Whatever happened to using military force as a last resort?

Admiral Mullen, retiring chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, photo courtesy of wn.com.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius raises an interesting question in his commentary on the retirement of Admiral Mullen, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ignatius begins:

WASHINGTON -- Talking to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his final week in the job, I found myself wondering if we are entering a "post-military" age, when our top officers understand that the biggest problems can't be solved with military power.

Time and again, versions of this theme surfaced in my conversation with Mullen. He has been, by widespread assessment, a very effective chair who restored the position to prominence in national security decision-making. But the problems he's leaving unresolved lie at the periphery of the military space, where conventional weapons can't reach.

Ignatius' column highlights the execution of bin Laden:

Military officers are by nature problem-solvers who like to fix things, or shoot them, or get around them some other way. So what brings a smile to Mullen's face, right off, is the feat of sheer military prowess in the May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Mullen remembers the mess that was Desert One in 1980 -- helicopters that didn't work, aircraft that crashed, shortage of parts, bad training. Watching that fiasco, he recalls, "I sensed that we were in trouble as a military."

And Ignatius concludes:

As Mullen prepares to leave Friday, the federal government is shuddering with the politics of paralysis. So I ask him, as a last question, about the political divisions he has tried to bridge as a nonpartisan chair. He muses that it's odd to be lecturing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about governance when "there's a lot of things we don't get right" at home.

What America needs, he says finally, is the same requirement that makes the military work, which is "accountability for outcomes." A political system that works -- whether it's in Islamabad or Kabul or Washington -- is one that takes responsibility for solving the problems that do not yield to force of arms. 

Sane people continue to be troubled by the execution of bin Laden without giving due consideration to taking him prisoner. And mention of the use of Predator drones in Pakistan and elsewhere is noticeably absent from Ignatius’ column.  But it’s that final sentence that I find most disturbing, even frightening: “A political system that works -- whether it's in Islamabad or Kabul or Washington -- is one that takes responsibility for solving the problems that do not yield to force of arms.”

It sounds as if the political system that works, according to Admiral Mullen, is one that responds first with armed might and if that doesn’t solve the problem, then try other approaches; hopefully, that's not what the admiral meant. If so, it would contradict Ignatius' opening comment regarding a "post-military age."  

In any case, we've had just cause to wonder more than once in recent years as to whatever happened to using military force as a last resort?