Obama Can't Control the World

One thing you can say about the world is that it changes. So just because the U.S. managed to dominate the globe with a certain degree of effectiveness in the decades after World War Two doesn’t mean it should continue to attempt to do so, or expect success if it does. However you want to term U.S. power — as an empire, a superpower, whatever — the reality is that Washington’s international military operations have  grown to the point that legitimate questions can be asked about any government’s ability to manage them. The decline of previous global powers — only Rome and Britain ever approached the level of domination the U.S. has enjoyed — began when the empires they’d built simply became too big and expensive to effectively control. Nothing protects the U.S. from the same fate, and it may soon have to decide what it wants most: a society that can afford Medicare, education and Social Security, or one that can  play sheriff to the world.