Quotes of the Day

Play a thought experiment on the decision by iran last week to restart the process of uranium enrichment that, under an agreement with the major European powers, it had ceased in 2004. Assume — as many fear — that Iran wants highly enriched uranium not so that it can develop nuclear power, but to build an atomic bomb. Suppose, moreover, that it manages to do so, and that there is no military intervention in Iran of the kind that Israel visited upon Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. What would happen next? Somehow or other, in all likelihood, others would seek to contain Iran, in the way that the Soviet Union was contained during the cold war. But if that was to be the fate of Iran, who would do the containing?

To ask the question is to answer it. "There is an assumption," says Michael Mandelbaum, of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., "that if the Iranians got the bomb, Uncle Sam would contain them." There are certain tasks in the world that are and can only be performed by Washington; no other country, or group of countries, has the will, the wallet, or the military muscle to attempt them. In that sense, Mandelbaum argues in a new book, the U.S. acts as the world's government, to the broad benefit of many outside its borders. The Case for Goliath is one of those works that invites the reader to look at the familiar in a new way; it would be nice, if optimistic, to think that it will be read carefully by those for whom knee-jerk anti-Americanism is a substitute for thought.

For much of the post-1945 world, Mandelbaum argues, the U.S. has done what governments do. It has provided a degree of security to others, by damping down the prospect of global war and by leading the struggle against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Its money, the mighty greenback, is the closest thing to a global currency we are ever likely to see, and the voracious appetite of American consumers has injected precious demand into the world economy at times — as, for example, after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s — when it was much needed.

Crucially, the U.S. sometimes acts to protect others — by deploying its massive military power — even when its own security is not directly threatened by turmoil overseas. This is not a common attribute among nations. The countries of Western Europe are as rich as the U.S., and were more directly affected by the wars of the Yugoslav succession from 1991 to 1999. But the memories of Europe's dark 20th century meant that there was little support, in any European country, for the use of force to impose a solution there. It was U.S. political will and air strikes from U.S. warplanes that ended the wars in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo four years later. The European powers placed their hopes for peacemaking in the Balkans on diplomacy and the promise of commercial benefits if the protagonists ceased fighting. That tactic failed (just as it appears to have failed in dissuading Iran from going nuclear). Sometimes only war brings peace.

Sometimes, of course, it does nothing of the kind — witness Iraq. As Mandelbaum reminded me last week, the fact that the U.S. has some of the characteristics of a government does not mean that it is omnipotent. Indeed, while many enjoy painting U.S. economic, military and political power as "imperialist," what is striking — with Iraq as the major exception — is how restrained the U.S. has been in the exercise of its power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when no nation or group of nations has been in a position to cut it down to size. The potential check on American power, argues Mandelbaum, now comes not from outside the U.S. but from within it, from American voters who pay for the security of others without ever having been asked explicitly to do so.

Americans, we should remember, are capable of getting tired of being the world's cops. They did so in the late 1970s, after Vietnam, and the bloody muddle of Iraq may weary them of playing this role once again. That would please those who would like to see Gulliver bound, but they might be careful of what they wish for. In the years after Vietnam, the Soviet Union, uncontained, went adventuring in Angola, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. If, after Iraq, the U.S. decided that sorting out the world's problems just wasn't worth the hassle, any answer to the question "Who will contain Iran?" (nobody? Israel?) would be a lot more uncomfortable than "Uncle Sam."

• MICHAEL ELLIOTT
• From uranium enrichment to aggressive online censorship, the aims of Iran's hardline regime are increasingly alarming