Beginning with Woodrow Wilson’s justification for getting America into WWI, America has been the world’s policeman, a role that escalated after it was the only wealthy nation standing in 1945. However, it’s not 1945 anymore. The Cold War is over, allegiances have shifted, and Europe is not Europe. That’s why it was simply awesome today when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth explicitly told Asia and Europe (although he was clearly speaking to NATO) that the “time for free-riding is over.”

In 1916, when the “Great War” in Europe was already in its second year, Woodrow Wilson won reelection in part by pointing out that he’d kept America out of the war and promising that he would continue to do so. However, for myriad reasons, by 1917, Wilson could no longer maintain that promise.

However, Wilson, a high-minded, racist, eugenics-believing progressive, needed a high-minded reason for tossing young American men into those bloody trenches. America, he said, was a savior. “The world must be made safe for democracy,” and America was the one to do it.

There was no room for self-interest:

We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

Instead, virtue would be its own reward:

We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Those same principles have guided American warfare ever since. Yes, we entered WWII after Japan attacked us and Germany then declared war on us, but in the aftermath of a war that cost us over 400,000 American lives, we dedicated ourselves to rebuilding a shattered Europe and protecting it from Soviet domination.