US steps back as world police — and leaves a huge void
The term "world's policeman" triggers negative reactions — even if hardly anyone denies that police are needed. This is probably because no country has ever applied for the position of being the world's police and been elected by a majority. Like other nations before it, the United States simply took on the role of ensuring global law enforcement and performed it in its own self-interest.
Should Washington actually withdraw from this self-imposed task after decades, the question arises of who will take its place. One obvious answer is that if there is to be a global police force, then it is the United Nations that should take over the task of ensuring order. But this has had little success in the past and is unlikely to work in the future. Disagreement and conflicting interests among its nearly 200 members have prevented, or frequently hindered, such collective solutions. As a rule, it has been powerful individual countries that have left their mark on the world, for better or for worse.
For this reason, the post of "world police" will not remain vacant, which would be a nice idea in itself. Every vacuum is filled as soon as it is created. If the US steps back, others will push into the gap. You can already see it in Syria: Russia, Turkey and Iran will determine the postwar order there. In Asia, China in particular will expand its influence. Europeans may have moaned about the Americans' often presumptuous, sometimes naive role in world politics. But the prospect of having to deal with China, Russia or Turkey as the world's police in the future will not be an improvement.
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Germany's credentials insufficient
But what about the Europeans, their aptitude and their will to become a stabilizing power? They do not want to be the world's police. But "taking on more responsibility" has become a popular slogan, especially in Germany, which Americans have long accused of being somewhat of a freeloader. However, the implications of "more responsibility" are not clear to everyone.
Any actor wanting to even approach the role the US has played up to now would firstly have to accept a significantly higher military expenditure — money that would be then lacking elsewhere. Such a nation would have to be prepared to send its own soldiers on combat missions all over the world and to accept the inevitable casualties. It would have to put up with being seen as an enemy in many parts of the world. It would also have to be convinced of the global role model character of its own system and attempt to assert it widely. As for Germany, at any rate, none of these political and social preconditions can be met.
EU as world police is wishful thinking
The idea remains that the European Union as a whole could take on the task. As an alliance of democratic states with a great deal of economic and military weight, plus a lot of soft power, it would theoretically be perfect for the post. But only theoretically. When the EU is called upon to act as a stabilizing force, it is the individual countries — usually the former great powers Great Britain and France — that step into the breach. The United Kingdom will soon be leaving the EU. But even France and Germany are too different to make a good police team, as the question of military operations in Libya and Syria have shown. A global EU of 27, on the other hand, is pure wishful thinking.
What is emerging instead is a range of regional power centers and, depending on the crisis, varying cooperation. The Americans may no longer play the dominant role, but they will continue to play a very important one. For their part, without any real will to militarily intervene, Europeans are unlikely to move beyond being a regional power in the foreseeable future. But it is precisely because they share the same values — a fact which is currently being forgotten — that Europeans and Americans should continue to seek close links on global political issues. After all, the US is more than Donald Trump.