The Tragedy of Hegemony
Two days ago I wrote:
a smaller, useful question is whether the US should have to bear the entire burden of letting populations of foreign strangers suffer. One wonders how recent history would be different if Europe had actually already been able to reassert itself as a moral leader in the world. Until it does, life will be too difficult for America.
Megan affirms from Aspen:
when Americans say “someone should do something” to stop a conflict somewhere, this is almost tantamount to saying “we should do something”, because at a most generous estimate, there are four military forces in the world capable of deploying into a conflict zone and shutting down the war: America, Britain, Australia, and Israel. For diverse reasons, the other three are very unlikely to deploy without our support. We’re it.
[…] Perhaps the list of conflicts in which we should intervene is very short–the hard left and the paleo right would say that it is zero. But we have to recognize that if we don’t, no one else is going to do it for us–the African Union cannot make peace in Darfur, none of Iraq’s neighbors can help it if it erupts into civil war, and so forth.
That means that when we decide not to intervene, we are making a decision that no one should act to halt the conflict.
This is a totally unnatural state of affairs that we must bring to an end as quickly and painlessly as possible. Sadly, we can’t do it alone. Just because we’re the world’s lone superpower doesn’t mean other civilized countries are excused from being plain powers. And yes, I recognize it is irritating to paleos and others to determine whether countries are pulling their own weight at least in part on the basis of their ability to project military power into far-flung lands. (Actual moral force counts too.) But if paleos want to dial the US down from global hegemony, as they should, they’ve got to recognize that other countries — specific other countries — do indeed need to dial their participation up. Some will, regardless: our foreign policy should be keyed toward skewing the participants’ club in our favor.