A World Without America Revealed Through President Obama

 

I hope all those people throughout the world who complained for years how the United States was behind all the strife and warfare in the world are happy and are enjoying a world more to their liking. They claimed that wherever there was war, wherever there was trouble, wherever the world was falling apart, there you would find America and that was because America was the cause of what was wrong with the world. For the last six year we have had a world where America did not answer the alarm, did not take the lead, did not come when trouble settled in and made life impossible and the world started to unravel. President Obama called it “Leading from behind.” What he meant was that America would not answer the call unless others took the lead role. Did you notice any difference? We have.

 

The first difference was that even with America holding back she was amongst the first to show up with supplies and manpower whenever the problem was so large that it could not be ignored. Such as the 2011 Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant meltdown or the 2010 Haiti earthquake where the United States was either the first or second nation to be there and set up health care and other hospital services as well as search and rescue and virtually anything else which was required to help. Fortunately for the world the United States was still there in the lead when natural disasters struck. But for what President Obama referred to as “Manmade disasters,” the United States held her hand and waited for somebody else to rush in and for a special invitation before doing anything. The United States was not going to rush all over the globe putting out fires and responding to every emergency leaving the world to face its own problems, especially when the world as a force of nature was not the cause, we the human beings were the cause. Look around and see if this is the kind of world you want, the kind of world you desire. Probably the best example of what a world without America will become is plainly evidenced by ISIS which has metastasized and like a cancer has spread well beyond merely infecting much of Syria and Iraq and now spreading across Northern Africa, especially in dysfunctional Libya and now having Boko Haram claiming fealty to ISIS has now started to spread its terrorist claws beyond Nigeria and into Cameroon, Chad and beyond. The Islamist terrorist who struck the Paris kosher deli Hyper Cacher claimed to have ties to ISIS and there have been signs that ISIS has begun to infiltrate Gaza, Judea and Samaria with plans on replacing Hamas and Fatah and taking over the terror war with Israel. The fight against ISIS has really displayed the problem of a world where the United States does not take the lead.

 

The United States was still the first responder but just not as active as in the past as she was only willing to supply some of the air cover and air strikes aimed at supporting the Kurds and Iraqi military and in gathering a coalition, something the United States demanded be done before she would even join in giving air support missions. What is missing is having the United States supply the lion’s share of the fighting forces. Now in facing off against the threat of ISIS we have the entire world, especially those in the crosshairs of ISIS such as Saudi Arabia all waiting for the United States to provide troops on the ground before they will even consider sending their forces to fight. Instead they stand poised to defend their land should ISIS come knocking at their border but are loathe to fight ISIS where they are instead of waiting for ISIS to threaten their lands and people. What is wrong with such a strategy? Well, first off that means you will wait until ISIS feels they have the forces to take you on, on your own soil. That means allowing ISIS to grow in strength, numbers, equipment and training all before you take a stand and even then you wait for their assault, never would you go and strike them where they live, just as long as they do not invade your home. The exception thus far being Jordan, who is responding to the brutal and inhumane execution of their pilot by burning him alive in a steel cage by ramping up their air attacks against ISIS and is considering placing forces in the field to fight ISIS and destroy them. The United States President has promised to weaken ISIS and degrade their abilities and eventually weaken them to the point that the forces against ISIS will have the upper hand and will vanquish them. The notable part is the lack of American forces on the ground for any part of this conflict; the world is on its own.

 

There is more to this new order in the world that should frighten the average citizen who lives anywhere in the world where the norm had been the United States taking the lead and doing that which needed to be done, that world may have passed on by forever going forward. The United States has her own difficulties of which supporting an army spread throughout the globe and fighting in every theater even those which do not make the daily news has passed. Facing a monumental debt which can no longer be ignored and must be trimmed down, even if at the cost of a military force capable of being the world’s policeman thus the United States may be facing become more like the European nations and guarding their closest interests and hoping the other problems remain far from her shores. There is no new sheriff and the old sheriff has handed in his badge and retired, or at least taken a long holiday. For at least the next two years the world is going to have to find its own way and hold off the bad guys all by themselves. And to make matters worse, the next President of the United States might have a similar view of riding to the aid of every last cry for help as too high a price or even not America’s problem. There are Republicans as well as Democrats who feel the world will just have to get along without the United States to lean upon for support every time an ill wind blows by. Rand Paul is a noninterventionist and we know very little about Hillary Clinton or Senator Elizabeth Warren when it comes to foreign policy though we know that Hillary Clinton is more proactive than President Obama has been, though that should not be taken as too much comfort and almost anything would be more proactive than lead from behind Obama. We very well may have seen the end of Pax Americana and be entering a new phase for the world, the world beyond American interventions, so how do you like that idea?

 

We foresee some real problems and difficulties as should the United States step down from the role of leader of the free world, then who does the free world turn to to take up the role? It might be possible that the most outspoken leader of a Western power might be Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. But this role is not a normative role and Canada will be getting a new Prime Minister in the upcoming elections, or at least that is what the pundits have predicted. We probably should not look to Canada to become the new leading nation with troops spread all over the globe in a leading role of protecting the realm from all harms. Canada has paid an outstanding role as best ally and we will put our shoulders to the stone along with the rest of the world and even be one of the leaders to speak up, but act as the savior of the world, probably not. Then there’s Britannia which once ruled the waves, but perhaps her last stand was her holding out against the Nazi assaults long enough to provide the United States with a jumping off point in the war in Europe during the last world gone mad war known as World War II. Even in that war the British relied upon every ship, boat, raft and rubber dingy to retrieve her embattled troops from Dunkirk in what became known as the Mosquito Armada and which very likely saved the war for the British as they could have lost the better part of their military had they not been pulled off by an armada which included far more civilian craft than anything else. For those needing reference, May 27 through June 4, 1940, the “Mosquito Armada” had managed to evacuate 338,226 allied troops while leaving almost all of their equipment abandoned on the beaches at Dunkirk. For more reading this is a good reference on what was officially referred to as Operation Dynamo. I guess we might look to either the European Union (EU) or possibly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) though the latter often was simply another term for the United States. We could look to the United Nations (UN) though I have my reservations about troops wearing baby-blue helmets operating in an actual war zone as they would more likely make grand targets more than anything else. Apparently there is no ready and capable replacement for the role the United States has played for approaching a century, some might say since she entered World War I breaking the standoff which had raged for years with horrific tolls on both sides, tolls which were exceeded in World War II which makes any prospect of a World War III one of the most frightening prospects of all times.

 

So where does the world go if the United States has retired from their role of Guardian of the Realm, so to speak. Obviously there is no other Guardian of the Realm ready to step forward and the major coordinated alliances such as NATO, EU, UN, SEATO or the Anglo Alliance (English Speaking Nations of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, and United States) which is an unofficial alliance of convenience made by speaking a similar language, many have noted the subtle differences and as was said by Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, or George Bernard Shaw depending on your preferences, “The United States and Britain are two nations separated by a common language.” The one thing which can be noted is that only one of the above entities is presumed to be empowered to settle any world problems which are brought before it, the UN. The EU and Anglo Alliance are more referred to as trade alliances which set up favorable treatment between nations for trade and commerce. SEATO and NATO have remained but is a treaty reliant on the powers of the United States largely and might still have sufficient bite as the United States is bound by treaty to come to these nations’ aid when called upon and theoretically this come to the aid part also presumably works in the opposite direction should the United States need assistance and saving from an attack on her shores. That brings us back to the United Nations and all one need ask is does anybody out there honestly believe the United Nations can be counted on to save the day? Us neither.

 

That returns everything to square one. Obviously the United States filled some massively large shoes which no other nation or group of nations seem able to or even willing to give it a go. That obviously means that the world is going to have to find some new way of opposing the ills which plague it from time to time and pray the United States gets out of bed after her slumber and puts on those unimaginably huge shoes and returns to guarding the gates against the barbarians and miscreants. In the meantime, the rest of the world will, by necessity, need to gird their collective loins and go forth and slay the trolls and ogres which threaten the peace and security of the nations of the world just in case the world is going to need to hold its own for the time being. The United States actually may have exhausted herself by the overextending its forces between Iraq and Afghanistan and need time to recuperate and renew her military. There is a chance that renewal of the American military might not be possible and the United States be relegated to playing just a supportive role and not take the fore on every charge going forward. I realize that is a sobering thought but it is a thought we must face just in case it becomes the reality with which we all must live. We may be facing not just a world without America but a future without America and that is the scariest thought of them all. This all depends on the next Presidential election and of all the candidates who have been discussed, not a one has what is needed if the United States is to raise back to her former glory and fulfill the role of Guardian of the Realm. There is one person we can recommend but alas they are not actually a politician, something which might be a recommendation for the next person to be President of the United States. Perhaps we should say the name but prudence says to remain quiet and hope his conscience wakens him to the call to come and repair what needs repair so that the world can once again depend on the United States to rescue those in need of rescue in times of peril. Without that hope the perils will only grow exponentially. One thing we learned, Hope and Change was not exactly what most of us thought it was and now we simply hope for a change back to the United States we once knew and often criticized and detested publically for her overbearance and brazen chutzpah, but now we have had our eyes forced open wide and glimpsed a view of a world without America, and do we like what we see, we do not and believe the vast majority agree with that view. Should the sleeping giant reawaken and return to that ever so difficult role, we must remember these times without America and welcome her lead rather than detest her greatness as her greatness is the world’s hope and we do not want that to change.

 

Beyond the Cusp