The United States is not an empire. Yet we are, to employ an overused term, the leaders of the free world. Our recent abandonment of the Kurds betrays our leadership role.
Freedom and authoritarianism are pitched against each other in an endless struggle. Since 1941, the U.S. has led the forces of freedom.
There’s a dangerous temptation in this role. President George W. Bush, for instance, sometimes presented the U.S. in messianic terms, with a duty to spread Western-style democracy, by the sword if necessary, to every corner of the world. Our failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have shown where this leads.
President Trump’s promise of an “America First” foreign policy appealed so widely because the public grew tired of policing the world, whether to spread democracy or for other humanitarian goals.
It’s axiomatic yet somehow controversial these days to say that the job of America’s armed forces is to serve this nation’s interests. In past centuries, the leading military power tried to enrich itself by building an empire. The U.S. has largely eschewed that path.
Yet, what goes on in the rest of the world is nevertheless of profound importance to us, both in how it affects us and because we embody universal ideals. It is in America’s interest for authoritarianism to give way to freedom and for freedom to hold fast against authoritarianism.
You couldn’t ask for a clearer example of this than our current predicament with China. Because the People’s Republic of China is a dictatorship, American businesses face pressure to silence criticism of its tyrannical actions. A freer China would be better for America. Great power comes with great responsibility. They cannot be separated, so a nation that wishes to retain its great power, as we should, must accept burdens beyond its borders.
So how do we advance freedom and our other global interests if not through empire building or global policing? We do it through alliances.
Our most advantageous alliances are often the oldest. The “Five Eyes” intelligence cooperation between us and Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand began in 1956. But even 63 years later, it continues to deliver the crown jewels of global counter-proliferation, counterterrorism, and counter-hostile state intelligence. We should never forget that the most important ingredient of intelligence is not the tools, or even the people; it is the trust and shared values between those people. That is why the alliance sustains and why it continues to deliver.
Formed to deter Soviet aggression in Europe, NATO today allows 29 democracies to band together in deterring Russian aggression, albeit patchily, confronting global terrorists and preserving relative peace. But NATO isn’t just about big guns. It’s about big guns that create safe spaces for democratic activity and economic prosperity. America exported $575 billion in goods and services to the European Union in 2018. NATO enables that.
Alliances also serve our purposes precisely because they ensure American interests will be advanced without the need for direct American action or presence. Australia, for example, has long been America’s Pacific partner in addressing humanitarian crises such as refugee flows and in countering aggression that undercuts our international order. The Australian-led peacekeeping force in East Timor in 2000 and its growing naval deterrence of China are two examples.
Or consider Colombia, which, after decades of American security support, is now a prosperous democracy committed to opposing our regional adversaries and supporting American friends in Latin America.
This brings us back to the Kurds.
The Kurds are pro-American, with a well-trained fighting force that has been a crucial enemy of Islamic State. They have also fought Syria’s tyrant Bashar Assad.
Thus, our alliance checks two forces of anti-American authoritarianism for the price of a small U.S. troop presence and some military aid.
By maintaining and cultivating alliances, we advance our national interests with a lighter footprint.
Trump wants to spend less time, money, and manpower dealing with the world’s problems. The best way to do that is through strong alliances. The worst thing to do is to abandon our allies. But that’s just what he has just done to the Kurds.
