A persistent strain of isolationism courses through the American bloodstream.

Proponents generally cite George Washington in his farewell address to the nation, claiming that he warned against “entangling alliances.”  He didn’t actually quite say that. Most of his address was introspection about his life of service, warnings about encroachment by one of the three branches of government into another, and fervent warnings against political parties. As for alliances, he said that the United States must faithfully keep her existing treaties with Great Britain and Spain. But, he said, enter into future treaties with caution; no alliance can be permanent. As Churchill would say more than a century later, there are no permanent alliances, only permanent interests. Washington pointed to the oceans that protect our hemisphere from spillover of Europe’s bloodletting. He said that America is in a position to “choose peace or war,” that “belligerent nations” would think twice before threatening the United States. By maintaining a strong defense, we might occasionally make “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”

Those distances soon began to shrink. President Thomas Jefferson, who did not want a standing military at all, built a navy and sent it halfway around the world to crush the Barbary pirates preying on American merchantmen on the high seas. James Monroe, our fifth president, sent the U.S. Navy to blockade Africa and catch slavers; the African Slave Trade Patrol continued until 1861, when it was called home for the Civil War.

With the War to End All Wars raging in Europe, Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Then the Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted -- the Germans were offering Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico to Mexico if it would join the war on Germany’s side. Two million American soldiers shipped out to European shores, and another two million were on the way when the war ended. Over a hundred thousand American troops did not come home -- killed in combat or by disease (the Spanish flu was as deadly as enemy bombs, bullets, and bayonets.)

World War I was ended by exhaustion and an armistice, not by a decisive victory. Inevitably, it resumed as World War II in less than two decades. Again, America stayed out of it until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, followed immediately by Germany’s declaring war on the United States. This time the war ended in total victory by the Allies and unconditional surrender by Germany and Japan. Despite wars breaking out continually in some corner of the world ever since--two of them, Korea, and Vietnam, fought by American troops -- isolationists still clamored for America to withdraw into its fortress at home. “We can’t be the world’s policeman!”

Okay, so who would you rather have as the world’s policeman?

Because somebody will be.

You might not like it, but it will always be as it always has been: the guy with the biggest army -- the guy strong enough to lay down the law. Nature abhors a vacuum; the absence of world order means world chaos. Many powers kept their world’s order at one time or another. They weren’t nice cops. All practiced slavery, some practiced human sacrifice, they controlled their subjects with brutality, their ships of state floated on seas of blood. No such thing as rights or civil liberties. There’s always another wannabe King of the Hill watching, an equal or rising power on the edges of the ruling empire, waiting for the top cop’s sword to grow dull.

The United States of America has held that position, Policeman of the World, since the end of the Second World War. We didn’t choose the job, didn’t seek it, we were just the strongest of those left standing in the free world when the war ended. Before the smoke even cleared, our erstwhile ally Stalin was already moving to seize an empire, reneging on promises to liberate the countries his army occupied in the course of defeating Nazi Germany, liquidating, imprisoning or relocating millions who stood in his way. For America’s European allies, the war was a Pyrrhic victory -- financially exhausted, they watched their empires collapse. The Soviet Union, which had been kept alive and in the war by American largess now trained, sponsored, and encouraged Communist revolutionaries in the former colonies to seize power and/or lead liberation movements.

By default, the United States of America became the leader of the free world and top cop in the West. Although President Harry Truman allowed an unmanaged military demobilization after V-J Day that would prove catastrophic in five years, America still had the strongest economy in the world at the end of the war. Europe lay in ruins with millions of their citizens interred in mass graves. Our homeland was virtually untouched.

Now America is abdicating its leadership role. Our culture is degenerating, our military power hollowing out, the shadow of a Dark Age looms. A new Axis of Evil -- China-Russia-Iran-North Korea -- is muscling up and watching us like a pack of jackals measuring a tiring buffalo.

Consider the alternatives. Look at the cultures of those who seek right now to replace America as Policeman of the World. Do you like what you see? Is that what we want for our grandchildren?

If it’s not, we’d better get a grip on ourselves and renew the United States of America as founded: faithful to a Constitution based on Judeo-Christian principles and values, a country and people morally and fiscally sound.

If we accept that America must continue to be the World’s Policeman simply because there is no one else in the free world capable of doing it, then we have got to do it. Our armed forces have to be so strong and so ready to fight that nobody will want to mess with us and everybody will want to be on our side.

Si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war.) The Fourth Century Roman Flavius Vegetius Renatus, observing with dismay the decline of the Roman legion, was not the first nor the last in history to express the axiom of “peace through strength.”

Washington advised that money invested to prepare for war will prevent greater expense “to repel it.”  Benjamin Franklin would say that is the stitch that saves nine.

So what’s our state of readiness now? We’re not. We have a Woke Department of Defense obsessed with “DEI” (letters better arranged as “DIE) and CRT. Meanwhile, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are building massive sea, air and land forces. They are at war with us -- the shooting just hasn’t started yet.

Weakness is a provocaton, and our enemies see us as weak. If we would have peace, we had better get on a war footing now.  Otherwise, as Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “War cannot be avoided; it can  only be postponed to the other's advantage." If we would keep peace, we must wear that Policeman of the World badge.  As Thucydides said,  The strong do what they can. The weak endure what they must.

Image: Public Domain