Protector or Bully?

            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.