# When and why did the United States become the sole representative of the West? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 22, 2013, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042 "2013-01-22T21:18:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/21 "2013-01-23T03:47:29Z")
The Suez Crisis in 1956. Britain and France tried to conduct a major international act independent of the United States and failed. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/22 "2013-01-23T10:10:15Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > Would you rather we just called him the man with robotic spy planes roaming the skies ready to cap your ass as soon as you stick your head above ground? Or the guy with his finger on the button that can send your puny and insignificant country back to the stone age? > > Pompous? Leader of the free world just seems so much more civil and nicer; less threatening. Who needs mass transportation when you can have mass destruction? It’s much better to be friends and let us lead. 😉 I’d just go with “The President of the United States of America”. Interesting how this so rapidly devolved into “we’ve got the biggest military ya boo sucks go us”. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/23 "2013-01-23T11:06:08Z")
The current intervention in Mali might suggest something to the OP. Seems to me the OP is working very hard to avoid the term ‘empire’. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/24 "2013-01-23T11:08:37Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Suez Crisis in 1956. Britain and France tried to conduct a major international act independent of the United States and failed. Wasn’t that Israel, the UK and France? Fwiw, it failed in a diplomatic sense, not militarily - the UN and others forced withdrawl. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/25 "2013-01-23T11:24:39Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Wasn’t that Israel, the UK and France? > > Fwiw, it failed in a diplomatic sense, not militarily - the UN and others forced withdrawl. It failed. Wars are conducted to achieve political aims. The Suez crises failed in that. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/26 "2013-01-23T11:29:40Z")
We appear to be in agreement. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/27 "2013-01-23T12:48:03Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > It failed. Wars are conducted to achieve political aims. The Suez crises failed in that. It failed for the UK and France. Israel’s goals were to end cross-border raids from the Gaza Strip and Sinai, to consolidate its alliance with the two European nations, and to prove that it was capable of modern offensive mechanized warfare, and in these, it was successful (at least for the next 11 years). As Israel already had access to both the Mediterranean and Red Seas, ownership of the Suez Canal wasn’t that big an issue. Sure, it would have been nice if Nasser had been removed from power, but all and all, Israel saw the Sinai War as a qualified success. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/28 "2013-01-23T12:57:24Z")
Oh, I don’t disagree that Israel saw it as a success, I was talking about the UK and France who did not. Of course the Suez Canal was less important to the world at large in 1956 then it is today, so Nasser could also get away with his closing of it by sinking ships. As an aside, the Israeli Navy must have hated moving ships from one to the other coasts before 1979. Move a ship, and circumnavigate Africa. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/29 "2013-01-23T14:04:38Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Wasn’t that Israel, the UK and France? Israel was never in contention as a Great Power. The Suez Crisis was what caused Britain and France to realize they were no longer Great Powers - they were no longer the equals of the United States or the Soviet Union and had dropped to a lower tier of power. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/30 "2013-01-24T14:17:32Z")
As a general answer, I’d say it’s because we’ve been on top economically, and are just rather big for a Western country. This leads to us putting out a lot of media. Hence, people not from the West only have exposure to U.S. culture through our media, and assume that that’s Western culture in general. ---
**Author:** ![firstname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7ab992/32.png) [@firstname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/firstname)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/31 "2013-01-24T14:31:29Z")
Only Americans think this. The rest of the Western world is a little more humble (thankfully). ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/32 "2013-01-24T14:34:12Z")
I dunno about humble, it certainly has more perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/33 "2013-01-24T22:12:12Z")
> [@firstname](#): > > Only Americans think this. The rest of the Western world is a little more humble (thankfully). I’m not saying the United States is perfect in every way (and gets better looking each day) but it would be false humility for the United States to pretend it’s just another western country, no different than Belgium or Austria or New Zealand. We really are, objectively, the most powerful and influential country in the Western world and have been for decades. ---
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/34 "2013-01-24T22:25:51Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > Americans like to call their president Leader of the Free World, which even when I was a kid, I thought was a really pompous thing to say. Who was the first US President to be given this title? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_I\_Am](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@Sam\_I\_Am](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_I_Am)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042/35 "2013-01-25T04:18:29Z")
You are taking that sentence out of context. The article is not saying that the US is the sole representative of the West. It is saying that after 1972 when Britain pulled out, the US was the sole **military** representative of the West **in the Middle East**. Which I would imagine is largely true still now, while there are UK, Canadian, and other forces there, I would imagine the US provides the largest Western military force there by far, and also the largest political “meddling” for want of a better word. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-and-why-did-the-united-states-become-the-sole-representative-of-the-west/648042.md?page=1)