Can American Power Be Preserved After Obama?

Image: Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Navy

Gideon Rachman, National Interest/Financial Times: Preserving American Power After Obama

How long can a country with less than 5 percent of the world’s population continue to be the dominant power in every region of the world?

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the overwhelming power of the U.S. military has been the central fact of international politics. However, in three crucial regions—Europe, the Middle East and East Asia—America’s rivals have begun to test its resolve to use this power. Faced with serious security challenges in all three regions, the United States has to consider when and whether to push back—while its allies watch nervously, largely from the sidelines.

These events are taking place in different parts of the world, but they are intimately connected. It is American military might that guarantees borders all over the world. In the Middle East, the United States has giant naval and air bases, which exist to reassure friends and to intimidate rivals. In East Asia, the U.S. Navy has become used to treating the Pacific as an “American lake”—guaranteeing freedom of navigation and providing reassurance to its allies. In Europe, it is NATO that guarantees the territorial integrity of its member states, and the United States now accounts for a staggering three-quarters of NATO’s military spending.

WNU Editor: The question that needs to be asked is .... does the American public want the U.S. to be the dominant power in every region in the world? In the past I would have said without hesitation that yes .... Americans want to see their country hold influence in every part of the world. Today .... I am not sure.