The U.S. Role on the Global Stage

The political thinkers of the Enlightenment, on whose ideas the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution are based, believed that no authority except force ultimately restrains nations, just as civil society’s implicit force restrains individuals. The superior power of a single state or a balance among great powers is as close as humankind can come to peace. If a beneficent state is dominant, the region or the world benefits. But in the contrary circumstance, a region or the world suffers, as Europe did for most of the centuries from Rome’s fall until Allied victory in World War II.

The United States has been the superior global power since 1945, challenged until recently only by the Soviet Union, which possessed military but not economic strength. But China’s large and growing economic power allows it to build armed forces that aim to surpass America’s. This tests not only the United States’ unsought position as the world’s great power, but also the liberal international order that has been the principal U.S. foreign policy and security objective for a century.