To start with, the US is bound by various treaties to defend dozens of countries. Beyond that, there are various countries that have consistently stood by the US. Britain, Australia and Japan being some good examples.
Australians have fought in every American war since Australian independence, including the current war in Iraq. Suppose one day Australia is attacked. Should we repay their loyalty by telling them, tough shit?
To everyone who thinks an American withdrawal from the world would be a good thing, I would say that you should think long and hard about what that world would look like.
Nature abhors a vacuum. In the event of an American withdrawal from the world, someone would fill that power vacuum. There’s really not any one country that could dominate the entire world and so instead, we would see a variety of regional powers.
The EU would most likely hold together. They are all liberal democracies with deeply intertwined economies and through NATO, have long been aligned for mutual defense. The rest of the world however would get very messy.
In the Middle East, Iran would become the dominant power. I really don’t know what to say to anyone who doesn’t understand why that would be a bad thing. Just as I don’t know what to say to someone who doesn’t understand why Iran taking over Iraq would be a bad thing.
Also, Israel most likely would not survive without American support. The idea of abandoning Israel, offends me for a variety of reasons, beginning with, in modern history, the US has had no more loyal ally than Israel. Sure, loyalty to the US is in their own best interest, but at the same time, the Israeli people are, by and large, genuinely grateful for what the US has done for them.
Beyond that, the wild cards are Russia, China and India. All three have rapidly growing economies and in the case of Russia, you have a history of imperialism and a megalomaniac “leader†who’s a KGB guy who wants to return Russia to it’s past “glory.â€
How any of those three countries would respond to an American exodus from the world is in anybody’s guess. What isn’t a guess though is, a lot of people would get VERY nervous. The kind of nervousness that leads to the building of armies and once you have an army, it becomes very tempting to use it.
As just one example, take the Pacific. At the moment, pretty much all of the major players are perfectly happy with buying and selling between countries, making money and generally being one big happy family.
That could however change drastically in the event of a US withdrawal from the Pacific. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but it would happen.
Indian has a very capable navy. Capable enough to make various countries nervous. Australia being one good example. In the here and now, it doesn’t much matter. India could attack Australia, but doing so would mean war with the US. A war that would see the entire Indian navy on the bottom of the Pacific in short order. IF India was stupid enough to escalate to the nuclear level, then the US would turn India into a parking lot. They know that and so, peace is maintained.
Absence the protection of the US, Australia would quite naturally look toward Britain. The Royal Navy is not to be trifled with, but at the same time, Britain is no longer a world power and is not likely to ever be so again. Therefore, Australia would have to take a serious look at increasing their own defense spending. That exact same seriously thinking would be taking place in Seoul and Tokyo, among other places.
There’s also the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Japan, South Korea and Australia could all go nuclear if they wanted to. Japan could do it in very short order. On their own and faced with nuclear capable neighbors, all three countries would be stupid not to develop a nuclear deterrent of their own.
The problem there is, the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that some idiot is going to decide to use them.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just the sneak preview. Compared to modern thermonuclear warheads, Hiroshima was the atomic equivalent of a busted lip. A nuclear exchange between two or more countries would kill millions, if not tens of millions of people. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn’t take that many nuclear detonations to effectively shutdown the planet.
Earth would heal itself, in time, but we’d all be dead first.
The US is not without flaws and therefore, our foreign policy is not without flaws. At the same time though, I can imagine a world far worse than the one we have today.
I would also add that the US saved the world from the two great evils of the twentieth century and hasn’t asked for a whole lot in return.
I challenge anyone here to show me any country in history that has ever done what the US did after the Second World War. Not only did we help rebuild Europe and Japan, but after we had done so, we allowed the people of the respective countries to take over and run them as they saw fit.
I see red whenever I hear someone talking about American imperialism and the reason I do is, the US is not and never has been imperialistic. If we were, then Germany and Japan would have an American governor and anything of value in the country would be placed on a ship and sent back to the US.
I could say a great deal more and I’d like to address the issue of healthcare for illegal immigrants, but given the length of this post, I think I’ll shut up now.
I wouldn’t want for people to think I’m channeling Brek.
*Last part is a little ghost of RB past joke.*