THE JANUARY 2014 AL QAEDA TAKEOVER of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the scenes of some of the bitterest fighting between American and insurgent forces only a few years earlier, has prompted numerous questions along the lines of “Who lost Iraq?” and “Was the intervention in Iraq generally, and in these towns in particular, all in vain?” Of course, with hindsight, more and more Americans have come to the conclusion that the answer to the latter question is “yes.” It is always easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, and Washington has no shortage of those who look brilliant when they start looking backward.

At the time, however, the case for intervention, backed by intelligence that many policy makers took at face value (whether they should have done so is still another issue) was far stronger than it appears today. Indeed, there are still those who firmly believe, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, that, as one analyst has put it, “whatever was gained came at horrendous cost. But Iraq is changed, and in many ways for the better. So not all is lost.” Perhaps.

Nevertheless, the reemergence of a radical Sunni threat to the Shia-led Iraqi state raises a much more fundamental issue that goes well beyond the case of Iraq itself. When the United States invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power, its leaders had not taken into account the implications of occupying a state that was artificial from birth. Washington’s objective—to transform the Iraqi dictatorship into a force for peace and moderation in the Middle East, and to do so by promoting good governance in Baghdad—presupposed that good governance was even possible in a state whose citizens did not want to live alongside one another, unless they were forced to do so. Did the United States and the international coalition that supported it fool themselves? More to the point, should foreign nations, and America in particular, intervene with land forces in the Middle East—or, indeed, elsewhere in Asia, or in Africa—to preserve or create stability and good governance in states that are inherently artificial?

IT IS WORTH LOOKING AGAIN at both Iraq itself and its neighbors in the Middle East before considering the wider aspects of this question. In the aftermath of World War I, Britain inherited the three former Turkish provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, which were combined under a League of Nations mandate into a single unit called Mesopotamia. The mandate took no account of the different ethnic and religious groups in the new entity, despite the Kurds’ effort to gain their own independent state. Britain established a puppet government under the rule of King Faisal I, son of the sherif of Mecca. Faisal, a Sunni Muslim, surrounded himself with a clique of Sunni advisers who suppressed an increasingly hostile population (especially the Shia and Assyrians) with the aid of British military force. Britain, financially exhausted and frustrated by its inability to foster good governance in the League’s artificial creation, finally persuaded the League to recognize Iraqi independence in 1932, though London’s promises of self-determination had not been fulfilled.

The American experience seven decades later was virtually identical. Only the names of the actors had changed. The country was still led by a corrupt king, this time a secular one. Minorities were brutally suppressed. America—and indeed Britain as well—intervened with the intent of providing leadership and promoting good governance. All it did, however, was to replace one dictator with another and brutal minority rule with brutal majority rule.

The history of a large part of the rest of the Middle East since World War I is not much different. Whether one examines the recent history of Libya or Yemen or Syria or Lebanon or Sudan or even Egypt, one finds patterns roughly similar to that of Iraq. In most cases, Ottoman rule was followed by colonial domination, usually with a puppet monarch, over territories that did not match ethnic boundaries. In virtually all cases, ethnic groups engaged each other in civil strife that at times led to outright civil war. Kings were replaced by strongmen. Strongmen were overthrown in coups, usually to be replaced by new ones. Foreign interventions made little difference.

Libya, once an Italian possession, and Yemen, part of which was under British control, both were artificial combinations of territories with vastly differing ethnic populations. Both were initially led by kings. Both suffered from civil wars and currently continue to do so. Western and Arab states have intervened in both, resulting in chaos in Libya and ongoing instability in Yemen.

Like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon were both created in the aftermath of World War I, initially the products of the 1916 Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement and subsequently French mandates under the League of Nations. Both states were completely artificial, consisting of a combination of previously Ottoman provinces that had hewed more closely, though hardly exactly, to the ethnic and religious populations that resided in them. Syria, like Iraq (and Yemen), was initially ruled by a king—the very same Faisal I, who, upon failing to consolidate power in Damascus, shifted his attention to Iraq. Syria then came under the rule of a succession of unstable governments, with coups virtually the norm, until the rise of General Hafez al-Assad, the son of a sheikh of the minority Alawi sect, who had advocated a string of minority enclaves—including a Jewish one—along the Mediterranean Sea as a bulwark against Sunni domination. From his base as general secretary of the ruling Baath Party, Assad became the country’s strongman after its defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, successively serving as prime minister and then, after a successful coup, president for the remainder of his life. His far less capable but equally ruthless son, Bashar, now rules, and with the benefit of support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah shows no sign of departing anytime soon.

Lebanon, which emerged from the consolidation of five previously Ottoman provinces, never had a king once the Ottomans departed, but was every bit as unstable as Syria. It had been plagued by civil strife during the period of Ottoman rule, and was wracked by civil wars afterward as well, the most recent being the fifteen-year civil war that began in 1975. It has also been the victim of Syrian, Israeli and American interventions, as well as of rival warlords and militias, with a virtually independent southern region under the control of Hezbollah. It currently is once again on the verge of civil war, as the Syrian civil war continues to spill over into its territory, and tensions between Hezbollah and Lebanon’s other religious groups—the Sunnis, Druze and Christians—which were never far below the surface, continue to heat up once again.

Sudan, once an Ottoman domain, later was conquered by Egypt and subsequently became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, though by then Egypt was itself under British control. In the aftermath of the 1952 Egyptian revolution, Sudan achieved independence in 1956. Within two years, however, it suffered from the first of several coups. With two brief intervals, it has been under continuous military rule since 1969. From its inception as an Egyptian conquest, the country artificially incorporated both an Arab North and a black, animist South. Civil war between the two racial groups first broke out virtually at the same time as the Anglo-Egyptian condominium ended in 1955, just as independence was about to be proclaimed. A second civil war began in 1983, and only ended when the Arab North was forced to grant independence to its black African southern region in 2011. South Sudan is now itself being torn by civil strife, with the Arab North now attempting to mediate the dispute between Sudan’s two main rival groupings, though several others are also at war with the central government.

Although ethnically (but not religiously) homogeneous, Egypt’s modern history also reflects the pattern of Ottoman rule, beginning with colonial domination and a monarchy, followed by military rule and punctuated throughout by unrest and revolutions. The country remained under Ottoman rule until 1882, when it became a de facto part of the British Empire, though ruled through a succession of puppet kings. The 1952 revolution brought the country under military rule, which persisted in fact if not in form until the 2011 revolution, and subsequently returned after a year in which the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood controlled the government.

It is arguable that even several of the Middle East’s monarchies—which have been relatively stable, at least in the sense that none has been overthrown recently—are in some ways as precarious and artificial as those states ruled by the generals. Jordan, initially an Ottoman possession, was a British creation, carved out of what had been mandatory Palestine in 1921 and established as a separate British mandate the following year. It has suffered from varying degrees of unrest virtually throughout its existence, with the most marked examples being the assassination of its first king, Abdullah I, in 1951, various assassination attempts against his son, King Hussein, and the Palestinian insurrection beginning in 1970 known as Black September. Saudi Arabia was born out of warfare; it came into being when King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud conquered the Hejaz in 1925 after previously conquering the Nejd. The country, initially part of the Ottoman Empire, was formally unified and given its current name in 1932.

Oman and Bahrain likewise have suffered from civil strife. Though never under Ottoman control, but for decades under British influence, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos had to defeat a major rebellion in the country’s Dhofar region. Likewise, Bahrain’s minority Sunni leaders have come under tremendous pressure from the state’s Shia majority, and faced virtual open rebellion in 2012–2013. Nevertheless, none of these states has collapsed into chaos, in part because traditional rulers, as opposed to strongmen, command (and often buy) more loyalty among their naturally conservative populations, and in part because other regional Muslim states are prepared to spring to their assistance. Most notably, Iran provided forces (as did Britain) to help Sultan Qaboos quash the Dhofar rebellion, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates dispatched forces to come to the aid of the al-Khalifa regime in Bahrain. It is one thing for a Muslim state to come to the aid of a beleaguered fellow Muslim regime. It is quite another if a Western state does so, especially in large numbers. This was not the case with British support for the sultan of Oman, which was limited to its small but highly effective Special Air Service units.

THE MIDDLE EAST IS HARDLY UNIQUE as a venue for artificial states drawn by European bureaucrats that are at best unstable and at worst collapsing entirely. Much of Central Africa reflects a similar history, with similar results. Instability, dictatorship and outright warfare have predominated both in what was once French West Africa and in the former Belgian colonies along the Great Lakes and the Congo River virtually since France and Belgium departed Africa at the beginning of the 1960s. Both European countries, and especially France, have intervened on the continent since granting independence to their former colonies; the French intervention in Mali last year was only the most recent of numerous such interventions.

For decades, Washington recognized that it was wiser to stand back and merely assist the Europeans who sought to stabilize their former African colonies. This was the case with France’s numerous interventions in Chad, Britain’s intervention in Sierra Leone in the 1990s and NATO’s actions in Libya in 2011 (though in the Libyan case American military involvement was far more significant than was publicly acknowledged). Elsewhere, however, Washington has often attempted regime change by inserting troops on the ground, yielding mixed results over the long term.

America’s 1993 intervention in Somalia’s civil war did not prevent that state from falling apart. Nor is this all. Multiple interventions in Haiti, including one in the early 1990s, have yet to yield stable and viable governance of that impoverished state. The 2003 invasion of Iraq has not been a success. Afghanistan may yet prove to be a failure as well, unless one may term achieving the objective of troop withdrawal by the end of 2014 a “success,” regardless of its consequences for the future of that state. But this would be tantamount to a student declaring to his parents that he has succeeded on a test by fleeing the examination room before it concluded.

Where Washington has successfully intervened, it has almost invariably been because the venue was in its own Western Hemispheric backyard, with its more familiar culture and shorter logistics lines. Moreover, with the notable exception of its support for the contras during the 1980s, the United States has tended to focus on providing arms, training and occasional aerial support to governments under pressure, rather than supporting opposition groups seeking to overthrow the government. In most cases, where it did insert general-purpose forces, they would quickly depart the scene of their operations. Where American forces remained in a country for a considerable length of time, as in El Salvador or Colombia, they played a supporting role, providing training and aerial intelligence for local troops rather than leading operations against insurgents. Finally, the United States has generally refrained from seeking to overhaul Latin American societies and governments, partly because, at least nominally, they share similar roots in a European-based political culture.

Washington also intervened successfully in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. But both in the case of the Bosnian civil war and that of the fight for Kosovo’s independence, American involvement in combat operations did not include the insertion of land forces. Rather, America employed its overwhelming airpower in both Bosnia, a state roughly the size of West Virginia, and Kosovo, which has a smaller area than Connecticut. Even then, only when cease-fires were negotiated did the United States commit its forces to larger, multinational units. Unlike in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, American forces did not constitute the majority of those units, nor did large numbers of American land forces remain in theater for an extended period. Finally, the United States did not take the leading role in promoting good governance, much less nation building, in either Bosnia or Kosovo; that daunting task was left to the Europeans.

IT IS PAST TIME FOR WASHINGTON to recognize a fundamental truth, which is that it cannot mold other states in its own image and that its attempts to do so through force are actually counterproductive. American greatness is not enhanced by engaging abroad willy-nilly. Instead, it is undermined. Indeed, if America is truly exceptional, then, by definition, other states cannot be made into knockoff Americas. It is ironic that President Barack Obama seems less inclined to intervene in other states than those for whom exceptionalism is an article of faith. His motivations may be entirely misplaced—he appears committed to avoiding entangling foreign commitments that will undermine his ability to pursue his primary objective of “nation building at home”—but his instincts regarding intervention are very much on the mark.

America’s attempts at nation building have rarely succeeded. Its greatest successes have been in countries with fairly homogenous populations—Germany, Japan and Korea—and in which it has stationed troops for more than half a century. The states that are the primary sources of instability today, and that tempt some policy makers on the right and the left to intervene in order to “set things right,” are unstable precisely because they are not homogenous. Forcing nationalities with ancient communal hatreds to live in harmony is a difficult mission at the best of times. For American forces, whose knowledge of foreign—particularly non-European—cultures and languages is for the most part rudimentary at best and whose sense of history is measured in decades rather than centuries, such a mission is virtually doomed to failure from the start.

In addition, in the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghan wars, few Americans would be willing to commit troops to unstable or failing states for as much as a decade, or even longer. Yet development experts argue that only in such extended time frames can nation building succeed. Indeed, it is remarkable that the American public was willing to tolerate both of those lengthy conflicts; the country’s previous two wars, in Kuwait and the Balkans, both involved the relatively brief commitment of American forces. Moreover, public pressure led to the withdrawal from Somalia in March 1994, less than eighteen months after the initial humanitarian intervention was launched in December 1992.

A case might have been made in the early part of the past decade for supporting America’s intervention in Afghanistan and its subsequent efforts to undertake nation building in that country, despite the length of time that such activity was expected to require. After all, the American intervention in 2001 was highly popular, since it removed the hated Taliban regime. Refugees came streaming back to Afghanistan from Pakistan in particular. Small businesses began to sprout throughout the country. Al Qaeda was on the run, as was the Taliban.

Moreover, despite its ethnic diversity, Afghanistan has a long history of nation-statehood. Its people have a strong sense of national identity. It has been termed the “graveyard of empires,” for good reason—its people have historically found ways to defeat invading superpowers, whether they were the ancient Greeks of Alexander, the armies of the British Empire or those of the Soviet Union. Building upon a legacy of governance, though it involved a delicate balance between a relatively weak central government and powerful provincial leaders, was nevertheless a potentially feasible task.

However, Washington essentially turned away from Afghanistan to prosecute its war with Saddam Hussein. Until America came to realize the extent to which it had withheld the military, civilian and financial resources required to help rebuild (not build) Afghanistan, the Taliban was able to regroup and exploit the corruption that was endemic throughout the country.

Nevertheless, America’s second major intervention in Afghanistan as the Iraq War began to wane might have been successful. It still might be. It has been seriously hampered, however, by the administration’s premature signal that it planned to withdraw the bulk of American forces in 2014, come what may. That announcement vitiated the effectiveness of the surge, which was announced in December 2009. It provided the Taliban, other insurgent groups, Afghanistan’s neighbors and the Afghan government a timetable for planning for dealing with an Afghanistan that lacked a significant American presence. As a result, the American intervention in Afghanistan is unlikely to realize U.S. objectives, despite the loss in combat of thousands of American lives and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars.

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.