Should the USA continue to "police" the world?

Nope. Taking us out of the role of being the mediator and enforcer of the world will do many things for us. It will take away a massive waste of money both in direct costs as well as indirect costs. It will take away an avenue of corruption. It will stop giving the CIA a way to interfere around the world to push whatever warped agenda they have.

Get us out of the UN as well. The UN is part of the problem with us wasting so much money on exactly this sort of thing.

Yes. After all, someone has to do it.

Yes. The world has evil people like Putin and highly-paid idiots like Tucker Carlson who support him. Having a deficit should not be an excuse not to police the world. Fix the deficit another way.

Well, America always knows best, right? ;)

“policing” is a strange choice of words to label unending military interventionism and staging of coups in furtherance and maintainance of your global haegemony. Make no mistake: this “policing” is done for your own benefit. Any positive effects for others are at best useful circumstances for public justification.

It’s a muddy mix that I can’t untangle so I don’t try any more. Should the US not have gotten into WW2 to stop the Holocaust? Should it not help Ukraine along with its NATO allies such as Germany? On the other hand, has its intervention not made conditions in South America much worse? Shouldn’t it have stayed out of Vietnam?

Phil Ochs wrote a great song in the 1960s called Cops of The World against interventionism. I loved it and still love it. However, I don’t think strict isolationism is possible in the world today.

The US and many other countries play heavy on the world stage. They all need to be responsible in policing activities in the world as we share the same planet and the technology keeps us all close.

^^Agree!

The US is the muscle behind the UN. We are pretty important in that role. That affords is a little slack to police things in our own interest. It’s not always best but it is what it is. We can’t let countries like China take over the world.

https://youtu.be/3ww4ofe0v70

@janbb I find it an unfair comparison to make WW2 close to some of the others. We didn’t start WW2 and only really got involved after Japan attacked us. I’m not for isolationism, but we get involved where and in ways we don’t need to be. As you mentioned, the many debacles in South America as well as Viet Nam. But likewise we didn’t need to be in Afghanistan, we didn’t need to be flexing military might throughout the Middle East and Africa as we have. Even Ukraine – we didn’t need to provide the vast amount of support that we did. NATO and Europe certainly didn’t, and it is in their neighborhood. We have given pretty much more than all other countries combined.

@seawulf575 I think for once we’re in agreement. Why are you picking an argument?

This was a reasonable question – 20 years ago. Now it’s a rehtorical smokescreen for pro-Russian propagandists and US right wingers trying to leverage the “debt crisis” to prop up their own rotten agendas.

American intervention will end when individual countries and regional alliances build real military capability to defend their own interests. Europe whined about “US militarism” for 30 years while hiding behind the NATO shield, tying their economies to Russian energy supplies, and letting their own militaries shrink to insignificance. Like everything else, when it comes to defense you don’t get what you don’t pay for.

So @JLoon I’m a pro-Russian US right winger trying to prop up my own rotten agenda? (whatever that is?)
When I’m ALL for isolationism and NOT running the country broke funding everyone else on the planet while taking care of our own so we don’t have another 9/11. or endless wars in the Middle East. But I’m the ”Bad “person here?!

Some people seem to like to take astronomical leaps of assumptions about things or people they don’t even know.

I think the us could back down at being the world’s hall monitor,but should stay in the UN
Plus didn’t the us enter Afghanistan,an Iraq under a Republican government??

The world can be policed more cheaply and more effectively through diplomacy and the UN than through military action. But if Putin’s actions and Ukraine’s resistance have reminded us of anything it is that freedom and truth are not empty words but have a value that is beyond price.

@ragingloli What would you rather call our intrusion into other countries and cultures?

@Dig_Dug – Oh you’re so right.

Some people really do ”... like to make astronomical assumptions about people and things they don’t even know.” 0_o

@JLoon And here I “assumed” you would say something silly. lol! :D

@seawulf575 At first I thought you may have been mocking, but you seem to be serious so I am agreeing with you here!

Should the US be reimbursed for policing the planet?

That would help with the debt/deficit. Peace and stability are good for most business worldwide.

How about the States start policing the States first?

@rebbel Now, that’s a good idea!

@rebbel they shoot every unarmed black man they deem as a threat.

@rebbel Good idea! Now you’re talking!

Military force has always been a blunt tool. US economic heft and diplomatic system has always done more, more cheaply than the military. But as Ukraine reminds us, we still need to actually use our weapons for good reasons. Ukraine should be a no-brainer of a war to support. You are only weary of it because the country has already been at war for 20 years. Those wars were ill conceived and morally dubious.

So what is the tipping point in the Ukraine war? Russia bombs them until..what? X amount of people die? X amount of money spent? X amount of time goes by? Someone says: “Okay we give up!” What the hell are we doing about this injustice? Just sit back and watch what happens or do something to stop this. Hey Russia what do you want? Or hey Russia stop or we blow you out into the stratosphere!

Ukraine’s infrastructure is being very badly destroyed. Russia seems prepared for a long war. Even if Ukraine wins, they may have a battered broken country to return to. Russia has less to lose. I don’t know what the end game is, but we can spend billions of weapons every year and the outcome might still be Russia winning.

This question really wasn’t about the Ukrainian war in particular anyway it seemed to morph into that and it wasn’t suppose to.. It was about the world in general. The US isn’t actually “policing” in the Ukraine.. ummm since ya know, bombs dropping everywhere. You guys push my buttons and I better watch that. I may go nuclear. lol!

@janbb Not trying to pick an argument. Sorry if it seemed so.

The war goes until Russia loses. They are out classed and out willed. Their only hope is a failing of western resolve. To Russia, Ukraine wis turning out to be another Afghanistan which was another Japan. Russia’s authoritarian leaders have more instability within their empire than they project outwardly, and their wars are more about internal issues than military or material necessity, but the sycophantic nature of most cults of personality and dictatorships means that the leaders are usually poorly informed about the military’s actual odds of winning.

NO

The U.S. should do less on its own initiative and more in conjunction with the U.N and with its allies in Europe and Asia.

No easy answer. I want the US to help when people are being slaughtered and women are being treated like less than human.

I wish I could be a pacifist, but with the lunatic leaders out there you have to fight abuse and violence with violence.

We are the Democracy with the big military. Other countries can and should help, and they often do, but they are generally much smaller than us.

The premise of your claim is incorrect.

The debt is not “out of control”.

Government debt is not a real debt. There’s no collection agency or bailiff knocking on the door of Congress. There is no possibility of default. It is almost entirely internal (“owed” to itself). It is also trivially serviceable, since it’s all in the denomination controlled and issued by the Federal government.

To quote economist Stephanie Kelton: “The national debt is nothing more than a historical record of all the dollars that were spent by government but not taxed back.”

As for the US “policing” the world. It doesn’t and never has. The US is a bandit on the world stage. It materially and diplomatically supports most of the world’s authoritarian regimes. It has murdered millions of people since the second world war.

I wish there were someone policing the world. because the US state would be the prime criminal and held to account.

@Kropotkin I don’t remember which country you are in. Do you feel the US was always the prime criminal in the last 200 years? Or, just recently?

@JLeslie I’m in the former gold medallist country of international banditry: the United Kingdom.

I’d say the US has been the gold medallist since the 1960s at least.

@Kropotkin I know that he entire debt is not foreign owed and much is recouped through taxation, (even though it is constantly being added to) but we do owe some of it to foreign countries. Although these number do obviously fluctuate always, at the time of this printing we owed roughly $4,314,900,000. to other countries. https://people.howstuffworks.com/5-united-states-debt-holders.htm
And you and others seem to disagree with my terminology of “policing” but I still believe the US has been and most likely will continue to police the world no matter what word you want to use. We stick our nose into so many countries and are forced into so many confrontations with our never ending wars (or to coin a Vietnam term, POLICE ACTION) I’m not sure what the heck else you’re going to call it?!

@Dig_Dug
It is called “imperialism”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism Nope, not really. This is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_action This term or Counter-Insurgency are MUCH more accurate to what the US has been doing since Korea.

@Dig_Dug Most countries hold each others treasury notes and bonds in varying amounts. The US also holds Chinese and Japanese “debt”.

Every country with its own central bank can print two types of paper with a number on it. The first type is called “money”, which slowly devalues over time from price inflation. You can go shopping with it.

The second type is a bond. You can buy it with money but can’t go shopping with it. It pays interest over time or after some designated amount of time, which counters price inflation to an extent.

If, for example, a foreign government has a lot of dollars, but doesn’t want to buy anything with those dollars, it may prefer to buy US treasury bonds with those dollars. It then becomes a scary holder of “US debt”.

@Dig_Dug
“or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.”
is exactly what the colonies are doing.
Toppling unfriendly governments, and installing and propping up friendly regimes in their place ensures access to resources, like the obvious oil, and rare earth metals, and access to foreign markets to sell your products and services, and to exploit cheap labour.
It also ensures the safety of trade routes to the same.

@ragingloli We barely have political and economical control of our own country let alone others. I think these other countries are controlling themselves with our policing and military aid. We helped topple the Berlin wall, I don’t remember us taking control of Germany? How much control do we have in the Middle East, Vietnam, Japan or Korea? A whole lot of policing going on that costed a whole lot of money and I don’t see any more stars on our flag yet!

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

The US has been playing this game from it’s inception. I’ll try to find a link for this, but I read a run down on the web somewhere “US Military Interventions 1783–1900” . Mind boggling run down our activity all over the world, and casualties lists. Not even touching on the big wars or Indian Wars, just what used to be refered to as brush fire wars. A few instances are a naval war against Greek pirates in the Mediterranean Ocean in the 1830s which for some reason involved parties going ashore and burning villages on some of the Greek islands. A punitive operation against a tribe in West Africa, the “Fish People”, where Marines and Sailors spent three weeks marching thru jungle being ambushed by these people and killing them in return. It goes on and on. We never met a war we didn’t like, and if we couldn’t find a real one we’d go looking for one. And we critique the Brits? We wanted to be like them when we grow up. Still do to this day.
,

And speaking of the Brits and our efforts to appear big and bad all over the globe, during the operations against the Greek privateers I mentioned, a man of war was sent over there by the president, I believe it was Andrew Jackson at the time, a belligerent jack ass anyway, and this was the biggest war ship ever built at the time. 180 guns aboard, believe it was called the USS President or the USS United States. When it sailed thru the Straights of Gibraltar even the British were awed by this vessel. Somewhat of an overkill for some pissant privateers but we love to display our new toys when in world Coppers mode.