Yeah and Vietnam is why. Really, America as the world police was a pretty short-lived experiment. We had to be dragged in to WWII. We mostly sat out the Maoist

Yeah and Vietnam is why. Really, America as the world police was a pretty short-lived experiment. We had to be dragged in to WWII. We mostly sat out the Maoist revolution even though we did have a presence in China at the time. Korea ended up being politically fraught and the public just didn't have their heart in it. No one wanted to help a backwater Asian country. It's hard to sell a 70-year investment to help them become a first-world democracy when the outcome isn't guaranteed. Vietnam really broke a lot of people's spirits to the point that we carefully avoided nation building in the 1991 Gulf War. Our biggest success since Korea was the Balkan Wars which just aren't prominent in the public consciousness for some reason.