that sense of unease about the seriousness of America’s international commitments.

In any event, it is one thing to intervene with military force to defeat aggression against an ally or a friendly state, such as Kuwait in 1990. It is quite another to insert military forces either to topple an unfriendly but nonthreatening regime, such as Iraq in 2003, or to take sides in a civil war that has no direct impact on American national security as is the case with Syria today and may well be the case in Ukraine as well. Likewise, it is one thing to attack a putative aggressor from the air or sea, as was the case with Libya in 1986 and again a quarter century later; it is another to deploy troops on the ground. It is the latter that provokes the greatest outrage among the largest number of people in the targeted country, in part because it is so much easier to insert troops into a country than to withdraw them.

Put simply, while advocates of nation building argue that most people want to live in a free society, it is even more the case that most people don’t want foreigners telling them how to live, especially if those foreigners wear uniforms and carry guns down their streets and alleys, kicking down the doors to their homes in the middle of the night.

It is easy in retrospect to regret the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, especially since it is arguable that Iraq is hardly free today. Still, the case for intervention at that time looked far more compelling than it does today. Nevertheless, it is undeniable (except for the most partisan administration supporters whose job it is to make silk purses out of sow’s ears) that America’s standing in the Middle East is nothing short of a disaster. Iraq is falling apart. So is Syria. Libya and South Sudan require little comment. Somalia is a failed state. Lebanon, ever fragile, may once again revert to civil war. Egypt has gone through multiple convulsions. American intervention in Iraq was not the sole or proximate cause of all these developments, but it surely was a contributing factor in many of them. Another American intervention in the region would only make matters worse.

Africa, with its own collection of artificial states, several of which are either failing or on the verge of failing, is hardly a better venue for American intervention. It is true that the United States has become more actively involved militarily on that continent, particularly operating from its base in Djibouti, without suffering the kind of blowback it has received in the Middle East. Indeed, Africa is one of the few places worldwide where America remains highly popular. That may be the case, however, because the focus of American efforts is on counterterrorism operations that involve a relatively small number of boots on the ground. For the most part, Washington continues to pursue its traditional, and sensible, policy of letting others, whether Europeans or Africans themselves, take the lead in conducting both combat and stabilization operations.

At issue, therefore, is whether the United States should continue to pursue an activist combat role, followed by exercises in nation building, in Asia in general and in the Middle East in particular. Whatever one’s view of whether America should or should not have invaded Iraq in 2003, there is no excuse for not learning the lesson of Iraq that should by now be clear to all. It is a lesson first enunciated in a different Asian context by General Douglas MacArthur and ignored ever since: the United States should not become enmeshed in a land war in Asia. What made sense in the late 1940s makes sense in the contemporary Middle East for the same reason: ancient peoples, with ancient hatreds, will not pay much heed to well-intentioned Americans who come to tell them what to do with their polities, and sadly, all too often, they will try to kill them.

Dov S. Zakheim was the under secretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004. He is vice chairman of the Center for the National Interest and serves on the Advisory Council of The National Interest.