The Isolationist President?
It’s U.S. sovereignty, stupid.

Mr. Gaffney is also president of the Center for Security Policy.
July 26, 2001 1:45 p.m.

n recent weeks, the drumbeat of criticism of Bush administration foreign policies has sharpened considerably. TV pundits, editorial cartoonists, journalists, allied governments, and prominent Democrats, including notably Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, have been denouncing the president for acting "unilaterally." They fret that he is putting the United States squarely at odds with the will of the "international community." His is an "isolationist" approach, they say, one that threatens to alienate our friends and undermine our interests around the world.

There is no disputing the fact that Mr. Bush has adopted policies at odds with what passes for an international consensus on a number of topical issues. He has, in particular:

Rejected as unworkable and unacceptably costly the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions that are said to contribute to global warming.

Declared his intention to "move beyond" the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — with or without Russian assent — in order to develop and deploy effective missile defenses prohibited by that accord.

Refused to pursue ratification of the Treaty of Rome which establishes an International Criminal Court (ICC) on the grounds that such a mechanism is likely to become politicized and may be abused to prosecute American leaders, military personnel, and other U.S. citizens without regard for their constitutional rights.

Opposed efforts to impose via an international treaty controls on Americans' right to bear arms that were deemed unconstitutional. And,

Most recently, decided not to agree to a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). After exhaustive study, the Bush administration concluded that, while the BWC annex is intended to make that treaty prohibiting the production, possession, and use of biological and toxin weapons more verifiable and enforceable, it won't do either. Yet, it would have other, real, and very undesirable costs.

What these examples illustrate is not that President Bush is willfully and recklessly disregarding America's responsibility to be a world leader and exemplar to others. Rather, he is assuring that the nation retains the military power, economic strength, institutions of free and representative governance, and constitutional liberties that enable this country to play such a role.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton's mantra from the 1992 campaign, "It's U.S. sovereignty, stupid."

The immutable fact is that each of the agreements to which President Bush has objected infringe unacceptably on American rights, prerogatives, and/or responsibilities:

U.S. accession to Kyoto would compel the federal government, American businesses and individual citizens to make significant changes in their day-to-day activities, changes that would impinge upon the productivity, welfare and possibly even the security of this nation. Mr. Bush appreciated, moreover, that these burdens would not be equally shared by other leading developed nations (Britain and Germany being spared significant economic dislocation thanks to their previous closure of obsolete greenhouse gas-emitting steel plants) or by large developing nations like China and India. Worse yet, the Kyoto Protocol — like virtually every other multilateral accord — would cede U.S. sovereignty to a supranational institution. In this case, the "international community" would assert oversight authority concerning American CO2 emissions and, at least indirectly, the energy use largely responsible for producing them.

Mr. Bush has similarly refused to allow anybody else to determine whether and how the United States will be defended against ballistic-missile blackmail or attack. To be sure, one of his predecessors nearly 30 years ago — and under altogether different strategic circumstances — decided to give the Soviet Union a veto over American missile defenses in the form of the ABM Treaty. Fortunately for all Americans, this president understands that, in the wake of the demise of the USSR and the emergence of missile threats from a number of other quarters, it is not only imprudent to leave the Nation unprotected; it is contrary to the federal government's sovereign responsibility under our Constitution to provide for the "common defense."

Speaking of the Constitution, President Bush appreciates that its protections and rights would not be guaranteed to Americans prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. After all, the court is to adopt, and its activities are to be governed by, a hodgepodge of legal codes and practices. These will not, however, include such pillars of U.S. criminal jurisprudence as a trial by a jury of the defendant's peers or the right to confront his or her accusers. The president cannot in good conscience agree to surrender cardinal principles of our Constitution to unaccountable international prosecutors, judges, and institutions.

Foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations have made no secret of their desire to use the Convention on Small Arms as a means of overriding Americans' deeply cherished, if hotly contested, right to own and bear arms. While President Bush did go along with a new international agreement meant to make it more difficult to engage in illegal international trafficking in light weapons, he properly refused to subordinate domestic ownership of such weapons to supranational purview and dictates.

The Biological Weapons Convention would afford foreign intelligence services and business competitors access to many of the United States's most sensitive proprietary processes and data in the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering — all without contributing appreciably to the deterrence or detection of covert and illegal BW activities.

The United States already made this mistake once, in connection with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Thanks to that treaty, countries like Iran that are known to have ongoing covert chemical-weapons programs are being given a wholly unwarranted clean bill of health. Meanwhile, U.S. government facilities and private companies are being subjected to disruptive, potentially damaging, and certainly costly on-site inspections by an international inspectorate. America simply cannot afford to extend and compound the CWC's damage to its cutting-edge industries in the highly competitive biotech and genetic-engineering fields.

It is regrettable that President Bush has been put in the position where he has to stand up again and again for American sovereignty which is now being threatened by so many ill-advised agreements. Had his immediate predecessor been more protective of our institutions, rights and equities, he would have refused to allow these accords to metastasize as they have. Interestingly, even Bill Clinton felt compelled to act in what would now be called a "unilateral" fashion by refusing to sign onto a fatally flawed ban on anti-personnel landmines. He also declined to recommend to the Senate ratification of the ICC Treaty in its present form which he described as "deeply flawed," even though at the last moment he buckled into pressure to sign it.

Clearly, it would be far easier for Mr. Bush to go with the flow, earning the kudos of the chattering classes at home and abroad by allowing agreements reflecting the lowest common denominator of scores of nations to become part of the growing body of supranational institutions and legal structures. It is to the president's great credit that he has not done so, given the high costs associated with such a course of action.

When all is said and done, though, not only will the United States be better off as a nation if George W. Bush succeeds in enhancing American sovereignty than if he embraces treaties that erode it. With its economic and military strength and constitutional arrangements secure, America will also be a more effective and engaged world power. That will benefit every law-abiding member of the "international community" — far more so than they would from any number of agreements with those who do not respect the rule of law or intend to honor their treaty commitments pursuant to it.