When help is needed the phones, start ringing in Washington, D.C. Not in Moscow, Beijing or even London, Paris or Berlin.

To restore and keep order in a chaotic world, America remains an indispensable nation.

According to press reports, it was political journalist Sidney Blumenthal and foreign policy historian James Chase who coined the phrase, “indispensable nation,” and it was U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who used it to describe America’s role in the world.

In Blumenthal’s words, “Only the United States had the power to guarantee global security: without our presence or support, multilateral endeavors would fail.”

President Barack Obama in an address at West Point Military Academy said, “When a typhoon hits the Philippines or school girls are kidnapped in Nigeria or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help. So, the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. This has been true for the century past and will be true to the century come.”

Today’s generation may not remember that during the Cold War whenever there was a crisis around the world, it triggered an automatic confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Those confrontations always carried the specter of a nuclear holocaust.

The Cuban Missile Crisis proved that the threat was real. The very survival of our nation was in balance. The U.S., today, is the dominant military power in the world, less in danger of being overwhelmed by Russia or China but not immune from consequences of wars waged against democratic countries allied with us, as Ukraine or Israel.

We are facing Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who considers the breakup of the Soviet Union a “major humanitarian tragedy” and sees his mission as restoring Russia to its “historical greatness.”

Part of this attempt was the invasion of Ukraine and if it would have been successful, followed by the re-conquering of other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Another country that seeks dominance, in this case in the Persian Gulf, is Iran under the rule of a fanatical Islamic leadership. It uses terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies all over the region, to attack American, Western and Israeli interests.

The only thing that stands in the way of Iran achieving its goal of sowing havoc in the region, by using its oil wealth to arm and financially support its surrogates, is the U.S. effort to strengthen the regimes opposed to Iran.

Supplying arms, providing support at international forums, economic cooperation and alliances are the means by which the U.S. is playing the role of an indispensable nation.

The U.S. is not a conquering nation. We are not imperialist in the sense that the great European powers were. After every conflict we tried to leave behind a regime, in hopes that it would govern by methods that reflects the values of American democracy.

We won the Cold War not using arms but by the attractiveness of our ideas, values and by the example of our prosperity.

In a column I wrote some 20 years ago, I said, “To bring stability to volatile regions of the world, we must repeat what worked during the Cold War. Stand strong and resolute at the floodgates, while showing the world that we care, are compassionate and are willing to share our bounty.”

(Frank Shatz is a former resident of Lake Placid and a current resident of Williamsburg, Virginia. This column is used with permission by the Virginia Gazette.)