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The Myth of American “Indispensability”

The myth of indispensability serves as an all-purpose rationalization for foreign policy hyper-activism.

Micah Zenko debunks the myth of American “indispensability”:

The problem with allowing this classification of America’s global role to persist is that it is so patently false, and thus an illogical basis upon which to base and prescribe U.S. grand strategy.

Zenko is right that the “indispensable nation” idea is false, but then it isn’t really intended to be an accurate description of what the U.S. role in the world is. It is a pretext or an excuse to justify the role that its adherents want the U.S. to have. That is, they want the U.S. to act as if it were indispensable, because they want the U.S. to be extremely active in its foreign policy, and so they claim that it is. Claiming that the U.S. is indispensable helps interventionists to avoid explaining why a particular intervention or course of action is worth doing or in the American interest. Instead of explaining why a given action needs to be done, they use “indispensable nation” talk to jump ahead to the conclusion that only the U.S. is able to do it, and therefore the U.S. “must” act.

Of course, it’s frequently possible that other states could address the problem in question, but they are actively discouraged from doing this when American politicians and diplomats declare that the U.S. is “indispensable” and must be the one to “lead” in response to this or that crisis. That causes other states to expect that the U.S. will take care of major problems for them, and the U.S. obliges often enough to reinforce the habit. Since the U.S. frequently volunteers to “lead,” all other states have no incentive to take the risks or assume the burdens that many of them could take on. When the U.S. isn’t quick enough to volunteer they will complain about being let down and “abandoned” until Washington eventually responds.

Those that claim to believe that America is indispensable are wedded to the idea of a hyper-activist U.S. that serves as a benevolent hegemon or sustainer or “world order.” Indispensability serves as an all-purpose rationalization for that hyper-activism, and it fits into the circular argument that America “must” act because that is “who we are.” This has added demagogic value: you can’t reject U.S. meddling in the latest crisis without rejecting “who we are” (i.e., the “indispensable nation”). One big problem with this is that no state, including the U.S., is capable of being what the “indispensable nation” crowd think the U.S. should be. That isn’t “who we are” as a nation. It is the nation that certain politicians and ideologues would like to imagine us to be.

The other rather glaring flaw in this thinking is that the rest of the world and most Americans don’t want the U.S. to play that role. Somehow U.S. “indispensability” is perceived only by a very small number of people worldwide that also happen to believe that the U.S. should be global hegemon. When asked what role they think the U.S. should have, most Americans say they want a U.S. “leadership” role that is “as active as others.” Only 20% want the U.S. to have the “most active” role and just 12% want the U.S. to act as “world leader”:

Most Americans Favor Shared World Leadership

The “indispensability” myth is one way that our political leaders dress up their very debatable and sometimes terrible policy choices as necessities that are required by “who we are” as a nation. It demands that Americans pretend that we don’t really have a choice about what our role in the world should be, but should quickly accept whatever ill-advised policy our political leaders want to pursue.

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