Since 1945, the United States has been a world superpower, and since 1989, it has been the only superpower. Yet many people, both American and otherwise, are uncomfortable with this power. Many question why America has the right or the responsibility to act as the world’s police force, especially in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is that when it comes to policing the world, somebody has to do it, and the United States is the only country up to the task. The world needs a Hobbesian leviathan for the same reason that countries need one: life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, brutish, and short. In the absence of a powerful hegemon capable of imposing order on the rest of the world, the international arena is like Somalia on a global scale.
In the multipolar sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, great power war was almost constant. Europe saw the Thirty Years’ War, the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars. It was only after the British Empire became the world’s dominant power that some semblance of order arrived; after Britain’s victory over Napoleon in 1815 there was not another great power war in Europe until the Crimean War in 1853. After the British Empire declined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two world wars broke out and approximately 100 million people were killed. Rising out of the ashes of World War II like a phoenix, the United States took up the mantle that previously belonged to Great Britain. Since then, the world has seen an unprecedented level of peace and stability. War between powerful nations is virtually nonexistent.
The reason hegemons like the United States maintain peace between great powers is two-fold. First, hegemons deter their rivals, essentially scaring them away from aggression. If anyone were to attack a nation with American military bases or a mutual defense treaty with the United States, they would incur the full wrath of the United States and find themselves in a fight they could not win. Accordingly, North Korea has not attacked the South in over 60 years, China hasn’t attacked Taiwan, and the Soviet Union never invaded Western Europe. Second, hegemons provide a security umbrella to their allies so they don’t have to build up their own militaries. This allows countries to avoid the security dilemma, in which countries attempt to improve security by building up their military capabilities, only to have their neighbors reciprocate. An example of this security dilemma is the lead up to World War I, where Germany’s naval buildup sparked an arms race that precipitated war between Germany and Great Britain. Currently, many historically bellicose nations like Japan and Germany spend only 1 percent of their GDP on defense, which in turn avoids provoking their neighbors. Thus, America’s role as the world policeman is not just to scare its enemies but also to calm its friends. If the United States were to assume an isolationist stance, the consequences would be disastrous. The world would be just as unstable as it was in the early twentieth century, but with far more deadly weaponry. The great power wars of the twentieth century killed 100 million people with bombs and bullets, a great power war in the twenty-first century could be fought with nuclear weapons and cost hundreds of millions, or even billions, of lives. To give an example, one must imagine what would happen in East Asia in the aftermath of an American retreat. Without the American defense umbrella, Japan would remilitarize to counter China’s growing power. Given China’s history of being invaded by Japan, the Chinese would likely respond by accelerating their own military buildup. Since China has a sizeable nuclear arsenal, Japan would probably build its own nuclear weapons, which it could easily do since it has had nuclear energy for decades. East Asia would resemble Europe in 1914 and the tension could easily lead to a devastating war. The Second Sino-Japanese War killed 20 million people; a Third Sino-Japanese War would be unthinkable.
The thought that the United States keeps the peace is laughable to some. In the past decade the United States has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, bombed Libya and Syria, and launched drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. While the wars in recent years have been tragic, they pale in comparison to great-power conflict. 5 years of American drone strikes have killed 2,400 people while a single air raid in World War II could kill 10 times as many. At the end of the day, American power isn’t perfect but it beats the alternative. In the same way that it would be illogical to abolish the police in the wake of Ferguson, Iraq does not invalidate the United States’ role as global leviathan.
There are those who argue for a sort of collective security where no one country polices the world but everyone chips in. The problem with this strategy is that some countries might decide to go rogue and destabilize world order. In the early 1900s, the British found the job of policing the Far East too difficult and outsourced it to the Japanese. Rather than preserve stability, the Japanese ended up becoming belligerent and expansionist, going to war with China in th 1930s, and then Britain itself in 1941. A collective security arrangement would be a global militia rather than a police force.
Others question why it is the United States’ responsibility to police the world in the first place. The answer is that it is vital to our interest. The American economy is heavily dependent on trade, and this trade would not be possible without world order. Transporting goods through warzones is difficult, and dead people aren’t very productive. Global trade peaked in the late 1800s and early 1900s, only to collapse after the decline of the British Empire. Trade only picked up again after the rise of the United States. If the U.S. Navy were to stop protecting the sea-lanes, trade would once more collapse and the U.S. economy would go with it. The United States spends over $500 billion every year to maintain its overseas military capabilities but receives $2.3 trillion in exports in return (not to mention the added economic benefit of being able to import cheap goods).
America makes mistakes. U.S. foreign policy can be aggressive, naïve, or just plain stupid. But at the end of the day, the world is better off with the United States than it is without it. In the same way that we are glad to have the police around in spite of police brutality incidents, the world should accept United States hegemony. A world without the United States would be far more violent and poor. To quote Ian Morris of Stanford University, “if you are a serious pacifist you should support American power at all times.”