Debate Primer: World Policeman

This week, Political Union will debate whether the United States should serve as the global policeman. This argument is rooted in the idea that political scientists call “anarchy” in global politics, which is just another way of saying that there is no global government that can tell everyone and every country what to do and when to do it. In place of that, we have intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and the European Union, but they’re a far cry from hegemony. To put this tiny bit of theory in context of the United States we need to go back to the turn of the 1990s, when the Soviet Union’s gradual collapse turned a bipolar geopolitical environment into one squarely structured around the US. The success of the US’s “Operation Desert Storm” in Kuwait in 1990 and 1991 further encouraged those who concluded that the United States, as the world’s most militarily powerful exponent of democracy and free markets, would serve as the global policeman.

Now fast forward past America’s two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military rise of China (and re-rise of Russia), continued population booms in India and Nigeria, and the expansion and solidification of the European Union’s common market. Throw in ongoing domestic debates over the US government’s level of spending on its social safety net. After two decades of demographic and political change, it is no longer obvious that the US can be or should be the global policeman, either because it has better things to do or because it simply is no longer strong enough, relative to its rivals.

Fortunately there is no shortage of sources to point to on this subject, though several are somewhat dated. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t start with a New Yorker article written by Northwestern’s own Daniel Immerwahr on precisely this issue. Immerwahr’s expertise in the US’s imperial history and his narrative writing ability make this an enjoyable read, and the one I recommend most from this list [11 mins].

Here’s something between an explainer and an opinion piece in the Times from last summer about America’s waning involvement and sporadic intervention in international conflicts. This piece is useful, as it goes point by point through relevant history and political argumentation [8 mins].

I’ll roll together a couple sources arguing that the US must continue to play an active role in foreign conflicts: the first, a piece in Politico during the Trump years, lays out the important political economic case for why commercial needs dictate military strength [10 mins]. The second is from the former Prime Minister of Denmark (who also served as secretary-general of NATO), and argues that America’s moral superiority makes it uniquely fit for steering global politics [6 mins].

What about the skeptics? Lionel Shriver wrote in the Spectator last fall, in the wake of America’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, that America was clearly no longer invincible - he uses harsh words to advocate for isolationism, while still expressing fear of a China-led international sphere [6 mins].

As a bonus, here’s another conservative perspective for why an American pullback is overdue [5 mins].

Here’s an article in an academic journal (although written much like a newspaper opinion piece) laying out the costs to the American economy when it comes to American military buildup and intervention abroad. Hint: if you can’t see the full text from this link, paste the title of the library into the NULibraries portal, and open the digital version from there. 

Finally, if you’ve got the time, I highly recommend taking a look at this recording of a debate done by Intelligence Squared (a debate society like ours, but for grown-ups) in 2008, on exactly the same question. The entire debate is 90 minutes, but some of the most influential voices in America’s foreign policy conversation (Ian Bremmer, Max Boot, Michael Mandelbaum, etc.) all take part.

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