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the last few weeks, the Bush administration has refused to sign
or ratify a number of international agreements. The Kyoto accord
on global warming is the best-known case. But the U.S. has also
withdrawn its support for the treaty on germ warfare, warning the
U.N. that it would not accept international regulation of the small-arms
trade if it impinged on the rights of American gun-owners, and threatened
not to attend the U.N. Conference on Racism if its agenda included
reparations for slavery and condemnation of Zionism as a form of
racism.
These refusals have been denounced as "U.S. unilateralism" by European
politicians. And their criticism was echoed in Sunday's Washington
Post by its distinguished foreign-affairs columnist, Jim Hoagland,
in an article that described Bush's policy as "isolationism lite"
but worried that it could have very un-lite consequences:
"Other nations fear the effect of Bush's rejectionism on the overall
system of international agreements and negotiations that has grown
up since World War II.
This fear is most pronounced in Germany, where postwar independence
and reunification are widely seen as being based on the international
treaty system. Bush foreign policy risks becoming deeply unpopular
among centrist voters who decide elections in Germany, and not only
in Germany."
And seeing a similar political opportunity to brand his opponents
as isolationist know-nothings, Sen. Tom Daschle, the Majority Leader
of the newly Democrat-controlled Senate, had earlier worried publicly
that this policy of abstentionism was "minimizing" and "isolating"
the U.S. in world affairs.
Of course, the senator must be dimly aware that such abstentionism
long pre-dates the Bush administration. Mr. Daschle himself was
one of the 95 Senators who voted for the 1997 Senate resolution
opposing the carbon emission limits in Kyoto. The Senate itself
decisively rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last year
prior to the election. And President Clinton refused to endorse
the international ban on landmines and signed onto the Rome Treaty
establishing an International Criminal Court only as part of his
last-minute presidential giveaway of pardons and liberal desiderata.
Even then, in a wonderfully Clintonesque touch, he explained that
he was signing on to the "aims" of the treaty only and would oppose
ratification unless the ICC Statute were "reformed."
On the other side of the ledger, however, both the Clinton and Bush
administrations have accepted significant new international obligations.
For instance, they backed NAFTA and NATO expansion — the latter
obliging the U.S. to go to war to defend the territory of Hungary,
Poland, and the Czech Republic. It is hard to imagine a more solemn
commitment to internationalism.
In short, both major parties have endorsed some international obligations
and backed away from others. Could it possibly be that American
interests were advanced on both sets of occasions — that some
treaties furthered U.S. aims and were endorsed while others retarded
them and were blocked?
That is exactly what Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State, argued
last week at the meeting of Asian foreign ministers. He pointed
out that the U.N. germ treaty was generally known to be unenforceable
because of the vast expansion of biotechnological facilities in
recent years. And the treaty would put the U.S. — both the
leader in biotechnological research and a nation that takes its
obligations seriously — at a commercial and strategic disadvantage.
The Pentagon similarly persuaded Mr. Clinton that assenting to an
International Criminal Court would risk the arrest and conviction
of U.S. troops for following his orders — until his last days
in office when he suddenly became more worried about the fate of
liberal troops in think tanks and NGOs.
That does not mean, however, that the choice to be made is solely
one between international obligations and American interests. As
the U.S. support for NAFTA and NATO suggests, there is a more subtle
choice facing us — namely a choice between two very different
sorts of internationalism — internationalism which rests on
cooperation between independent nation-states and supra-nationalism
which seeks to subordinate sovereign states to new forms of international
agency.
Traditional internationalism is very specific about the obligations
it imposes. Where possible, it defines these obligations clearly
in advance even though they may be of the highest kind, for instance,
Article Five of NATO which commits member-states to defend an ally
under attack. When a new obligation is under discussion, it employs
the unanimity principle which allows just one member to exercise
a veto on collective decisions — the old General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade had such a rule. It acknowledges that nations
can exercise their sovereignty (and second thoughts) by leaving
an organization or abrogating a treaty. And in general it is subordinate
to national sovereignty — indeed it makes international organizations
the agents of nation-states to achieve certain specific endeavors.
In marked contrast, supra-nationalism is hostile to national sovereignty
in principle. It seeks to bind member-states to accept majority
decisions on issues that cannot be known in advance. It is hostile
to rules such as the unanimity principle — the European Union,
for instance, has "qualified majority voting" on most policy areas.
It will generally accept "opt-outs" from collective majority decisions
only on a temporary basis. It allows no mechanism for withdrawal
from treaties or the bodies they establish. It even claims the right
to exercise powers over states which have not accepted its legitimacy
— thus the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal
Court claims jurisdiction over the citizens of states which have
not ratified it in cases where their alleged victims belong to a
state that has done so. And in general supra-nationalism makes nation-states
the agents of its collective decisions, thereby depriving them of
a portion of their sovereignty.
This distinction between supra-nationalism and internationalism
is, of course, an abstraction. No actual organization or treaty
embodies either principle in a pure and unadulterated way. Probably
the EU is the nearest thing to a purely supra-national body —
just as GATT is perhaps the best example of traditional internationalism
(and, doubtless not coincidentally, one of the most successful of
the international institutions established at the end of the Second
World War.) Abstract though it may be, however, the distinction
is vital to both democracy and the U.S. Constitution.
Nation-states are the building blocks of a democratic internationalism.
The powers exercised by international bodies can help nations to
reach diplomatic agreements, but they cannot compel nations to agree
when they disagree. And they cannot exercise powers that have not
been specifically granted by national parliaments without violating
democratic accountability. Self-directed powers like those of the
independent prosecutor of the proposed International Criminal Court
are a dangerous innovation. The Kyoto Protocol seems to envision
another kind of self-directed international regulatory agency. These
innovations, and the supranationalism they embody, are incompatible
with parliamentary democracy — and in America's case, with
the U.S. Constitution.
When the Bush administration resists making unlimited, open-ended
and unknowable commitments, it is not resisting internationalism
— it is objecting to rule by unaccountable international elites.
The shrieking you hear is their complaining about it.
This originally
appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.
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