That this question needs to be addressed is a testament to the abject failure of modern education.
The answer is yes. And now you want to know why, don’t you?
Kids today. When I was their age if I wanted to know something I had to walk all the way to the library, uphill, in the snow, both ways! They have the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in their pockets and can’t look up how to spell ‘boo’.
It’s B-O-O. Seriously, what’s wrong with the world nowadays? Nothing is making any sense and …
What?
Oh, yeah, topic. I’m pretty sure the topic is why do I even have to answer stupid things like this but sure, we’ll do it your way and answer the question in some depth. Lazy freeloader.
The US of A lives on North America, Planet Earth, right next door to Central America and just down the continent from South America. Across the alley are Europe and Africa, they live with their neighbors the Middle East and Central Asia. Across the street are Asia and Australia – Australia is the one with the weird animal attitude. Up the street is the Arctic which is basically a big ice cube and down the street is the Antarctic which might as well be an ice cube.
Just your average planetary neighborhood. Just like every other neighborhood, everyone eventually gets on everyone else’s nerves. Unlike normal neighborhoods, the results can be catastrophic. But for the most part, we get along pretty well. At least well enough we haven’t killed each other yet.
Emphasis on yet.
Smart money would be on moving. Trouble is, this is the only neighborhood there is. We’re stuck with all these idiots and worse, they’re stuck with us. We swear, nuclear weapons were a good idea at the time!
That was just a hair less than 80 years ago. Since then, the whole neighborhood has been kinda quiet. I did say ‘kinda’ – there are occasional fireworks. But on the whole, we don’t fight nearly as much – bicker, yes, fight, no. Part of that was scaring the heck out of ourselves with World War II, but a lot of that was because the US put her very big foot down.
Few wanted to argue and most even agreed. Truth is, the whole neighborhood was battered, some parts really, really bad, and it didn’t take a genius to see that we needed to change some things. The US came up with a pretty spiffy idea. She’d handle security and provide for the security of the seas and everybody else would let her install the neighborhood security systems. Russia and China opted out but most either signed up or at least didn’t oppose the plan.
Weirdly enough, the danged thing worked. Oh sure, not perfectly, but pretty danged good, all told. Turns out that when nations can just trade for the stuff they need they are less antsy about invading each other. It didn’t solve everything and there were still squabbles, but most settled down and started fixing up their own homes. Sometimes the US would even help.
The sheer number of violent conflicts did go down. It didn’t take terribly long before most realized that fighting the US was mostly futile and that the US wasn’t out to rule the world. Oh, it got pushy about that freedom and democracy stuff it is always talking about but even that wasn’t so bad – they were right about a lot of that stuff.
The US got everyone to start another of those neighborhood action committees. That first one, the League of Nations, hadn’t worked but the United Nations did much better. Far from perfect and annoying, but better. Now we could all fuss at the meeting instead of yelling over the hedges. Sometimes we even figured stuff out.
Yep, it was a pretty good run. Lately, however, the US seems less interested in the neighborhood. That’s kinda scary. See, we’ve all come to depend on the US to keep things mostly sane. Even the folks that don’t like the US depend on her.
We realize how important the US for the World but does she realize that she needs us, too? Sure, the US is very self reliant but that’s because she has always had to be. But part of what makes her good at it is that so many
What?
Oh, yeah, got off track there. It’s a lot easier to demonstrate why this crazy neighborhood needs us than it is to show why we need them. I mean, really, what good are neighbors anyway? They run lawn mowers at six am, train their dogs to use your yard, and sing dumb songs while you’re trying to nap in the hammock. Who needs ’em?
We do. They also jump start your car so you aren’t late for work, pick up your mail when you’re out of town and teach you how to train your dog to use Bob’s yard.
Okay, serious again. Being a hermit is pretty stupid; being a hermit nation state is miles beyond stupid. We don’t invent all the cool stuff. We don’t see all the really good solutions. We make dumb mistakes. Other nation states are there to invent the cool stuff we don’t, figure out solutions we missed and loudly point out our dumb mistakes. That last one is annoying but you can’t fix it if you don’t know is broken.
Man was meant to enjoy the company of his fellow man. Face it, tug of war is boring when your opponent is a tree. We need other people to challenge us, to not take our crap, to insist that we do better and to teach us what they’ve learned.
Nation states are just really big collections of people with a more or less common system of government. Don’t get all hung up on the government part – those guys are just people, too. Large groups of people need other large groups of people to tell them when they are being idiots. They also need other large groups to help them out and to challenge them. Groups of people are just people that act even weirder than normal.
They mostly wear underwear too. Really hard to be scared of a government in its underwear, isn’t it?
The US is just a really big group of people with a set of mostly common governments that happens to be way overpowered. No author in their right mind would make up the US in a novel, but here we are. Why do we need the rest of the world? Same reason they need us – it’s how we’re made.
Also, how else would we buy stuff labelled ‘made in’ some other country?
