America must don the police officer's uniform again

The profound significance of one of the most important political-strategic books, written in two stages at Harvard, seems to be lost on the U.S. The book was completed in 1996 but it has proven itself as an accurate screenplay for the events of the burning world in 2012.

Professor Samuel Huntington wrote his book "Clash of Civilizations" as a response to a book written by his colleague Francis Fukuyama in 1992. Both started out as articles, which were later expanded into full length books. Fukuyama delighted in the fall of the Soviet Union and titled his essay "The End of History." Huntington disagreed with his colleague's conclusions, arguing that as the bi-polar world splits, humanity will embark on a clash of civilizations. Perhaps it will be the West vs. the Chinese, or perhaps the West vs. Islam, or possibly the West vs. both.

I was given the opportunity to write the foreword for the Hebrew edition of Huntington's book, published in 2003. My contribution boiled down to a quote from our sages: "When evil comes to the world, Jacob is the first to know it." The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is playing the unfortunate role of harbinger of a looming global storm.

With his original thinking, Huntington spoiled the glee over the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in the face of his prophesied clash between the West with Islam or the Chinese, he had only conventional advice: bolster NATO, strengthen ties with Japan and South Korea, don't get involved in other cultures' messes. U.S. President Barack Obama's White House has obviously not yet read this book.

2012 America has ceased playing the central role it has filled since the fall of the Third Reich: the world's police officer, overseeing global conduct from the United Nations building in New York. The U.S. is displaying hesitation, half-heartedness, diminishing credibility, avoidance of necessary military action and it is stumbling toward its target in the instances it does use force.

When the North Koreans invaded South Korea in 1950 the entire world was certain that the U.S. would not rest until the invaders were pushed back to their side of the 38th parallel. Then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower even used the threat of nuclear weapons.

Whatever happened to that spirit-

Obama has declared unequivocally that he will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. His stated intentions are worthy of our faith. But why isn't he pointing NATO in that direction? Why isn't he tightening the sanctions on Iran? He is afraid that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will drive oil prices up to $100 per barrel.

Fine, so be it. But the Islamic-Arab world is not helping Obama. It is acting out Huntington's script. A $100 price tag on a barrel of oil may have been the cost of destroying Iran's nuclear program, but instead, that same barrel of oil now costs the same $100 just because a Coptic director in California made the movie "Innocence of Muslims" which unjustifiably mocks the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, and some wise ass in France published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in the nude. It is unfathomable that such catastrophes ended up happening without the rewards of destroying the ayatollahs' nuclear program.

Now every crisis is immediately followed by another; every disappointment by another disappointment and every frustration by yet another frustration because the U.S. fails to understand what is actually happening in the Middle East. It shouldn't have intervened in Egypt, but Obama thought that the person who would replace longtime president Hosni Mubarak, to the crowd's delighted cheers, would be an Arabic-speaking Thomas Jefferson.

If the U.S. doesn't want to lose its unique and almost exclusive status in the world, it has to put the police officer's uniform back on. The U.S. has always been far more democratic than any empire that preceded it, but even during its glory days it walked with a big stick. If China dares threaten U.S. ally Japan's welfare in the presence of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then all hell breaks loose.

In light of ongoing events in the capitals of Middle Eastern countries and in distant Asia, Israel can take very small comfort in the knowledge that even its biggest opponents within Western governments understand that the Jews are just the excuse for the outbreak of Islam, not the reason. As expected, it was just the Jews who knew it first.

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