Pax Americana

The United States isn’t the problem. The problem is there is no alternative to the United States. Much of the world sees us as both cause and solution to every conceivable malady. We see ourselves in that light. If North Koreans develop nuclear weapons and threaten peace in the Western Pacific, America has failed and should do something. We should engage in unilateral talks. We should enlist allies. We should blockade. We should not. It is never what the world or North Korea’s neighbors should or should not do. It’s always what America should do. We look around for someone to help shoulder the burden. There is no one. That is our fault too.

Last year The Atlantic sponsored a panel discussion on worst case events in Korea. How would the United States manage a new invasion of the north? (There was no suggestion the last invasion may have ended prematurely.) They assembled experts with an impressive array of military, intelligence, and foreign policy credentials. There were liberals and conservatives from democratic and republican administrations. There was one woman. All were Americans. The panel discussed the presidential decision making process; what advice he would get from national security advisors, what information would be available and how reliable it would be, what forces would be at his disposal and how they should be deployed, what issues he would confront in defeating and occupying North Korea. Not one panelist envisioned more than a cursory role for South Korea, China, Japan, or Russia. It would be an American show.

And so it goes. The world watches as Europe negotiates with Iran over nuclear arms and threatens to refer them to the UN, but it is an empty threat. Iran agrees to more talks, demurs, delays and makes threats of its own. No one really expects serious action unless it is from Americans, or maybe Israelis by proxy. It’s always the same. Whether it is Somalia, Sudan, Serbia, Palestine, Lebanon, Cuba, Venezuela, or Pakistan; whenever a rogue regime or petty warlord threatens the question is what will Americans do? Whatever we do will be wrong.

Americans will tire of this, just as we are tiring in Iraq. We could, if we wished, quash any and all of these disturbances; but America is not Rome. We use force with restraint. We attempt to minimize “collateral damage.” We try to obtain international consensus when no one else is willing to do more than criticize. We adopt rules of engagement that put American troops at undue risk. This cannot go on. I have a growing sense that Americans may be ready to withdraw from its role as the world’s only law enforcement agency.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s time for Europeans to wean themselves of an American security umbrella, for China to get used to the idea of an East Asia bristling with nuclear arms, for Arabs to steel themselves for the onslaught of the next Saddam Hussein, or the next Taliban, with no Great Satan on the horizon to protect them.

What I really think is that the next American president will have some truly momentous decisions to make. I suspect energy independence will be at the top of the list. So will national security and it will be focused on internal security. Over the next twenty years the world will have to come to grips with how it will govern itself. It will take a crisis of historic proportions to bring it about. America will not do it alone and Americans will not have a solution imposed on them.