Analyzing and rejecting hegemonic missteps is not mutually exclusive with affirming hegemony is a net force for good. US leadership promotes human rights, education, and health---the Chinese alternative is much worse.

Today’s restrainers similarly seek to capitalize on the suffering and difficulties associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the broader fight against terrorism, when they argue for the withdrawal of the remaining U.S. forces from these and other conflicts.11 Restrainers, however, often conflate the initial decision to intervene at all with how a conflict is subsequently managed or how eventually to withdraw. These are different policy decisions. Indeed, one can be critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and how the war was managed – while also believing that Washington should retain a modest U.S. military presence to help prevent a return of the Islamic State and to counter the influence of Iran. Restrainers have also attempted to leverage the Great Recession and the current economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic to incite populist passions.12 They do this by falsely suggesting that defense spending is the primary source of the federal deficit and debt.13 Defense spending is near post-World War II lows in terms of percentage of U.S. gross domestic product and percentage of federal spending. Restrainers consistently paint existing and potential conflicts and U.S. military deployments with the same brush, warning of another “forever war.”14 However, not every conflict leads to an interminable quagmire. Even the so-called War on Terror, despite its headaches, so far has helped prevent another major foreign terrorist attack on the United States, which many had predicted to be inevitable after 9/11. The term “forever war” is itself curious. History, unfortunately, is a forever war – the chronicle of states’ struggles with their enemies. To be sure, one can write a truly wondrous history of human achievement. But sadly, as the Spanish writer George Santayana observed, “only the dead have seen the end of war.”15 Restrainers operate under the mistaken assertion that the world would be a safer or better place if U.S. influence would simply recede.16 The 20th century tells another story. As the historian Robert Kagan argued in his 2012 book The World America Made, the U.S.-led world order has heralded a global rise in liberalism and human rights, better education and health, greater wealth, and more access to information.17 Equally puzzling is the notion that the world’s problems and conflicts are of little consequence to the United States.18 What happens abroad inevitably affects Americans at home. Al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks despite America’s best efforts to steer clear of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was and is based. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor despite Washington’s best efforts to stay out of the fray. Isolationists initially blocked then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt from providing greater support to an embattled Britain, and millions of lives were lost from not confronting German leader Adolf Hitler sooner.19 The best way to protect American interests is to engage internationally and maintain a well-designed, forward-deployed military presence alongside allies and partners. As Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell have noted, U.S. deployments of varying magnitude along what they call the “unquiet frontier” that stretches from the Baltic Sea to the South China Sea counter the rise of revisionist powers such as China, Russia, and Iran.20 Support for U.S. allies, coupled with a U.S. military presence in forward bases, helps deter gathering threats.21 When Washington plays an outsized role in shaping and maintaining the international rules-based order, Americans and people around the world are safer and more prosperous. That is what the United States has done, for the most part, since World War II. And that leadership role has helped ensure that global conflicts such as the Cold War did not erupt into devastating military confrontations. Admittedly, the U.S.-led international order certainly has not prevented all wars. There have been costly mistakes along the way. But responding to those mistakes by ignoring persistent threats and drawing down U.S. military posture for its own sake would be shortsighted and dangerous. Those who welcome the retreat of U.S. power have yet to fully answer one important question: What happens after the United States goes home? When the British Empire unraveled after World War II, the United States stepped into the void, promoting an international system based on the rule of law. Who will follow the United States? The alternatives are frightening. Russia is far less equipped to become a superpower but would be a particularly predatory, corrupt, and avaricious one under Russian President Vladimir Putin. China, for its part, actively seeks global leadership. The Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian hostility to democracy; weaponization of data;22 human rights abuses;23 support for rogue states such as Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan;24 threats to Hong Kong and Taiwan;25 militarization of the South China Sea;26 and massive theft of intellectual property27 should all serve as warnings about a Chinese-led world order. And let us all dispense with the fiction that the European Union could be an alternative to the United States in defending democracies. U.S. power, therefore, must be retained, not restrained.