The Limits of Power

Endless War

The “peace dividend” that Americans expected after the Cold War never materialized. Instead, the U.S. embarked on a continuing, seemingly endless, series of wars, with boots on the ground or bombs in the air, or both, in the Caribbean, Persian Gulf, Eastern Europe, Africa and Central Asia. By the 1990s, America was “the indispensable nation,” responsible for managing a “Pax Americana” called “globalization.” America used soft means of persuasion but resorted to violence when it deemed that was necessary to defend its allies in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Defense Department did not, however, take responsibility for actually defending U.S. soil. Investigations after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed that no government department or institution took that duty. Instead, the Defense Department focused on applying force to make sure events in far-flung places did not disturb the American way of life. And what is that way of life? Freedom, of course – though no one has really defined what freedom means.

America has taken on the expansion and defense of freedom worldwide as its raison d’être. Reinhold Niebuhr, ...