It Simply Does Not Work Without the Sheriff

When it comes to the crunch, this will not be a particularly pleasant world to live in if the U.S. fails to defend the world from evil monsters.

Barack Obama, the tragic Hamlet of the White House, announced this week that the U.S. is not “the world’s police force.” This would be welcome news for all those individuals who still have not forgiven the U.S. for releasing us from National Socialism. It will also have pleased those who have not yet forgiven the U.S. for saving Western Europe from becoming a Communist People’s Republic after 1945 with its military power. Also, it will have satisfied all those individuals whose naive anti-Americanism barely camouflages the anti-Semitism that hides behind it.

For all of those committed to the values of the Western world, Obama’s denial of the role of his homeland as “the world’s police force” represents a dangerous threat. This is because if we consider all the serious mistakes that it has committed over the last few decades, when the going gets tough, the U.S. is the only nation able and willing to sufficiently defend these Western values.

For all of America’s shortcomings, a world without the “world’s police force” would clearly become an inferior and more dangerous world. If the U.S. were to retire from its role as the “world’s police force,” who would deal with Iran’s intention to eliminate Israel? Who would cope with a North Korean dictator who intends to send nuclear missiles to Sudan? Furthermore, who would restrain any other villains that arise in the future? Whoever believes that the EU could fulfill this role in any way may just as well ask the baby Jesus to provide security. This continent demonstrated its weakness most impressively through its inability to bring an end to several hundred thousand murders in the Balkans. The same applies to the United Nations, albeit for different reasons.

Those individuals who want the U.S. to go into early retirement as “the global sheriff” support the implication that other powerful nations, such as Russia or China, could push themselves forward into the void that the U.S. leaves behind. For those individuals who are concerned with a Western set of values, this would not be a very favorable option. On closer inspection, that “multipolar world,” which brought about America’s return to its current hegemony, is a less democratic, constitutional and liberal world. It is simply an undesirable world.

The risk that this will become the reality is considerable. Since their formation, with the exception of the “short 20th century” — as it was described by the late British historian Eric Hobsbawm — the U.S. has been somewhat isolationist. In 1821, U.S. President John Quincy Adams defined this national inclination with the following statement, “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Almost 200 years later, having been weakened by tremendous debts and a weak president, many have commented that the U.S. could return to this behavior in order to support its Western values, but that would be to the detriment of all citizens throughout the world.