Public-opinion polling and the most important, most accurate polling of all—elections—indicate that the American people want to step back from the global leadership role they have played since the end of World War II.

The hard truth, however, is that a world without American leadership is a world that’s out of order—and a world that’s out of order is a threat to American interests. An even harder truth: Whether we like it or not, there’s no ready replacement for America—at least not one Americans would be comfortable with. Those nations which share our values don’t have the strength to promote international order, and those nations with the strength to promote international order don’t share our values.  

Handoff
Britain—worn down by six years of war—didn’t have that problem at the end of World War II. That’s because Britain had America—a sister nation that shared its values and vision for the postwar world.

Historian Niall Ferguson notes that Britain “regarded the transfer of global power to the United States as the best available outcome of the war.” And so, Britain accepted the new realities of the postwar world and accepted its new role as America’s junior partner.

Those new realities were a function of what the war left in its wake. Postwar America was “the one unscarred liberal power,” as Derek Leebaert writes in “The Fifty-Year Wound.” America’s civilian population, cities, factories and industries were virtually untouched by the ravages of war. And America’s political system was untainted by the madness that had hijacked so many of the world’s governments.

“It is a solemn moment for the American democracy,” Winston Churchill cautioned as the old world gave way to the new. “For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.”

Though “vaulted into a position of leadership without an adequate period of apprenticeship,” as political philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr observed during that handoff in global leadership, the American people were equal to the moment.

American leadership on the world stage has prevented great-power war—a constant scourge between 1600 and 1945—for the past 80 years.

The number of democracies has increased eightfold during this period of U.S. leadership.

American stewardship transformed Europe into a zone of peace and prosperity—and refashioned Japan and Germany from expansionist, militarist tyrannies into free-market democracies.

And with America leading the way, the global average tariff—which was 22 percent at the end of World War II—was steadily chopped down after World War II to less than 3 percent.

Interests
All of this has served U.S. interests.

America is more secure in a world with more democracies, because democracies don’t go to war against one another.

Less war means less death and destruction. An Atlantic Council study explains that “Armed conflict killed an average of 1 to 2 percent of the human population from 1600 to 1945.” Hundreds of thousands of Americans were among that number: More than 521,000 U.S. troops were killed during the world wars—in less than six years of combat. However, after America began leading on the world stage, rebuilding the free world and defending free government, there was a dramatic drop in lives lost due to war: fewer than 100,000 U.S. battle deaths during the Cold War’s 45 years, an average of 0.4 percent of the world’s population during the Cold War, and less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent since 2000.

Less war means less miliary spending. During World War I, the U.S. diverted a per-year average of 16 percent of GDP to the military. During World War II, the U.S. poured an annual average of 27 percent of GDP into the military. During the Cold War, as they accepted the responsibility of global leadership, Americans invested an average of 7 percent of GDP on defense. Those investments didn’t end all wars, of course, but they did deter Moscow and prevent World War III. (Americans spend less than half that percentage on defense today. Hopefully, we haven’t forgotten that waging war is far more costly than deterring war.)

Finally, America is more prosperous when trade barriers are low, because that allows American consumers to find the best value when purchasing goods—and American producers to sell their goods in more markets.

The revived postwar economies of Japan, East Asia, West Germany and Western Europe became markets for those American goods—triggering massive U.S. economic expansion and spurring unprecedented U.S. prosperity: In the 76 years before World War II, America’s per-capita GDP increased by 136 percent. In the 76 years between the end of World War II and 2021—with America leading on the world stage—America’s per-capita GDP increased by 320 percent.

In short, American leadership has been good for America and the world.

Candidates
America accepted that leadership role not to go looking for problems, but to address problems before they exploded into something unmanageable. That was the lesson of 1941—a lesson too many Americans have forgotten.

The American people may be tired of playing that role, but no other nation—or group of nations—has the reach, resources and resumé to do what America does. Consider the candidates that share our values.

Once the “master of the seas,” Britain strains to operate a fleet of just 76 warships and actually saw more personnel quit its military last year than sign up.

France is fighting political paralysis at home and facing a widening gap between its limited capabilities and outsized self-perception abroad.

Germany is struggling to invest 2 percent of GDP in defense. Moreover, Germany is haunted by its own history, which constrains it from flexing military muscle in global crises.

Japan, though building up its deterrent capabilities, has no stomach for policing the world—and its neighbors have no desire for Tokyo to play that role.

India has the demographic heft to lead on the global stage. But India is largely focused on internal development and regional challenges, not global leadership.

As to groupings of nations: The European Union—long aspiring to become a United States of Europe—shares America’s liberal-democratic values. However, the EU’s economic output is anemic relative to the U.S. (and even relative to the EU of a decade ago). Politically, the EU has no leading nation, no single voice. Militarily, the EU isn’t cohesive enough or strong enough to deter great-power threats like China and Russia, as underscored by EU efforts to cobble together a peacekeeping force for postwar Ukraine—a force dependent upon what EU leaders describe as U.S. “backstop” capabilities.

Indeed, it’s remarkable that 32 years after birthing the European Union, Europeans still don’t have a unified foreign policy or unified approach to defense. Instead, they have 27 foreign policies and 27 defense policies. That may be changing as the U.S. pulls back from Europe and pivots to Asia, but the EU is far from united. 

Finally, although it is charged with “the maintenance of international peace and security,” the UN Security Council is more fractured and less effective than it has been since the coldest days of the Cold War. Two of the five permanent UNSC members are actively undermining international peace and security.

Challengers
That brings us to Russia and China, which have the reach and resources to replace the U.S. They also have the desire to do so.

“China and Russia,” former Defense Secretary James Mattis explains, “want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.”

A world order remade in their image would be deeply hostile to America.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin imprisons, poisons and murders political opponents; muzzles independent media; and has deformed the rule of law with the law of one-man rule. Abroad, Putin has launched wars of territorial expansion against Ukraine and Georgia; has committed war crimes across Ukraine and Syria; has propped up regimes that gas (Syria) and starve (Venezuela) their own people; and is attempting to renormalize might-makes-right imperialism.  

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping maintains a techno-surveillance state darker than anything Orwell imagined; engages in genocide against Uighur Muslims; and imprisons religious leaders and political dissidents. Abroad, Xi has erased Hong Kong’s independence; taken aim at Taiwan; menaced the Philippines; attacked India; conducted a cyber-siege of the free world; expanded his nuclear arsenal threefold (fivefold by 2030); constructed the world’s largest navy; and militarized islands in the South China Sea in a bid control international waterways and ward off international efforts to enforce norms of behavior.  

Like the USSR, China can challenge the U.S. across multiple domains, multiple regions and multiple areas of influence. But China represents a more insidious threat than the USSR. Unlike the USSR, China has integrated with the world (rather than walling itself off from the world) and harnessed elements of the market economy (rather than clinging to Marx’s failed theories). This has enabled China to generate enormous wealth and stretch its tendrils—banking, manufacturing, logistics, shipping, communications, technology—into every part of the globe. And this gives the Chinese leverage the Soviets never had.

Xi and his henchmen are using that leverage to try to displace the U.S. and, as former national security advisor Gen H.R. McMaster concludes, “revise the international order in their favor.”

Echoes
All of these factors—the dark designs of China, the blood-soaked record of Russia, the relative weakness of Europe, the dysfunction of international organizations—explain why voices from around the world urge America to continue leading.

“The world can’t be secure without America,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine bluntly explains. “Without strong U.S. security commitments, everything else is weak.” 

“Only the U.S. can deter Putin from attacking again,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declares.

“We cannot replace American support,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni concludes.

“Poland and Europe need more America—militarily, politically and economically—more American spirit in thinking and acting,” exhorts President Andrzej Duda of Poland.

“I cannot see the Philippines in the future without having the United States as a partner,” President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “When we are in crisis, we look to the United States.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel calls America “the guardian of Western civilization…a force for light and good in a dark and dangerous world.”

Tellingly, these calls from our neighbors aren’t new. In fact, they echo what was said decades ago.

At the close of World War II, Pope Pius XII declared, “The American people have a genius for great and unselfish deeds. Into the hands of America God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind.”

As he watched the United States form a fist during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an awe-struck Charles de Gaulle reportedly remarked, “There is really only one superpower.”

“America has been the principal architect of peace in Europe,” Margaret Thatcher explained. “The debt the free peoples of Europe owe to this nation—generous with its bounty, willing to share its strength, seeking to protect the weak—is incalculable.”

“The peace and security of the postwar world was not possible without American leadership,” Shinzo Abe observed.

In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI asked then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to deliver a message to America’s military: “Thank you for helping to protect the world.” 

No Retirement

“The world needs a policeman,” former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen observes. “Since World War II, the U.S. has filled that role” He worries about what will happen “if the policeman no longer exercises his authority over geopolitical gangsters.” And he contends that “superpowers don’t get to retire.”

America may be ready to retire as global policeman. After 80 years on the beat, America has certainly earned it. Serving as civilization’s first responder and last line of defense carries a cost—always in treasure, sometimes in blood. But Rasmussen is right: Someone has to play that role. If America doesn’t, the alternatives are a world that’s out of control—or a world that’s under the control of men like Xi and Putin.

Alan W. Dowd is a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute, where he leads the Center for America’s Purpose. A version of this essay was published in the July 2025 issue of The American Legion Magazine.