American Military Power

Another dimension that you talk about in the book, and in a very positive way, is American military power. We built that power to win World War II and then to confront the Soviets, but you're suggesting that what's often overlooked is the extent to which that military power served a stabilizing function.

The American military, in some ways, was also a huge gift to the world, mainly because America created a belief that you create a stable global environment by creating a set of rules for all countries to follow. As you know, whenever you have rules, ultimately you have to have the ultimate guarantor that these rules will be obeyed or implemented.

A police function.

Sort of an indirect police function. The simplest example, of course, is what happens in the case of international waterways through which a lot of trade flows. Some of these waterways are very narrow, so it would be very tempting for states to say, "Hey, this body of water is mine and if you want to pass through it, you have to pay a toll," for example. It's a natural thing. That's what was done in the past. But as a result of the power of the American military, no country even dreams of closing any international waterway, because if they do so, they have to confront the United States Navy.

I give a very unusual example of the Canadians once trying to close the straits north of Canada because they believed it belonged to them. The United States decided it was an international waterway. The U.S. Navy sailed right through it and the Canadians dropped the argument that this was domestic waters.

So, in that sense, the American military has been enormously beneficial to the world --without intending to be, by the way. Certainly the Pentagon did not believe they were doing the world a service with this large American military, but it has, in many ways, provided a service. You could also see the real benefits the American military could bring in the recent Asian tsunami crisis, because when you finally needed to have a massive lift capability to deliver a large amount of humanitarian aid in a very short space of time, the only logistical machines that could deliver that is the American military machine.

Of course, Singapore, in a small way, also played a role, but our military is much smaller, [though] also very capable. But it showed the importance of having a strong military capability.

In all of these accomplishments and achievements, some of which were intended, some unintended, you're implicitly arguing that America had a "secret weapon," namely the legitimacy of its role in the world.

Oh, yes. I'm glad you introduced the word "legitimacy" into the discussion. The rest of the world saw the scale and enormity of American power, but because they believed that this power was being used to advance both American interests and global interests, they were quite happy to recognize this power as being legitimate.

The critical thing to bear in mind about legitimacy is that legitimacy is in the eyes of the beholder. You cannot create it yourself. America cannot go out and say that its power is legitimate. It's the rest of the world that's got to make that decision. As you know from much of the Cold War, in many parts of the world, many people said, "This power is legitimate."

And legitimacy leads to [the question of] whether you're being hypocritical or not, whether you're saying one thing and doing another. Ultimately, the [words and actions] have to go together.

Yes, definitely.

America has probably done more than any other country to educate the rest of the world, because the numbers of foreign students, especially Asian students, that study in North American universities now are hundreds of thousands. Now, having educated these minds and opened their minds, you find that increasingly these minds are using American social science techniques to understand American behavior. So they can judge American behavior very carefully, very empirically, and say when is American behavior consistent with the values and principles that it espouses and when is American behavior not consistent with the values and principles that it espouses. If the level of inconsistency becomes higher than the level of consistency, then there's an erosion of the legitimacy of American power as we have seen it.

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