There are two possible ways of looking at the policing function: one emphasises repression, the other more discreet ways of preventing crime. The United States, the dominant power in the world today and guardian of order, has in recent years opted for the first. But behind an apparently technical debate there lies a subconscious representation of the modes of divine action.
‘Gendarme to the World’: a Theological Interpretation of the Policing Function
The implosion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the beginning of the final decade of the twentieth century left the United States in the unprecedented position of alone being able to exercise global domination. With their own blend of idealism and a received view of its interests that characterises its foreign policy, the United States then decided to fully assume their unique status of ‘super-power’ and take on the responsibility of guaranteeing the preservation of world order with, where necessary, a right to intervene militarily outside their borders in implementation of an international mandate or on its own initiative.
It is precisely this adopted role and this activity deployed for nearly 20 years that has earned them the journalistic title of ‘police force to the world’.
It is not the aim of this article to go back over all these recent years, whose principle events are still fresh in the memory, but to identify their essential characteristics and to analyse them in the light of a particular interpretation of divine action and effectiveness.
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