America has a great opportunity to change the world. Will it do it?

These considerations all emphasize the unsuitability of American democracy for an imperial role.6 The American people are prepared to sacrifice for costly wars of necessity, such as World War II, and to undertake wars of choice such as the interventions in both Bosnia and Kosovo, so long as they do not prove to be costly. But expensive wars of choice (such as Vietnam proved to be and as Iraq threatens to become) that call for open-ended sacrifice for uncertain ends are simply not sustainable. There is also the matter of American vulnerability. Indeed, with the possible exception of ten days in October 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to war over the introduction of Soviet missiles into Cuba, Americans and their country have never felt more insecure.

American vulnerability is real. In part it is the residue of the Cold War and the fact that Russia still possesses thousands of nuclear warheads, more than enough to obliterate the United States. There is also China’s small but growing (and improving) nuclear arsenal. More of a danger, though, is the large Russian stockpile of nuclear materials (and possibly biological and chemical agents or weapons) that one day could end up in the hands of states such as North Korea and Iran or groups such as al Qaeda. Or terrorists could locate another source of advanced weapons or even develop their own basic weapon of mass destruction.7 Even without such a development, and as September 11 so starkly revealed on television screens across the country and the world, today’s terrorists can readily enter and move about the United States and cause billions of dollars of damage and claim thousands of lives with nothing more advanced than box cutters. What the United States has spent on homeland security has made airports somewhat safer but not much else.

The domestic vulnerability highlights a military weakness. Dominance on traditional battlefields, where advanced land, air, and sea-based forces can be combined, is one thing; dominance in built-up urban areas is something quite different. Many U.S. military advantages are irrelevant to the challenge of nation- or state-building in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. A lesson many governments and individuals seem to have taken from the 1991Gulf War and from the more recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars is that the one place not to challenge the United States is on a traditional battlefield using traditional tools of war. Terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are emerging as the preferred “equalizers.”

The United States is vulnerable in other ways as well. The United States increasingly depends on imports of oil and natural gas; even more fundamentally, the American and world economies run on fossil fuels. Loss of adequate supply of oil or natural gas or price spikes could cause economic disruptions, trigger inflation, and undermine economic growth. Energy is one expression of economic interdependence. Millions of jobs depend on the ability to export goods and services around the world. Imports provide necessary goods and services, not to mention quality and choice. If trade protectionism were to make a comeback, it would have a chilling effect on the U.S. and global economies. At the same time, the willingness of others to hold billions of dollars allows Americans to import more than they export and to spend more as a government than is taken in. If foreigners were to have second thoughts about their dollar holdings, the need to hike interest rates in order to attract dollars to fund the U.S. debt and attract resources for investment would likely trigger job loss and recession in the United States.

America is also susceptible to global perils. In 2003, the outbreak of SARS in China demonstrated, like HIV/AIDS and the flu before it, that viruses respect no border. When people in China sneezed, people in Canada and the United States caught much more than a cold. Viruses of another sort, those carried in cyberspace that infect computers, can wreak havoc on a modern society. Worldwide drug trafficking meets and fuels American demand (and is indirectly responsible for a significant portion of our crime). Global climate change is another sort of American vulnerability. It is broadly understood that the way energy is used around the world is altering the temperature of the atmosphere, something that before too many more decades pass could alter the ability to grow crops or live in coastal areas. Many of these vulnerabilities are manifestations of globalization, which at its core is the increasing volume, speed, and importance of flows within and across borders of people, ideas, greenhouse gases, manufactured goods, dollars, euros, television and radio signals, drugs, germs, e-mails, weapons, and a good deal else. What is at issue is not simply the fact that the actions of one government affect and are affected by those of others, but also the reality that many of the most important forces in the world are beyond the control and, in some cases, even knowledge of governments. Many aspects of globalization are positive, including the Internet, travel, trade, financing of investment, faxes, and telephones. Many of these phenomena play to U.S. strengths, as Americans (given their relatively open, dynamic society) are well suited to the demands of a modern world economy. Indeed, globalization is a powerful force behind the improvement in the American standard of living and, in some cases, the quality of life the United States provides its citizens.

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