I have
always thought of the United States as the world’s police force, a big brother
for countless other nations around the world who depend on us to keep them
safe. I mean, come on, the world would be a chaotic mess if not for the U.S.,
right? Perhaps not.
While researching for my junior
theme, I have repeatedly come across this question of whether or not the U.S.
really is the world’s police force or if we are just a big bully. I find myself
questioning my belief of the United States acting as the world’s police force,
and my research process has opened my eyes to some aspects of our use of
military that perhaps aren’t so heroic.
In an article
in Foreign Affairs, Melvyn P. Leffler
discusses the United States’ dominant military. He writes about our defense
spending, revealing that the Pentagon insists that we have defense capabilities
“sufficient to create an international order conducive to our way of life.”
This quote really stood out to me; it implies that the U.S. is making people
accept its’ ideals and values as their own by using military power to instill
fear in other nations. In this sense, the U.S. seems less like the world’s
police force, less like the heroic nation that I like to think of it as.
I am also reading a book right now
called National Insecurity by Melvin
A. Goodman. He writes that the U.S. is the only country that uses its military
“primarily to support foreign policy rather than to defend our borders and
people” (10). This quote implies that the U.S. is more aggressive than most
countries, which might not be a bad thing, but it is definitely something that
I will continue to research. A military, in my opinion, is meant to serve the
purpose of defending a nation and protecting it from harm. The fact that we are
using our military abroad to “support foreign policy” is alarming to me. This
could mean that we are trying to get other nations to conform to our ideals, as
Leffler suggested.
In my American Studies class the
other day, we talked about the U.S. controlling how other countries are run and
what type of government they run. For example, we learned that in the Iranian
Coup the U.S. government took the Iranian leader out of power and put in a man
who they found to be an acceptable leader. Who are we to tell other nations how
they should run their government? I can see how some would argue that this
makes us more of an international bully than an international police force.
To be honest, I am still unsure
what I think of this. I can see an argument for both sides. I chose to give
mainly the argument for the side that suggests that the U.S. is a bully in this
blog post simply because I feel that it is the side that is not heard as much
because people are sometimes hesitant to speak up.
