United States President Barack Obama has admitted that America is the bully of the world. The US President recently confessed to VOX that the country exercises force over countries, friends or enemies, when they don’t do what America wants them to do. Obama ‘candidly’ explained to VOX in an interview that the ‘reality’ of American leadership entails “twisting the arms” of states which “don’t do what we need them to do”. The United States, thus, sanction countries, companies and individuals as a way to twist their arms into compliance.
Obama told the viewers because America has economic, diplomatic and military leverage over other countries, it is able to get anything done. He argued that because “there are bad people out there who are trying to do us harm”, the US is compelled to have “the strongest military in the world…with a defense budget that exceeds the next 10 countries combined”.
Though Obama had stated that the US doesn’t have a military solution to all the challenges in the 21st century, and that the US does not feel threatened by any other country in the world, the American military find itself engaged in conflicts in many countries around the world because “there are asymmetric threats, terrorist organizations and failed states which do possess the ability to attack or provoke the United States”. These threats are ‘real’, Obama asserted, and tackling them entailed “leveraging other countries” whenever possible.
“It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people. It is right and appropriate for us to be vigilant and aggressive in trying to deal with that. I would argue that our invasion of Iraq was counterproductive to the goal of keeping our country safe,” he affirmed.
