War is the primary constitutional responsibility of the US Federal Government. As such we would do well to pay it some heed.
There has been some debate regarding the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Leftist critics have demanded that the US government stop sending aid; those of the Republican party that it spend more.
Both are, however, in more general agreement. Those who condemn now, did not with regards to Ukraine. I speak of the leftists, because I am perhaps closest to that mentality. You are pliant. You think we can be good world police or bad.
This was the moral of Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzeziński, writing about the second Iraq War. He believed that after the fall of the Berlin Wall we had a chance to rule the world for good. But because of certain mistakes we are failing. That is to say, the problem is not one of principle, but details.
That our world is globalized, so that what anyone does anywhere can affect us materially, and "foreign" and "domestic" are irrelevant to policy discussion: this is his mentality, and I suspect it is yours.
What I would like to inform the reader, is that this is imperialism. The latin verb imperō means to command or govern. In English usage, Empire refers to rulership over one or multiple lands which are extensive. Therefore "imperialism" should rightly refer to the ideology of centralization. That is to say, the more of the world under a single ruler, the better. The difference is not between good rule or bad rule, but rule or no rule.
One might ask: does the behavior of the US government manifest this ideology? Could it really be said to wish to rule? It does not demand a tribute, as the Persian emperors did. It does not explicitly deny the sovereignty of other countries. It does not, in short, treat the rest of the world as it does the states.
I would respond historically. The ruler's characteristic is violence for order. If a private person kills another, that is murder: versus execution. Never the twain shall meet. And regardless of the chaos which the federal government creates in the world; it never calls it anything but what it must to be legitimate in this same sense.
What I consider more notable, is my own sentiment: if the US government withdraws its presence, the world will end. More to the point, I am afraid to test that. I imagine that I am not alone.
I imagine that the only way that we can become true critics is if we accept that what we consider good and bad about US foreign policy are inextricably tied: that both are imperialism. Only then can we begin to weigh the record of this world police.
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