Elements of the left and right are united: The United States should not be the world’s policeman. Whether it be Ukraine, the Middle East or China, it’s not our business to get involved.
For the progressive left, the refrain is the same as it’s been since at least the 1960s: Who are we to judge? Slandering our country as a racist hellhole, they promote at best a moral equivalency between the United States and Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. Or they go further, and consider the governments of Venezuela, China and Cuba superior because they pursue socialism.
A rising force on the right is the They Aren’t Worth It Doctrine, or, as former President Donald Trump would put it, we’re suckers. Why defend Ukraine? It’s corrupt. Why back Germany? It’s ungrateful. Why have troops in South Korea? It can protect itself. More darkly, autocrats are praised as strong, efficient and “genius.”
Part of this is a backlash to the spectacularly failed promises that Iraq and Afghanistan could be transformed into democracies.
There’s also the naive fallacy, shared by both sides, that America can withdraw from the international stage, and “fix the problems at home” with all the money we’d save.
But the United States should not slink away from its place as the world’s superpower. It should not retire in shame, or throw up its hands in frustration, and leave a vacuum for the tyrannical.
Pax Americana is worth saving.
Contra the hashtags of The Squad, the United States is the most pluralistic, diverse nation state in history. Its people enjoy freedom of expression, freedom of existence, more than those under China’s Orwellian state, Russia’s soft totalitarianism or the theocracies of the Middle East. Why is the United States the No. 1 destination of immigrants and refugees worldwide? The American Dream is still alive.
Progressives think some European states are superior for their social policies, but their democracies flourished under an umbrella of American protection and support.
And what did we ask for in exchange? Not the toll of empires past, not land, not tribute. We wanted free trade and an end to war.
We are, of course, not nirvana. But the US struggles openly, in debate and at the voting booth, with political and social relations. We change. Do our critics even consider that the reason you don’t hear as much dissent in other nations is that those voices are stifled?
But all that is threatened if we retreat into fortress America. China expects obedience, not allies. Russia wants power, not peace. There will be more war, more conquering, more torture and suffering.
We are in the most peaceful period of recorded time, and it’s because of the post-World War II alliances forged by the West. How many regional conflicts were kept in check by NATO? How many dictators discouraged? And in the global marketplace this fostered, the quality of life rose for all. To take just one benchmark: 36% of humanity lived in extreme poverty in 1990. Today, it’s fallen to 9%, per the World Bank.
Ukraine is not a “border dispute”; it’s Putin trying to expand Russian energy influence over the West and restore the Czarist empire. China conquering Taiwan would secure a dominance in production and trade. Both aim to break the world order. We can pump all the oil we want domestically, we can support American industry, but do we really think we’ll enjoy the same prosperity if the rest of the world is dependent on their whims?
We must have enough pride in this nation to understand that the non-interventionist right and the blame-America left are wrong. The world needs us. Let us be there for them.