Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forget
It was not made with the mountains; it is not one with the deep.
Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep.
—Rudyard Kipling, The Islanders
On May 8, 2003, I had a very early breakfast with President Bush at the White House. We had had problems finding time for a meeting, but we both thought it was of utmost importance to meet. In March, the American-led international coalition had occupied Iraq. Denmark supported this mission, and after the initial successful military operation we had to prepare for the restoration of Iraqi society. There was a lot to discuss, but our schedulers gave up trying to squeeze in a meeting. However, the president was an early bird, so he personally intervened and suggested a breakfast meeting at 7:10 a.m, during which we could go for a run together. I am an early starter and a keen runner as well, and we had already agreed to go running together on an official visit he had planned to Denmark, so I willingly accepted.
My entry into the White House that morning was memorable. The security procedures were at a minimum; I guess they reasoned that only a very trustworthy person would meet the president that early in the morning. The cleaning was still going on, so, watched by astonished cleaners, I fought my way over vacuum cleaners, wires, and hoses and ended up in a very small room. The breakfast took place in the president’s private dining room in the West Wing, behind the Oval Office. The room is so small that there is space for only four people at the table.
Only two people were there: President Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. I was accompanied by the Danish ambassador to the United States, Ulrik Federspiel. After a warm welcome we got seated, and the president asked what we would like for breakfast. The selection was vast: seasonal fruit, muffins, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, orange juice, water, and coffee. Before we could answer, the president himself said, “Actually, I would like cornflakes,” and he asked a waiter to go and pick up a selection of cornflakes from his private kitchen.
In the meantime, the president expressed regrets that we had to cancel our run, but in fact he couldn’t go jogging any longer because of a torn ligament. Not only that, he doubted that he would be able to resume jogging. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, and added, “I had charted a three-mile track at home and trained for our planned run.”
Now the waiter returned with three different boxes of cornflakes. We agreed to try all of them, and the president himself readily served the cereals, accompanied by recommendations of the different kinds.
In this intimate setting we had an extremely open and frank discussion about the international situation. Typically for Bush, he used that occasion to inquire about my assessment of European politics and European political leaders. He was furious with President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, who had split Europe and the transatlantic alliance. He felt betrayed by Schröder, who had “lied in the Oval Office,” and Chirac was simply anti-American: He had “bullied the Eastern Europeans” and tried to undermine the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Though President Putin of Russia had joined Chirac and Schröder in a coalition against the Iraq War, George Bush was much more forgiving in his assessment of the Russian president. Putin had “miscalculated”—he was still up against domestic bureaucracy, corruption, and an old-fashioned military establishment. But the United States had a “strategic deal” with Russia, and the United States would help Russia.
It was enormously valuable to be able to talk together openly, to discuss our perceptions of the global situation and our plans for how to react to it. But for me, the main value of the meeting was that it confirmed to me President Bush’s determination, and his country’s ability, to act as the world’s policeman.
The need for a policeman was there in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; it was there a decade later, when he flouted the demands of the international community over his weapons program; it is still there today. The bleak truth is that there are regimes in the world that would like nothing better than to be able to break the rules of the international community and get away with it, and they will only stick with the rules if they know that transgressions will be punished. The world needs a policeman to make sure that the international rules that shaped our world—and our prosperity—are honored. And the only country with the strength and credibility to carry out that task is the United States.
As we have already seen, the United States occupies a unique, and uniquely privileged, geographic position in the world. When it comes to the global village, the United States is a big, rich house with a wall and a moat around it. As well as being a privilege, this position is also a temptation, because uniquely among the world’s leading powers, the United States can always choose not to get involved in foreign conflicts. Europe has all the troubles of North Africa, the Middle East, and Russia on its doorstep; China has neighbors North Korea and the South China Sea; Russia, as well as picking unnecessary and illegal fights with its neighbors, has to deal with the instability of Central Asia and the North Caucasus. These countries all live in more or less dangerous neighborhoods; the United States does not.
Throughout history, that privileged position has allowed America to swing between two opposing roles. At times, the United States has acted as the world’s policeman, the one that keeps order in the village and makes sure everyone else sticks to the rules. At other times, it has preferred to be its own gatekeeper, ignoring what was going on in the street outside unless it impacted directly on American security.
Ever since the Cold War, the pendulum has swung back and forth between the policeman and the gatekeeper, between advocates of early intervention (policeman) and isolation (gatekeeper). Right now, it is the gatekeeper instinct that dominates, but it is my firm belief that the next president will have to push the pendulum back the other way because the world is more secure, and the United States is safer, when America chooses to be the policeman early on and plays the role with conviction.
This chapter will therefore analyze the way the pendulum has swung back and forth since the end of the Cold War. It will examine the reasons why the pendulum has swung at specific times, and the effects that American action and inaction have had. And it will address the question of why the United States, and no other country, is suited to play the role of the world’s policeman.
The early 1990s were an unforgettable time in human history—a time of relief, and of belief. The Cold War had just ended, the threat of nuclear war had been lifted, dictatorships were turning almost overnight into democracies, and there was real hope that the world was about to become a better and more peaceful place.
President George H. W. Bush put that belief into words in his State of the Union address on January 16, 1991: “We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order—a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.”
But he was not speaking in abstract terms: He was referring to a very specific conflict. Five months earlier, in August 1990, the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, had sent a force of one hundred thousand Iraqi troops to invade their small but wealthy neighbor, Kuwait, claiming that it was historically Iraqi territory. The Iraqi troops subjected the people of Kuwait to unspeakable atrocities, systematically raping, pillaging, and plundering a tiny nation that posed no conceivable threat to Iraq.
It was a challenge to the international community, and to the concept of “the rule of law, not the law of the jungle,” and President Bush was determined not to let it pass. In his address to the nation, he underlined that his purpose was to protect a world order where “no nation will be permitted to brutally assault its neighbor.” He chose, in fact, to be the world’s policeman.
In that role, the United States led efforts to organize an international coalition that, working through the UN Security Council, passed United Nations resolutions demanding Iraq’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal. After the deadline for withdrawal passed, the coalition attacked Iraq by air. Within twenty-four hours, coalition forces controlled the skies, bombarding such strategic sites as Iraqi command and control facilities, Saddam Hussein’s palaces, power stations, intelligence and security facilities, oil refineries, arms factories, and Iraq’s missile facilities. Coalition aircraft subsequently targeted Iraqi troops in Kuwait. Comprising troops from thirty-four countries, including a number of Arab states, the coalition forces liberated Kuwait and forced the Iraqi forces to withdraw.
The First Gulf War was unprecedented in the use of high-technology and precision weapons, and losses on the Allied side were limited. Only the United States could have sent over half a million service members thousands of miles to carry out a precise military operation successfully in a matter of weeks; only the United States could have built such a broad international coalition so quickly. Had the United States refrained from taking action, Saddam Hussein would have succeeded in occupying a neighboring country, and this would have set a bad precedent and sent a dangerous message to unscrupulous dictators elsewhere in the world.
But the pendulum quickly swung back under the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose first foreign intervention ended in disaster. In 1993, the American military experienced a catastrophic failure of action in Somalia, where US troops were killed and dragged through the streets of the capital, Mogadishu. It was, at the time, the greatest loss of American soldiers in combat since the Vietnam War, and it appears to have traumatized the White House, especially as the losses occurred in an area that was of no vital interest to the United States. For the next two years, Clinton avoided intervention, preferring to act as the gatekeeper of American security rather than policeman of the world.
But the result was calamitous, both in Africa and in Europe. In Africa, 1994 saw one of the bloodiest events in the history of the continent: the Rwandan genocide. This pitted Hutu extremists in Rwanda’s political elite against the Tutsi minority population, whom they blamed for the country’s growing economic and social problems. In April 1994, a plane carrying the country’s Hutu president was shot down. In reaction, Hutu extremists started a bloodbath with the goal of destroying the entire Tutsi population. It is estimated that perhaps as many as three-quarters of the Tutsi population was slaughtered, and at the same time, thousands of Hutus were assassinated because they opposed the genocide and opposed the extremist groups that carried out the killings. Overall, up to a million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide.
All that while, America did nothing; indeed, according to Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide and now the US ambassador to the UN, the United States was not only passive, refraining from sending troops, but worked aggressively to block the authorization of UN reinforcements. Even as thousands of Rwandans were being butchered every day, US officials shunned the term “genocide” for fear of being obliged to act and, perhaps, risk US troops on the ground again.
Clinton subsequently declared that what he regrets most about his presidency is the lack of action to stop the genocide in Rwanda. In an interview with CNBC in March 2013, he said, “If we’d gone in sooner, I believe we could have saved at least a third of the lives that were lost. . . . It had an enduring impact on me.” By that count, hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been averted. The fact that they were not is a stain on Clinton’s presidency.
Yet it took another genocide to break the Clinton administration out of the gatekeeper mentality, this time in the Balkans. Here, the years 1991 to 1995 marked the disintegration of Yugoslavia under the pressure of ethnic conflict, economic issues, and the oppression of the government of Slobodan Milošević. The ensuing war lasted over three years. Initially, the Clinton administration considered the situation in the Balkans as a primarily European problem, best addressed by the then newborn European Union (formally created by the Maastricht Treaty in February 1992). However, European governments maintained a wait-and-see attitude. There was little European domestic support for armed intervention, while many Americans were reluctant to commit to a role in the Balkans, fearing a protracted occupation or guerrilla warfare. Over the next three years, the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina claimed around one hundred thousand lives and displaced millions from their homes as Europe witnessed the most horrific fighting on its territory since the end of World War II.
The defining tragedy of the Balkan wars was the Srebrenica genocide, in July 1995. Eight thousand Muslim Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, were killed by Bosnian Serb army units. The UN had declared Srebrenica a safe area under UN protection; however, the Dutch UN soldiers stationed there to maintain the safe area failed to prevent the town’s capture by the Serbs and the subsequent massacre. It was the worst crime committed on European soil since the time of Hitler and Stalin.
At last the United States swung into action. This was done through NATO, and through extensive diplomatic efforts, notably through the dispatch of the energetic American diplomat Richard Holbrooke to the region. In August 1995, galvanized into action by the US leadership, NATO executed an intense two-week series of attacks on Bosnian Serb military positions. The combination of NATO’s air campaign and Ambassador Holbrooke’s tireless diplomacy yielded a cease-fire by the end of September. Two more months of intensive negotiations led to the conclusion of the Dayton Accords, putting an end to the Bosnian war, in November 1995; and in December, the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) deployed into Bosnia to keep the fragile peace.
There are a number of lessons to be drawn from the genocides of 1994–95. The first is that it takes enormous time and effort to stir the United Nations into action. In Rwanda, the UN and Belgium, the former colonial power, had forces on the ground but no mandate to stop the killing. France, an ally of the Hutu government, sent a force to establish a safe zone but was accused of not doing enough to stop the slaughter in the area. The United States, according to Samantha Power, blocked attempts at action. By the time the international community agreed that something needed to be done, it was far too late.
The second lesson is that, even when the UN is involved, it is only as strong as its mandate. In the Balkans, that mandate was simply not strong enough. I well remember an incident in April 1994, when a Danish peacekeeping contingent got fed up with the UN’s passivity. A UN observation post had come under heavy artillery fire from the Serbs. While trying to relieve the observation post, a Danish tank squadron was ambushed and attacked with antitank missiles. The Danes requested air support, but almost unbelievably under the circumstances, their request was rejected. The Danish commander, Colonel Lars R. Moeller, then decided to act on his own initiative, returned fire, and destroyed several Serbian artillery pieces, an ammunition dump, and several bunkers. The Serb attacks ceased after this Danish counterattack. The Danish commander subsequently named the encounter Operation Hooligan Bashing. This incident was remarkable because it was one of the largest engagements that took place between the UN forces and the military units involved in the war in Bosnia. It showcased the weak UN rules of engagement and demonstrated the need for more robust UN mandates for peacekeeping operations.
But the Danish action was not enough to change the UN’s ways. The weakness of the UN led directly to the Srebrenica genocide, because the Bosniaks fled to the UN “safe haven” there, thinking that the UN troops would protect them. It was a fatal mistake. Speaking retrospectively, the later UN secretary-general Kofi Annan declared in 2005 that the UN had “made serious errors of judgment rooted in a philosophy of impartiality” in Bosnia, describing Srebrenica as a tragedy that would haunt the history of the UN forever.
The third lesson is that the United States is the only country capable of stirring the global community to decisive action. In that sense, the difference between Rwanda and Srebrenica is crucial. In Rwanda, as we have seen, the Clinton administration did everything it could to avoid taking action. By contrast, its reaction to the Srebrenica massacre was swift and decisive. Within days, Holbrooke was on the ground; within weeks, NATO planes were in the air; within months, a peace deal was on the table. None of that would have been possible without determined American leadership. The lessons of the genocide had been well learned.
Those lessons stayed with Clinton throughout his remaining time in office. The proof of that is in Kosovo, a province of Serbia with a majority Albanian population. In 1998–99, violence broke out between Albanians and local Serbs. President Milošević responded with great brutality and started a well-planned campaign of terror and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians. This campaign could best be described as one of “ethnic cleansing” intended to drive the Kosovar Albanians out of Kosovo, destroy the foundations of their society, and prevent them from returning.
Once more, the United States shook NATO into action. In March 1999, American aircraft led a NATO bombing campaign against the Serbian forces threatening Kosovo. At the launch of the operation, President Clinton made very clear that he had learned the lesson of history: “In dealing with aggression in the Balkans, hesitation is a license to kill. But action and resolve can stop armies and save lives.”
After seventy-seven days of air strikes, the Milošević regime was forced to accept a NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (Kosovo Force, or KFOR) and to accept the province being placed under UN administrative mandate while a permanent solution could be found. The search for a solution lasted almost a decade; eventually, in February 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized as an independent country by the great majority of Western states.
Today, there is relative peace and stability in the Balkans. The peacekeeping force in Bosnia is now managed by the European Union, and NATO’s Kosovo peacekeeping force has been reduced from fifty thousand troops to less than five thousand troops, reflecting the significantly improved security situation in the region. In one of my meetings with the Serbian president, Tomislav Nikolič, he acknowledged that NATO today stands as a guarantor of peace and stability and the security of all people in the Balkans, a true success story.
At the end of the day, it was because of American engagement and leadership that the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia were brought to an end—even if that leadership came late. The Europeans had neither the ability nor the will to do what was necessary. The UN was hamstrung by indecision, and Milošević’s forces were able to conduct a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing until the United States finally and belatedly decided to act.
Had President Clinton not decided to act as a policeman in the Balkans, Milošević and his brutal military commanders would have been able to continue their war crimes and violations of fundamental human rights, and, not for the first time in Europe’s troubled history, the stability of the continent would have been threatened by the negative repercussions of the conflicts in the Balkans. The United States was the only power with the capacity, the decision-making power, and the political will to put a stop to the killings. It is fair to say that thousands of people across the former Yugoslavia owe their lives today to the actions of the American policeman in the 1990s.
It has become commonplace to lump the American campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq together, and to present them as wars of aggression, reckless adventures that ended in unmitigated disaster. They are, in fact, widely viewed as proof that foreign intervention never works, and that America should give up trying to be the world’s policeman and focus on problems at home.
But that interpretation is seriously flawed, especially in the case of Afghanistan. The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was a question not of choice but of necessity. America had been attacked on 9/11; the man who planned the attacks, Osama bin Laden, had taken shelter in Afghanistan; the Taliban regime refused to hand him over. This was a hostile act, an act of war. The invasion was an act of self-defense, and fully justified.
The Iraq War, meanwhile, has become the symbol of interventionism devilry—almost the mother of all opposition to US military interventionism, with claims that the war was illegal, poorly prepared, and badly handled. Mistakes were, indeed, made in the conduct of the intervention—notably the failure to prepare a detailed and concrete plan for the reconstruction of the country and the reconciliation of its many ethnic and religious groups early enough. But I maintain that the Iraq War was legal and justified. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was a brutal dictator who would not abide by UN resolutions. His actions had to have a consequence, and for the people of Iraq, as well as the world community, it was a great relief to get rid of him.
Saddam Hussein rose to power in Iraq in 1979, a leading member of the revolutionary Arab socialist Baath Party. A Sunni Muslim himself, he became president and led a brutal dictatorship that suppressed all opposition, particularly Shia Muslim and Kurdish movements. His government was widely condemned for its systematic, widespread, and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law; including summary and arbitrary executions; enforced and involuntary disappearances, indiscriminate jailing, torture, assassinations; and the use of terror against his own people.
In particular, Saddam had a proven track record of using weapons of mass destruction. In 1988, he ordered the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq. The Iraqi army hit Kurdish areas with sarin and mustard gas. The attack killed between three thousand and five thousand people and injured seven thousand to ten thousand, most of them civilians. This incident has officially been defined as a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people in Iraq. Saddam also ordered the use of chemical weapons against a popular uprising in southern Iraq in 1991, and during the war against Iran, the Iraqi military repeatedly used chemical bombs, artillery shells, and rockets.
When Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait, the UN Security Council responded by adopting Resolution 678, which authorized member states to use “all necessary means” to “restore international peace and security in the area.” This provided the legal basis for the international military operation. After the Iraqis were driven out of Kuwait, and the Iraqi army was defeated, a cease-fire was signed. It was based on UN Resolution 687, which made the cease-fire conditional on Iraq meeting a number of requirements, including ceasing the use and development, and confirming the destruction, of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
According to Resolution 687, Iraq was obliged to provide an “accurate, full, final and complete disclosure . . . of all aspects of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.” To implement the resolution, Iraq was required to accept external scrutiny by international weapons inspectors. In the period from 1991 to 1998, the weapons inspectors destroyed large amounts of chemical and biological weapons. However, Iraq hampered the work of the UN inspectors, and in 1998 the UN had to pull the inspectors out of Iraq. As a result, a US- and British-led coalition initiated intensive missile strikes against Iraq in December 1998. This attack was legitimized by the still-existing UN Resolution 678, which authorized the use of all necessary means to ensure peace and stability in the region, as well as the violations of Resolution 687, which also was still in force.
In the subsequent three years, the Iraqi government denounced any kind of weapons inspection in the country. Consequently, in November 2002, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1441, which stated that Iraq over the years had substantially infringed, and continued to substantially violate, its obligations under the agreed Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 687; it also stated that the violations constituted a threat to international peace and security. The resolution gave Iraq one last chance to fulfill its disarmament obligations, compelling Iraq within thirty days to present a full account of its weapons of mass destruction. However, Saddam Hussein did not live up to this resolution either, and on March 20, 2003, an American-led coalition launched an attack on Iraq.
As Danish prime minister, I supported the launch of a military operation against Saddam Hussein, and Denmark joined the international coalition, which numbered about thirty countries. It was a controversial decision that divided the European countries and domestically created strong opposition. Among other things, I was attacked with red paint by an outside activist inside the Danish parliament.
I supported the military action against Iraq because of Saddam Hussein’s lack of cooperation with the UN. Saddam Hussein was given a last chance to cooperate, but he would not take advantage of the opportunity that a unanimous UN Security Council had given him to cooperate with the UN immediately, actively, and unconditionally. We knew that Iraq had previously produced and used chemical weapons. The Iraqi regime would not explain what had become of weapons that it had previously admitted being in possession of. This created considerable uncertainty in the region and internationally. Only through Saddam Hussein’s active cooperation could the uncertainty about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction be removed. Therefore, cooperation was absolutely vital, and there was reason to be concerned about Iraq’s refusal to cooperate. It was an aggressive regime that had invaded its neighbors and used chemical weapons against its own people.
The Danish military intelligence service did not have its own information about the possible existence of chemical weapons in Iraq. I noted that foreign services, including the American and British, seemed to believe that the Iraqi regime still had chemical weapons at its disposal, but as Danish prime minister I did not use the possible existence of weapons of mass destruction as an argument to join the international military coalition. For me, it was sufficient that Saddam Hussein had not adhered to and complied with UN resolutions. When a ruthless dictator so grossly violates UN rulings, it must have a consequence. Otherwise we are undermining the UN’s authority.
In my view, there was a clear legal basis for a military operation in the already-adopted and applicable UN resolutions. Resolution 678 of 1990 authorized UN member states to use all necessary means, including military force, to enforce the Security Council’s requirements and conditions. These requirements were further specified in Resolution 687 of 1991, which raised a number of conditions for the cease-fire with Iraq; and in Resolution 1441 of 2002, the Security Council had updated and confirmed the earlier decisions. The authorization to use force was therefore still valid.
My point was very clear: Whether or not Iraq possessed chemical weapons remained to be seen, but to avoid war it would be very easy for Saddam Hussein to eliminate any doubt by complying with the UN decisions and provide clear documentation as to whether Iraq had chemical weapons. In refusing to take that opportunity when it was offered, he had not only violated UN resolutions, but he had also created uncertainty about security in the region and internationally. For me, it was also important that the UN Security Council had repeatedly warned Iraq that “it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.” If you are to ensure respect for UN resolutions, such warnings should also be followed up by actions; otherwise the UN will gradually evolve into a toothless forum that talks and talks, and does nothing.
Today we all know that chemical weapons were not found in Iraq in the wake of the occupation of the country. Obviously, that compromised the whole operation, because people had the impression that the main reason for the invasion was the existence of chemical weapons. The left-wing mantra became “Bush lied, people died.” But as President Bush notes in his book, Decision Points, the charge was illogical: “If I wanted to mislead the country into war, why would I pick an allegation that was certain to be disproven publicly shortly after we invaded the country?” The fact is that intelligence agencies in the United States and around the world believed that Iraq possessed chemical weapons. As Bush notes, “Nobody was lying: We were all wrong.” I know from numerous talks with George Bush that he was very angry about the misleading intelligence reports, and in Decision Points he is very clear about the political price: “While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam Hussein gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false. That was a massive blow to our credibility, my credibility, that would shake the confidence of the American people.”
The fact that weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq does not mean that the basis for military action against Saddam Hussein was wrong. My decision was not based on secure evidence of Saddam Hussein’s stocks of weapons of mass destruction; it was based on his lack of cooperation with the UN. Precisely because Saddam Hussein did not cooperate, there was a fundamental and unacceptable uncertainty about the illegal weapons he had. It was this unacceptable uncertainty that we had to deal with. The main questions were: Could we run the risk that a ruler like Saddam Hussein had these weapons and would use them? Should we give an unscrupulous and erratic dictator the benefit of the doubt? Could we accept that he, after twelve years of noncooperation, continued to express defiance to the UN Security Council? For me there was no doubt. Not only did we have the right to act, but it was our duty.
However, even though I believe to this day that we were justified in what we did in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the fact remains that serious errors were made in the follow-up to both campaigns. It is those errors, not the actual interventions, that led to the perception of failure.
In Afghanistan, there were three key errors that, while justified at the time, made things much harder. First, we put arbitrary deadlines for troop withdrawal, and that made it impossible for us to adjust to the situation on the ground. Second, we were too slow in building strong and credible indigenous security forces to gradually take over security. And third, we should have done more to help local authorities to build strong institutions and develop good governance able to build trust between the people and the political leadership.
I have already discussed in chapter 1 the problem with our decision to set a calendar date for our withdrawal. That problem was compounded by the relative weakness of the Afghan forces when we withdrew, and that weakness was the result of our own late realization of the need to build them up. We did not start building up the Afghan security forces in earnest until 2009, the ninth year after the start of the military action. It was too late, and the hectic formation of the Afghan security forces that then ensued did not allow the depth and breadth necessary to construct a modern and strong security force fully capable of addressing a resurgence.
At the same time, our efforts for nation-building in Afghanistan were too weak and too reluctant. The truth is that the Western countries have been too reluctant to criticize the incredible inefficiency and the deep corruption of the Afghan government apparatus. It is probably a reflection of the usual Western self-criticism and self-doubt that led to the reluctance to do anything that could be construed as imposing our standards and requirements. But the result was that the poor governance itself led to distrust in the society at large, and to recruiting rebels to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.
Therefore, the third lesson is that a military operation must be accompanied by a comprehensive political approach, a robust civilian effort to develop a modern and efficient local government administration. We should not refrain from setting reasonable conditions in return for our sacrifice in blood and treasure out of a misguided consideration for cultural differences.
This comprehensive approach should include a plan for economic reconstruction that advances economic growth after conflict by promoting free trade, entrepreneurship, and a market-driven economy. The problem is that the economy in war zones becomes tremendously dependent on the military forces and their centralized military planning: The army buys local food, employs local workers, and acts as a huge market for the local economy. When the military is withdrawn, the economic structures are either distorted or broken, the private enterprises have become very dependent on public contracts or subsidies, and the already poor communities have become even poorer as a result of war and conflict.
I believe that every major military operation should include an “Operation Wealth of Nation” with the aim to spur strong economic growth and job creation as quickly and efficiently as possible. A key ingredient in such a plan for economic reconstruction would be to promote the establishment of high-growth enterprises and to advance entrepreneurship, which is the engine of development. Security and economics are interlinked. It is a vital part of the reconciliation and post-conflict stabilization that people are able to experience economic progress and improved living conditions.
Our experience in Iraq, too, shows that the problem with interventions is not the military mission but the political follow-up. The problems began immediately after the fall of Baghdad and Saddam’s flight. This created a political vacuum, and there were two decisions that in retrospect were probably not well considered. In order to ensure a clear break with Saddam, all officials belonging to the former Baath regime were removed, and the Iraqi army was dissolved. This meant that many Sunnis lost their jobs and took it as a signal that they had no place in the future of Iraq. Consequently, they joined the rebels who opposed the new Iraq.
However, it must be remembered that, after initial difficulties, we did manage to get Iraq back on track. The US troop “surge” in 2006–7 had a real effect on the ground. Following the surge, al-Qaeda–affiliated militias and death squads no longer swarmed the country, as they had just a couple of years before. US officials, state security services, tribal forces, and some armed groups had forged an agreement to work together against the most extreme groups terrorizing Iraq’s population. The major roads in those areas were lined with the flags of the Awakening Councils—local fighters who had decided to protect ordinary Iraqis from al-Qaeda—and the Iraqi military was deployed in all major cities. Finally, Iraq had relatively good security, a generous state budget, and positive relations among the country’s various ethnic and religious communities. The public had grown hostile toward al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups and were siding with the state and its army. It was a new atmosphere, and it was full of promise.
But the promise never materialized, and the sectarian violence increased after the withdrawal of US troops by the end of 2011. The withdrawal was envisaged by a security agreement reached between President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in 2008. This so-called status of forces agreement (SOFA) was the legal basis for the presence of US troops in Iraq after the expiry of the UN mandate at the end of 2008. Thus, the continued US presence in the country after 2011 depended on its ability to negotiate an extension to the agreement with the Iraqi government.
The problem was that Prime Minister Maliki pursued an increasingly sectarian form of politics. He transformed Iraqi democracy into a Shiite majority domination that effectively marginalized Sunni communities in the country. This strained his relationship with the United States, which rightly criticized his actions, and despite the deteriorating security situation, Maliki refused to extend the security agreement. We all know that President Obama had campaigned on the promise to pull the United States out of Iraq, but even if he had wanted to, he could not have remained in Iraq because the Iraqi government refused to extend the security agreement. Despite initial plans to keep some forces in Iraq to assist the local army, no agreement could be reached between Washington and Baghdad, and the last troops pulled out in December 2011, leaving security in the hands of the often less than effective Iraqi military.
With US troops out of the country, Maliki reinforced his sectarian policies with a harsh crackdown against Sunnis in the country. Sunnis found themselves increasingly the victims of the Shia-dominated government security forces. In response, many Sunnis turned to the extremist Sunni insurgent groups, which eventually merged into the Islamic State. Indeed, the heavy-handedness of Iraq’s army effectively acted as a “recruiting sergeant” for IS.
Again, the lesson of Iraq is that troop withdrawals should not be calendar-driven but conditions-driven, and that no military success will endure unless it is followed up by a successful and effective political reconciliation. Our mistake was not that we did too much militarily, it is that we did too little politically afterward.
These lessons are clear with hindsight; the problem is that they were not clear at the time. By the time of the US presidential election in 2008, popular opinion in the United States had swung massively away from the whole concept of foreign intervention. President Bush’s final approval ratings were among the lowest ever recorded, and while the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not the only reason for that, they were certainly important factors.
That is the background to the decisive swing away from large-scale foreign intervention that marked the Obama presidency. Where Bush the younger was an enthusiastic advocate of America’s role as the world’s policeman, Obama was much more reluctant, only taking action where he saw he had significant foreign support. In fact, Bush believed in leadership, and was therefore able to act quickly; Obama believes in consensus, and therefore acted reluctantly.
Obama’s role as the “reluctant policeman” was very clearly on show in his reaction to events in Libya in 2011. In February of that year, pro-democracy demonstrations against the dictator Mu’ammar Gadhafi began. The Libyan uprising quickly turned bloody as Gadhafi sought to suppress it with force. In March he massed troops around the rebel center, Benghazi, and having labeled his opponents “rats,” he threatened the population, declaring, “We will show no mercy and no pity to them.”
I was secretary-general of NATO at the time, and from the early stages of the crisis, I was in favor of international action to protect the Libyan people. However, when the UK and France offered a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for the establishment of a no-fly zone in Libya, they received little support for it, including from the United States.
The American position itself was unclear but seemed to show a reluctance to intervene. The then secretary of defense, Bob Gates, was the most outspoken against American involvement: “I believed that what was happening in Libya was not a vital national interest of the United States. I opposed the United States attacking a third Muslim country within a decade to bring about regime change, no matter how odious the regime.”
At the same time as the French were lobbying actively for a military operation, they were equally active in opposing any NATO role. For instance, they told us that the Arabs were skeptical about NATO. This alleged Arab skepticism about the idea of NATO leading the operation was a false argument. In fact, the Arab countries were quite comfortable with contributing to the operation through NATO. They know NATO from our partnerships with countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf; and throughout the process, I worked the phone to consult and to coordinate with countries in the region, and eventually to ensure their active contribution to a NATO operation.
The most remarkable telephone call took place on March 23. I had called the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, to discuss the situation with him. I presented him with the French argument that the Arab countries were skeptical about a NATO operation in Libya. He rejected that, referring to his own talks with foreign ministers from the region, and added, “By the way, I’m just in a meeting with Sheikh Abdallah bin Zayed [the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates] here in my office, and I’ll hand over the telephone to him, so he can tell you himself.” Sheikh Abdallah took the telephone and confirmed that the UAE would very much like to see NATO take the lead of the Libya operation, and he mentioned that other countries would have the same position. I got that confirmed in conversations with the Jordanian king, Abdullah, and the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani; and while the secretary-general of the League of Arab States, Amr Moussa, couldn’t commit on behalf of the member states of the League, he also confirmed in several conversations that he would be very comfortable with a NATO operation.
In fact, the contributing partners were all happy about the NATO lead. An interesting example was Sweden. It happened that I visited Sweden the day before a crucial vote in the Swedish parliament on Sweden’s participation in the Libya operation. I met with the members of the Foreign Relations and Defense committees. The Social Democrats, who are known for their anti-NATO stance, told me, “Secretary-General, tomorrow we will vote in favor of Swedish participation in the Libya operation exactly because it is a NATO-led operation. NATO has the political and military structures that provide the political transparency and oversight that we demand.”
So, one by one, the arguments against a NATO operation were removed.
Simultaneously, the US calculus changed. On March 13, 2011, the League of Arab States called for international intervention to halt the violence in Benghazi. The Arab League’s unprecedented move was a game-changer because it meant that an international intervention would not be a Western-imposed solution but a locally backed one. This would not be a case of the West against an Arab state but of the world against a dictator.
In a decisive meeting with his security team on March 17, President Obama made the decision in principle that the United States should try to stop the killings. He set two important conditions: He wanted NATO to commit to leading the operation after a short initial phase, and he wanted UN Security Council backing for more robust military action if necessary—the authority to use all necessary measures to protect civilians.
All of a sudden, everything moved. The UN Security Council adopted the famous Resolution 1973, authorizing the use of “all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population in Libya. An international coalition was quickly established to enforce the resolution. The massive machinery of the US military and intelligence communities moved into top gear. France, the UK, and other allies began flying sorties over Libya, and the United States began a massive aerial and sea-based bombardment of Libya’s air defenses and Gadhafi’s forward forces in Benghazi. At the same time, the French objections to letting NATO take the lead melted away. Finally, after weeks of uncertainty in defining the role of NATO, the alliance was able to speed up preparations to take over the Libya operation.
On March 27, NATO launched Operation Unified Protector, taking command of air and sea operations around Libya. NATO provided the command-and-control backbone; allies provided the striking force. This was very much a multinational effort, built upon an absolutely essential American contribution. While Canada and the European allies conducted the majority of the strikes, the United States provided 75 percent of the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. It also contributed 75 percent of the refueling planes used throughout the mission and dispatched military personnel to reinforce the NATO commands with the necessary expertise. Seven months later, on October 31, the operation was completed.
The military operation was, by any measure, an indisputable success. But, as we have already seen (see chapter 1), and just as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the political follow-up was an abysmal failure. There was no leadership; there was no action. Libya was left to its own devices. We now know—thanks to the interview published in the Atlantic—that Obama expected French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British prime minister David Cameron to take the lead in the reconstruction, as they had in the buildup to the air campaign. Neither stepped up; nor did Obama.
As a result, our military success turned quickly into a political disaster. NATO faced accusations of destroying Libya, of removing Gadhafi and not having a plan to replace him—quite unjustly, because with no UN mandate NATO could not take action, and NATO is not a UN member. The NATO members who have permanent seats on the Security Council—Britain, France, and the United States—did nothing to push for international support for Libya until it was too late. America looked to Britain and France to lead; they looked to America; nobody moved. And while they hesitated, Libya fell into the abyss.
That perception of the Libyan operation as a failure is probably the main reason why it took so long for the United States to take action in Syria. In this terrible conflict, it is as if the horrors of Bosnia have repeated themselves on a much larger scale, with atrocities on the ground and hesitation on the part of the international community.
Syria’s descent into self-destruction began at the same time as Libya’s, in March 2011, and in the same way, with pro-democracy protests erupting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. His security services responded with a heavy-handed and self-defeating brutality that stood out even in that time of regional turmoil. Teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall were arrested and tortured. When demonstrations broke out to protest against their treatment, the security forces opened fire, killing several demonstrators. The unrest triggered nationwide protests demanding Assad’s resignation, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the country. The regime reacted by using ever more force in a bid to crush the dissent, but rather than breaking the protesters’ resolve, it reinforced it—and radicalized it. Violence bred violence. Opposition supporters began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and later to expel the security forces from their local areas. The fighting escalated, and the country descended into civil war as the rebels formed armed brigades to battle government forces for control of cities, towns, and the countryside. According to the UN, 250,000 people had been killed by August 2015.
Atrocity piled on atrocity. The Assad regime used Scud missiles against civilian areas. His forces used barrel bombs and cluster weapons, which are illegal because they are indiscriminate. Extremists on all sides committed murders, mass killings, torture, and terrorism. In 2013, in the town of Ghouta, Assad’s forces began using chemical weapons. Yet even though Obama had said that the use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” that would trigger an American response, he refused to order action. As we have seen in chapter 1, this refusal to act was disastrous. It gave the world the impression that the policeman had gone into retirement. Obama’s hesitation, quite simply, was fatal.
And while Obama hesitated, the conflict deepened and broadened. The critical moment in this respect came in 2011–12, when an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, decided to set up a branch of his terrorist group in Syria. Baghdadi’s group, called the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), had suffered a string of defeats at the hands of US and Iraqi tribal forces, and its expansion into Syria seems to have been as much a desperate gamble as a strategic plan, but it paid off. By 2013, Baghdadi’s Syrian branch had built up a powerful battlefield presence, while ISI was once again carrying out dozens of attacks a month in Iraq; in April of that year, Baghdadi announced the merger of his forces in the two countries to create the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
By helping to destroy Syria, Baghdadi saved ISIL. The civil war allowed him to build up his forces, ready to take advantage of any opportunity for expansion, and that opportunity came in 2013, when a standoff between Iraq’s Shia-led government and minority Sunni Arab community developed into a full-blown political and sectarian crisis. Baghdadi took full advantage of it: ISIL shifted its focus back to Iraq, exploiting widespread anger among Sunni Arabs against Maliki’s sectarian policies. Backed by local tribesmen and former Saddam Hussein loyalists, the militants took control of the central city of Fallujah. Six months later, in June 2014, they launched an assault on Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, to the north. Thirty thousand Iraqi soldiers dropped their weapons and fled when confronted by an estimated eight hundred gunmen. Emboldened, the militants advanced south toward Baghdad, massacring their adversaries and threatening to eradicate the country’s many ethnic and religious minorities. At the end of the month, after consolidating its hold over dozens of cities and towns, ISIL declared the creation of a caliphate and changed its name to Islamic State (IS).
Yet still the international community hesitated, and without American leadership, nothing was done. There were many arguments in favor of inaction at that time: the lack of a UN Security Council mandate, the lack of support for military action from countries in the region, the sectarian complexities of the battle, the lack of a well-defined and coherent opposition that could have been the focus of support. Those reasons were, and are, all valid, but they were the sort of arguments that could have been overcome with patient diplomacy, energetic engagement, and determined American leadership. That leadership was simply not there, and no other country could provide it.
Only in August 2014, a full year after the Ghouta atrocity, did Obama finally authorize military action against IS. There is no doubt that this was the right decision: IS was on the verge of annihilating the Yazidi people, a distinct and independent religious community. IS had taken the city of Sinjar, massacred some five thousand Yazidi men, and sold a further five thousand to seven thousand women into servitude or handed them to jihadists as concubines. The terrorists were besieging an estimated fifty thousand more Yazidis on Mount Sinjar. The United States asserted that IS’s systematic destruction of the Yazidi people was genocide. The Arab League also accused IS of crimes against humanity.
At last, President Obama authorized targeted air strikes in Iraq against IS, along with air drops of aid. Eventually, US air strikes and Kurdish forces broke the siege. This was the beginning of an American-led international coalition carrying out operations against IS, which grew to include more than sixty countries. At the time of writing, the coalition has enabled Kurdish forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria to stem the relentless advance of IS and take back around 20 percent of the territory it had occupied. Without US leadership, the situation would have been much worse than it is. But if that leadership had been displayed two years earlier, it would have been much better.
The United States and Europe have paid an enormous price for this fatal hesitation. The war in Syria has turned into a strategic defeat for the United States, a strategic victory for Russia, and a threat to the cohesion of the European Union. While America and Europe talked, Putin acted recklessly to establish Russia as a power in the region and a player on the international scene, launching air strikes into Syria in September 2015. Those air strikes propped up the tyrannical Assad regime at the crucial moment and enabled its soldiers to retake lost ground at terrible human cost; they also weakened the most moderate, US-backed rebel groups, who then lost ground to both Assad and al-Qaeda.
Such decisive military action, with no attention paid to civilian casualties, allowed Russia and Iran to preserve and control the remaining puppet regime in Damascus. Russia’s action pushed the surviving Sunni opposition forces closer to an alignment with Islamic State and other terrorist groups, and made it more certain than ever that this war will rage on and on. The regime’s capture of Aleppo pushed tens of thousands more Syrian refugees toward a European Union already coming apart at the seams. For President Putin this is just another added bonus. He has hit two birds with one stone: enfeebled the United States and destabilized the European Union.
The Syrian disaster is an example of how conflicts can escalate out of control and develop into a broader threat when the United States hesitates. By any measure, Syria is a human tragedy and a great loss. Strategically, it is a calamity: an example that reckless autocrats and brutal terrorists will fill the vacuum when the United States and its allies retreat.
The record of history is clear: In Rwanda, Bosnia, and Syria before 2014, America hesitated, nothing was done, and the result was genocide. In Kosovo, Libya, and Syria after 2014, America acted, and genocide was prevented. Even Iraq and Afghanistan, so often cited as proof that intervention is not worth it, actually teach a different lesson: the danger of ending a mission before the job is done.
Taken together, I believe that this history of the past quarter century paints a clear lesson: Only the United States has the diplomatic, military, and economic power to provide decisive leadership and get things done internationally. Time and again over the past quarter of a century, we have seen that as long as the United States is in a state of doubt, holds back, and is undecided, there is no leadership, no direction, and no action. Once the United States gets its act together and provides leadership, things start to move and you can match words and action. To borrow from President Obama’s own election slogan, it is not just “Yes we can” but “Yes, only we can.”
Many Americans will argue, understandably, that this is not fair. After all, why would the Smith family in Peoria buy the argument that the United States should be the world’s policeman? Wouldn’t it serve US interests better to stay out of troublesome conflicts and leave it to the conflicting parties to resolve their own battles and entanglements? The brutal answer is that only superpowers have the necessary capabilities to get things done. The United States is the world’s only superpower, and as Robert Kagan observed in the New Republic in May 2014, “Superpowers don’t get to retire.”
America’s unique power takes many forms. The US military is unmatched in terms of economic resources, technological superiority, and capacity to deploy forces across the globe. The United States has an unparalleled ability to build alliances, underpinned by a strong worldwide corps of skilled diplomats. No other country in the world has the strength to complete the task as a global policeman, and the UN, which would be the natural alternative, is too weak. It is rare that the United Nations decides to take military action, and when that happens, member states often refuse to make the necessary military equipment and personnel available, and limit the use of the assets to a point that makes the UN impotent. Now that Russia—a UN veto-holder—has apparently decided to base its foreign policy on opposing the United States at every turn, the prospects for an active and engaged UN are worse than ever.
On top of this, I am convinced that the majority of people in the world have more confidence in the United States than in other potential candidates for the role of global policeman. China is a rising power, but without economic and military strength to pursue a global role as policeman. What is more, China is a Communist dictatorship that would be met with skepticism in many countries. Russia would like to challenge the US leadership, but Russia is a nation in decline, and the country’s assertive attitude toward her neighbors has developed a global distrust in Russia’s intentions.
By comparison, the United States is a benign democracy pursing democratic ideals of freedom rather than territorial interests. Therefore, America is also an appealing community that has attracted talented people from across the world. They are enticed by her wealth, respect for universal values, and open-minded approach to the world. The American melting pot has infused into the United States a diversity that has established networks all over the world and generated an interethnic confidence in the United States. So the world needs a policeman, and there is no one other than the United States to do the job. To be the policeman of the world is an awful, thankless job, but someone has to do it, and the United States is the only nation that can.
In fact, the argument that America should retreat, retrench, and pull up the drawbridge has two fundamental flaws. For one thing, it is morally repugnant. This is not a policy of handing the solution of problems to somebody else: It is a problem of handing them on to nobody, of letting bad things happen, and standing idly by. As we have seen, Bill Clinton did that in Rwanda in 1994. He still bears the moral scars.
The second reason is that those who want America to stop being the world’s policeman and start being their own gatekeeper seem to believe that if America stays away from the troubles of the world, the troubles of the world will stay away from America.
That creed seems to forget the horror and shock of 9/11. The harsh reality is that America, by virtue of its physical size and strength and its ideological attractiveness, will always be the subject of resistance, or even hostility and hatred, from the forces in the world that will challenge America’s undeniable and exceptional supremacy, or simply hate the principles of freedom and the way of life that are the foundation of the United States and its allies of liberal democracies. There is no reason to believe that terrorist organizations like Islamic State or al-Qaeda, for instance, would refrain from trying to strike American citizens or interests in the United States or overseas, even if the United States were to retreat and only mind her own business. America is the world’s top power, and in many parts of the world it is also the top regional power. That means that any country that wants to take the top spot for itself will feel that it has to knock America down, regardless of the way the United States behaves.
So whether the United States withdraws from world affairs or not, the United States—and American hegemony—will be the target of terrorists, rogue states, and resurgent states, either through direct attacks on the United States and American interests or through attempts to undermine the US-led world order. Adversaries will attempt to damage and weaken the United States. In the extreme case, they will threaten the safety and security of individual American citizens, as we saw on 9/11. That’s the destiny of being a superpower. And the new technology, a globalized world, and new ways of travel and communication mean that America is no longer protected by two great oceans. The bad guys can strike anywhere at any time, even in the American homeland. So if the United States does not go out into the world to nip the evil at the root, the evil may strike in the United States. So it is indeed in America’s own interest to take leadership and act as policeman.
It is clearly the most effective and least expensive approach to knock down conflicts and threats while they are still small. If the United States is reluctant to be proactive in due time, there is a risk that the skirmishes and menaces will grow too large and require disproportionate resources to fight. If you stand idly by and let conflicts, menaces, and atrocities run out of control, it may require the deployment of large troop forces for a long time to handle the situation. But if you nip it in the bud, before troublemakers grow too strong, threats can be tackled by targeted precision operations that are limited in time, scope, and resources. And you can further reduce the American costs by building alliances and partnerships and carrying out the job in collaboration with like-minded nations.
In many ways, the theory and practice of “the broken window” also applies to world affairs. The theory of “the broken window” is well known: If a broken window is left unfixed, it sends a signal of disorder and can lead to more serious problems. A broken window tells criminals that the local community doesn’t have the will to defend against criminal invasion. Conversely, if broken windows are fixed, and if there is zero tolerance for disorder, this approach sends a signal that criminal behavior is not tolerated. This in itself may prevent major crime. This strategy was implemented with great success to clean up New York City in the nineties. The same applies to the international community. If a breach of the international order remains unpunished and unfixed, it sends a signal of a lack of will and ability to defend against violations of international law. This can lead to even more and greater international disorder as terrorists and aggressors decide that there is little risk of retribution. In that sense, too, there is a need for a policeman to monitor the international security situation and send the signal that violations of international law will not be tolerated.
It is a vital US interest to protect the rules-based international order against erosion. That order—built, as we have seen, under Truman’s visionary leadership after World War II—has served the world well, but it has also facilitated American interests in a world dominated by free trade and peaceful coexistence within a rules-based institutional framework. When resurgent states, rising states, or terrorist organizations challenge this world order, they are also challenging the rules and principles that allow American business and the American people to prosper. American ships sail the world’s seas, American tourists travel the world’s countries, American companies invest in the world’s industries, American consumers buy the world’s goods, and the “Made in the USA” label is in high demand across the globe. All of that has been made possible by the rule of international law.
We must remember that this liberal and rules-based world order is not a divine, God-given phenomenon but a system of freedoms that was imposed on the world by the United States after World War II, thanks to the overwhelming US strength and foresight, and which can only survive if an invincible strength is maintained to defend it. America made it; America benefits from it. America stands to lose the most if it is overthrown.
And there are those in the world who do seek to overthrow it. Putin and others want to replace the liberal and rules-based order with their own vision: a world in which the strong and violent give the orders, and the small, weak, and peaceful obey them. The United States stands to lose many times over if that is allowed to happen—lose in security, in alliances, in market access, in its diplomatic power. In other words, the vital interests of the United States go far beyond narrow self-defense.
This was the message of President Roosevelt when he asked the American people to defend “not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.” It was the message of President George H. W. Bush when he spoke in defense of “a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.” It was the message of Secretary of State John Kerry when he said, “You just don’t, in the twenty-first century, behave in nineteenth-century fashion.” All of these statesmen knew that there are people and powers in the world who would love to behave in exactly that way, and it is only the fear of US power that stops them from doing it.
This is why the American people have a vested interest in taking on global leadership and doing the job as the world’s policeman, despite the hardship: America prospers when the world is at peace and the rules are respected. But since there will always be malignant actors who want to break the rules and breach the peace, and since one successful example of rule-breaking will inevitably encourage a dozen others, America has to be able to demonstrate the strength and willpower to deter aggressors, prevent conflict, and keep together the international order.
In retrospect, perhaps the greatest value of the past seventy years of US hegemony is what did not happen: the wars that never broke out, or were not allowed to spread, because there was a policeman to put them down in time. It may be hard to calculate the value of these wars that never happened, but the value is there in every moment of peace and prosperity the American people have enjoyed. The cost of action is more visible than the benefits of deterrence, but as we all know, prevention is better and cheaper than treatment.