Every time these global luminaries meet we are looking at the erosion of what made America great. Obama's aim is to become de facto emperor of the world, of if not the world then the global "underclass."
Commentary online
The Coming War on Sovereignty
John Bolton From issue: March 2009
Barack Obama’s nascent presidency has brought forth
the customary flood of policy proposals from the great and
good, all hoping to influence his administration. One
noteworthy offering is a short report with a distinguished
provenance entitled A Plan for Action,1 which features a
revealingly immodest subtitle: A New Era of International
Cooperation for a Changed World: 2009, 2010, and Beyond.
In presentation and tone, A Plan for Action is
determinedly uncontroversial; indeed, it looks and reads
more like a corporate brochure than a foreign-policy paper.
The text is the work of three academics—Bruce Jones of
NYU, Carlos Pascual of the Brookings Institution, and
Stephen John Stedman of Stanford. Its findings and
recommendations, they claim, rose from a series of meetings
with foreign-policy eminences here and abroad, including
former Secretaries of State of both parties as well as
defense officials from the Clinton and first Bush
administrations. The participation of these notables is what
gives A Plan for Action its bona fides, though one should
doubt how much the document actually reflects their ideas.
There is no question, however, that the ideas advanced in A
Plan for Action have become mainstays in the liberal vision
of the future of American foreign policy.
That is what makes A Plan for Action especially
interesting, and especially worrisome. If it is what it
appears to be—a blueprint for the Obama administration’s
effort to construct a foreign policy different from George
W. Bush’s—then the nation’s governing elite is in the
process of taking a sharp, indeed radical, turn away from
the principles and practices of representative
self-government that have been at the core of the American
experiment since the nation’s founding. The pivot point is
a shifting understanding of American sovereignty.
_____________
While the term “sovereignty” has acquired many,
often inconsistent, definitions, Americans have historically
understood it to mean our collective right to govern
ourselves within our Constitutional framework. Today’s
liberal elite, by contrast, sees sovereignty as something
much more abstract and less tangible, and thus a prize of
less value to individual citizens than it once might have
been. They argue that the model accepted by European
countries in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which assigned
to individual nation-states the right and responsibility to
manage their own affairs within their own borders, is in the
process of being superseded by new structures more
appropriate to the 21st century.
In this regard, they usually cite the European Union
(EU) as the new model, with its 27 member nations falling
under the aegis of a centralized financial system
administered in Brussels. On issue after issue, from climate
change to trade, American liberals increasingly look to
Europe’s example of transnational consensus as the proper
model for the United States. That is particularly true when
it comes to national security, as John Kerry revealed when,
during his presidential bid in 2004, he said that American
policy had to pass a “global test” in order to secure
its legitimacy.
This is not a view with which the broader American
population has shown much comfort. Traditionally, Americans
have resisted the notion that their government’s actions
had to pass muster with other governments, often with widely
differing values and interests. It is the foreign-policy
establishment’s unease with this long-held American
conviction that is the motivating factor behind A Plan for
Action, which represents a bold attempt to argue that any
such set of beliefs has simply been overtaken by events.
To this end, the authors provide a brief for what they
call “responsible sovereignty.” They define it as “the
notion that sovereignty entails obligations and duties
toward other states as well as to one’s own citizens,”
and they believe that its application can form the basis for
a “cooperative international order.” At first glance,
the phrase “responsible sovereignty” may seem
unremarkable, given the paucity of advocates for
“irresponsible sovereignty.” But despite the Plan’s
mainstream provenance, the conception is a dramatic overhaul
of sovereignty itself.
“Global leaders,” the Plan insists,
“increasingly recognize that alone they are unable to
protect their interests and their citizens—national
security has become interdependent with global security.”
The United States must therefore commit to “a rule-based
international system that rejects unilateralism and looks
beyond military might,” or else “resign [our]selves to
an ad-hoc international system.” Mere “traditional
sovereignty” is insufficient in the new era we have
entered, an era in which we must contend with “the
realities of a now transnational world.” This
“rule-based international system” will create the
conditions for “global governance.”
The Plan suggests that the transition to this new
system must begin immediately because of the terrible damage
done by the Bush administration. In the Plan’s narrative,
Bush disdained diplomacy, uniformly preferring the use of
force, regime change, preemptive attacks, and general
swagger in its conduct of foreign affairs. The Plan, by
contrast, “rejects unilateralism and looks beyond military
might.” Its implementation will lead to the successful
resolution of dispute after dispute and usher in a new and
unprecedented period of worldwide comity.
_____________
As the Obama years begin, we certainly do need a
lively debate on the utility of diplomacy, but it would be
better if that debate were not conducted on the false
premise offered by A Plan for Action. In reality, in the
overwhelming majority of cases, foreign-policy thinkers on
both sides of the ideological divide believe diplomacy is
the solution to the difficulties that arise in the
international system. That is how the Bush administration
conducted itself as well.
The difference arises in the consideration of a tiny
number of cases—cases that prove entirely resistant to
diplomatic efforts, in which divergent national interests
prove implacably resistant to reconciliation. If diplomacy
does not and cannot work, the continued application of it to
a problematic situation is akin to subjecting a cancer
patient to a regimen of chemotherapy that shows no results
whatever. The result may look like treatment, but it is, in
fact, only making the patient sicker and offering no
possibility of improvement.
Diplomacy is like all other human activity. It has
costs and it has benefits. Whether to engage in diplomacy on
a given matter requires a judicious assessment of both costs
and benefits. This is an exercise about which reasonable
people can disagree. If diplomacy is to work, it must be
preceded by an effort to determine its parameters—when it
might be best to begin, how to achieve one’s aims, and
what the purpose of the process might be. At the cold
war’s outset, for example, Harry Truman’s Secretary of
State, Dean Acheson, frequently observed that he was
prepared to negotiate with the Soviets only when America
could do so from a position of strength.
Time is one of the most important variables in a
diplomatic dance, because it often imposes a cost on one
side and a benefit to its adversary. Nations can use the
time granted by a diplomatic process to obscure their
objectives, build alliances, prepare operationally for war,
and, especially today, accelerate their efforts to build
weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles that
might carry them. There are concrete economic factors that
must be considered as well in the act of seeking to engage
an adversary in the diplomatic realm—the act of providing
humanitarian assistance as an act of good will, for example,
the suspension of economic sanctions, or even resuming
normal trade relations during negotiations.
Obviously, the United States and, indeed, all rational
nations are entirely comfortable paying substantial costs
when they appear to be wise investments that will lead to
the achievement of a larger objective. Alas, such happy
conclusions are far from inevitable, and failing to
understand the truth of this uncomfortable and inarguable
reality has led nations to prolong negotiations long after
the last glimmer of progress has been snuffed out. For too
many diplomats, there is no off switch for diplomacy, no
moment at which the only sensible thing to do is rise from
the table and go home.
Has one ever heard of a diplomat working to fashion an
“exit strategy” from a failed negotiation? One hasn’t.
One should.
_____________
Diplomacy is a tool, not a policy. It is a technique,
not an end in itself. Urging, however earnestly, that we
“engage” with our enemies tells us nothing about what
happens after concluding the initial pleasantries at the
negotiating table. Just opening the conversation is often
significant, especially for those who are legitimized merely
by being present. But without more, the meaning and potency
of the photo op will quickly fade.
That is why effective diplomacy must be one aspect of
a larger strategic spectrum that includes ugly and public
confrontations. Without the threat of painful sanctions,
harsh condemnations, and even the use of force, diplomacy
risks becoming a sucker’s game, in which one side will sit
forever in naïve hope of reaching a settlement while the
other side acts at will.
Diplomacy is an end in itself in A Plan for Action.
So, too, is multilateralism. The multilateralism the Plan
celebrates and advocates is, of course, set in sharp
contrast to the portrait it draws of a Bush administration
flush with unilateralist cowboys intent on overturning
existing international treaties and institutions just for
the sport of it. Defining unilateralism is straightforward:
the word refers to a state acting on its own in
international affairs.2 It is a critical conceptual mistake,
however, to pose “multilateralism” simply as its
opposite.
Consider, for example, the various roles of the United
Nations, the North American Treaty Organization, and the
Proliferation Security Initiative. The UN, the Holy Grail of
multilateralism, is an organization of 192 members with
responsibility for the maintenance of international peace
and security lodged in its Security Council. NATO is a
defense alliance of 26 states, all of which are Western
democracies. The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI),
created in 2003 by the Bush administration, now includes
90-plus diverse countries dedicated to stopping
international trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.
Each organization is clearly “multilateral,” but
their roles are so wildly different that the word ceases to
have any meaning. For example, if the United States
confronted a serious threat, it would be acting
multilaterally if it took the matter either to NATO or the
UN. Both options would be “multilateral,” but widely
divergent in diplomatic and political content, and quite
likely in military significance as well. They would be
comparable related in the same way a steak knife is
comparable to a plastic butter knife.
The PSI offers an even starker contrast, for unlike
either the UN or NATO, it has no secretary general, no
Secretariat, no headquarters, and no regularly scheduled
meetings. One British diplomat described the initiative as
“an activity, not an organization.” In fact, the model
of the Proliferation Security Initiative is the ideal one
for multilateral activity in the future, precisely because
it transcends the traditional structures of international
organizations, which have, time and again, proved
inefficient and ineffective.
“Multilateralism” is, in other words, merely a
word that describes international action taken by a group of
nations acting in concert. For the authors of A Plan for
Action, however, multilateralism has an almost spiritual
aspect, representing a harmony that transcends barriers and
oceans.
Harmony is designed to stifle any discordant notes,
and so is the multilateralism envisioned by an American
foreign policy guided by “responsible sovereignty.” It
is one in which the group of nations, of which the United
States is but a single player among many, initiates policies
and activities that would likely be designed to constrain
the freedom of action of the United States in pursuit of
that harmony—not only in its activities abroad, but also
in its activities within the 50 states.
There is a precedent for this in the conduct of the
European Union, whose 27 nations now possess a common
currency in the form of the euro and an immensely complex
series of trade and labor policies intended to cut across
sovereign lines. The EU is the model A Plan for Action
proffers for the “responsible sovereignty” regime its
authors wish to import to the United States. EU bureaucrats
based in Brussels have been reshaping the priorities and
needs of EU member states for a decade now, and proposing a
system based on the design of the EU suggests a desire to
subject the United States to a kind of international
oversight not only when it comes to foreign policy but also
on matters properly understood as U.S. domestic policy.
That very approach has been on display at the United
Nations for years in an effort to standardize international
conduct that has come to be known as “norming.” In
theory, there is good reason to create international
standards—for measurement, for example, or for conduct on
the high seas. But “norming” goes far beyond such
prosaic concerns. The UN has, for example, repeatedly voted
in different committees to condemn the death penalty, in a
clear effort to put pressure on the United States to follow
suit. Similar votes have been taken on abortion rights and
restricting the private ownership of firearms.
_____________
Such issues have been, and likely will again be, the
subjects of intense democratic debate within the United
States, and properly so. There is no need to
internationalize them to make the debate more fruitful. What
is common to these and many other issues is that the losers
in our domestic debate are often the proponents of
internationalizing the controversies. They think that if
they can change the political actors, they can change the
political outcome. Unsuccessful in our domestic political
arena, they seek to redefine the arena in which these
matters will be adjudicated—moving, in effect, from
unilateral, democratic U.S. decision-making to a
multilateral, bureaucratic, and elitist environment. For
almost any domestic issue one can imagine, there are likely
to be nongovernmental organizations roaming the
international arena desperately trying to turn their
priorities into “norming” issues.
This is what “responsible sovereignty” would look
like. For the authors and signatories of A Plan of Action,
sovereignty is simply an abstraction, a historical concept
about as important today as the “sovereigns” from whose
absolute rights the term originally derived. That is not the
understanding of the U.S. Constitution, which locates the
basis of its legitimacy in “we the people,” who
constitute the sovereign authority of the nation.
“Sharing” sovereignty with someone or something
else is thus not abstract for Americans. Doing so by
definition will diminish the sovereign power of the American
people over their government and their own lives, the very
purpose for which the Constitution was written. This is
something Americans have been reluctant to do. Now their
reluctance may have to take the form of more concerted
action against “responsible sovereignty” if its onward
march is to be halted or reversed. Our Founders would
clearly understand the need.
About the Author
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute, served as the United States Permanent
Representative to the United Nations (2005-2006) and as
Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security (2001-2005). He is the author of Surrender Is Not
an Option.
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Footnotes
1 The report can be downloaded free of charge at
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/11_action_plan_mgi.aspx.
2 An important subtext is the continuing confusion
between unilateralism and isolationism, confusion especially
evident in Europe in the late 1990’s. Even before the Bush
administration, I tried to explain the distinction in
“Unilateralism Is Not Isolationism” in Gwyn Prins, ed.,
Understanding Unilateralism in American Foreign Relations,
Chatham House, 2000. More recently, Mackubin Thomas Owens
makes a similar point in “The Bush Doctrine: The Foreign
Policy of Republican Empire,” Orbis, Winter, 2009.
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