By Joe Lane
The U.S. military is the most powerful in the world. Period.
Despite this virtually undeniable fact, an increasing number of U.S. citizens believe that the United States is not the most powerful but merely a military force with several peers leading the way.
According to a Gallup Poll from February, only 49 percent of Americans believe that the United States is the No. 1 military power — the lowest that percentage has been since Gallup began polling in 1994. This means that a majority of Americans no longer believe that the U.S. has the strongest military in the world.
But as Vox explains, “Since the end of the Cold War, America has unquestionably been the world’s strongest power, with no country even approaching peer status.”
So if this is the case, why do Americans seem to feel otherwise? The answer is rhetoric.
As America filters through Democrat and Republican presidents, the overtly stated power of the military has varied.
George W. Bush became president right before the worst attack in U.S. history. This — coupled with the overall platform of the GOP that tends to emphasize the importance of military prowess — made for a presidency that underlined the military might of the United States. President Obama’s administration, on the other hand, has included military milestones such as moving troops out of the Middle East, capturing Osama bin Laden with SEAL Team 6 (rather than the full might of the US military), and the use of other aspects of U.S. prominence to solve problems.
Obama (and the entire Democratic Party, including Bill Clinton) has been far less interested in starting wars and far more interested in proving to the American public that the United States is a super power in more than military prowess. That is, the Democratic Party has focused its foreign policy goals on using U.S. governmental organizations other than the military.
This change in rhetoric from the Bush administration to the Obama administration has, evidently, led many to believe that the U.S. military simply isn’t what it once was. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has capitalized on this change in rhetoric. The issue is that not only is the U.S. the most powerful military in the world, it’s as far above its peers as it has ever been.
This is not to say that the Republican viewpoint of using military power is flat-out wrong. War is a terrible, terrible thing. In many cases, however, war is the direction a conflict goes, and if that’s the case, it helps to have the best military and the military perceived as the best as well.
But there’s something to be said for the coyness of these Democrat administrations that maintain the full power of the military while not taunting the enemy in a braggadocios way.
In fact, it was a Republican president who spoke to this idea and offered one of the most well-known quotations in U.S. government history. Teddy Roosevelt, the most macho president of them all — known for African safaris, several-days-long trips to the mountains of the American West, and the massive growth of the National Parks system — is the godfather of what would today be considered a Democratic ideal. It may not be as attention catching as the rhetoric of the Trump campaign, but it is an idea worth considering: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
