Correct for the most part. Yes, some people put the blame on the UN, but that's debatable. I agree that most people would nod their heads to the fact that the United States should do something more, especially if another genocide occurs. I myself am not unaware of the overwhelming contribution that they can provide in any crisis. But what specifically that would entail is much more complicated than merely believing that powerful military equates to success in
1. preventing such occurrences from happening in the first place
2. saving lives during the actual crisis
In Rwanda, a study from Foreign Affairs ("Rwanda in Retrospect": A Hard Look at Intervention, pg 94) from 2000 reveals that even if the U.S. had intervened (with any size force), they wouldn't have been able to save even half of the victims (some hundred thousand people), let alone prevented the genocide as most people think is the case.
Interesting, and I'll have to take a look at the study when I have more time, but aren't you sort of... supporting my point, a little? I mean, saving a quarter or a third of the victims or whatever is significant as all hell. Are you saying that the U.S.'s military strength doesn't matter because other militaries of lesser strength could have done the same?
It depends. One thing to note is that foreign intervention can have unintended consequences that can actually result in making the situation worse.
Certainly true. Iraq taught us that, if nothing else,
we can get
our fingers burned playing with these kinds of things. Hopefully it lasts longer than the lesson we got from Vietnam.
"Shouldn't we even try?"
The U.S. and other countries can try, but the U.S. hasn't exactly been a particularly strong leader in terms of:
1. leading the debates on policies addressing humanitarian intervention
2. diplomatic efforts
You (obviously) have a point, but I think that the popular view of the US as having... diplomatic problems, shall we say, the world over is a bit flawed. No, we're not particularly well liked at the moment by populations of other developed countries, but in the places where we're most likely to have to intervene, I've always gotten the impression that it's somewhat of a different story, and really, that's what matters. Our diplomatic problems in the middle east (which, to the best of my knowledge, stem largely from our position vis-a-vis Israel and can't be rectified) notwithstanding, I've gotten (not that I've studied international politics or policies as hard as someone debating on the subject should have) the impression that most third-world countries still have a very '90s view of the US as the people who will come and save them if **** goes down.
Take, for example, a story I heard on NPR a while back when Libya was doing its thing. The reporter was interviewing an man whose house had been bombed (or someone's house had; I started listening in the middle of the story). The man said that although he was sad about the bombings, he realized that the U.S. had to do what it had to do to get rid of Qadaffi. The plane may or may not have been American, because from what I understand we pulled back and the British and French were more active in the actual bombings towards the end, but the idea-- and it was presented as sort of part of the zeitgeist in Tripoli at the time-- was that when you're getting the **** bombed out of you, for good or for ill, it's always the US. When Egypt was having its own little revolution, there was a fairly large hullabaloo about exactly what position the US was going to take on affairs over there. That was a bigger deal than the U.N. or whoever; it was expected of us to take the lead on condemning the undemocratic system. Like it or not, the Arab spring looked to the US to lead the world in sanctioning it, and although we again did an imperfect job--Saudi Arabia--it was clearly our imperfect job to do.
I have minimal knowledge of the U.S.'s participation in Libya but I know that there is a divide between people as to whether or not they were acting like a "leader" in that event. In terms of military power, revolutions are a whole different ball of wax to deal compared to wars; they are highly sensitive events where intervention is not always a black and white issue (i.e. black = intervene and save lives v.s. white = don't intervene and let people die)
We certainly led in the beginning (it was almost all us for a little while there) and while we were careful for political reasons to let other militaries take bats at the apple, I'm fairly sure that in terms of material we did more than the rest of the world combined. Revolutions are different, certainly, but again, the Arab Spring shows that it's not impossible to back the right horse, and that the expense of doing so designates the US as the go-to backer.
"Policeman" is impossible for me, it is a title that belongs to forces that uphold the law in municipalities, small towns and cities but not the world - you seem to acknowledge that it's too strong of a word for one state to represent alone in terms of the international community. Now, as for the U.S. being a "leader," I think that there is still a significant counter-argument to be made to the possibility of that idea, namely that there is widespread disapproval (and I would even go as far as saying contempt) of the idea of the U.S. as a "leader" of other states in any way (that contempt coming from other states, an easy example is China).
I'm more or less comfortable calling the US the "Policeman" of the world, because we're the ones doing the brunt of the policing. Do we lead China in policing efforts? No, because China takes no part in policing efforts. Nor does Russia. Do we lead Europe? To some extent, yes. In any situation requiring significant military force (and as you've made clear, not all situations requiring policing do require said force) it's inarguable, in my mind, that Europe is going to look to America, with its admirable/insane military budget, to do the heavy lifting; they're not all that opposed to American-led efforts when it saves them money, as we saw (sorry to keep whipping this horse) in Libya. What I'm saying is that we don't have to lead the world to lead policing, because the countries that would absolutely refuse to be led by us are kind of ***holes anyways, and wouldn't piss on a developing country if it was on fire.
EDIT: Again, sorry if any of this has been reiterated. When I have time I'll read through the other posts. In the meantime a quick summary of your counter-arguments to any of the above arguments would suffice as opposed to a full explanation.
Actually, while I have been getting mostly reiterated arguments in the last couple pages, you bring up relatively new points, with enough detail that responding specifically is definitely called for.
