Two Kinds of Internationalism
Mini Teaser: What Europeans condemn as unilateralism is in fact traditional postwar internationalism. As Lockeans, Americans prefer it to transnationalism because it's democratic.
It is often said that a prime cause of the dissension between the United States and Europe is the differing views about international cooperation that prevail on opposite sides of the Atlantic: Europeans, shaped by their experience with EU integration, are devoted to multilateralism, while Americans exhibit an increasing penchant for unilateralism. And there is no question that on a number of high-profile issues in recent years, the United States has taken stands that have put it in opposition not only to Europe, but to what is often referred to as "the international community." This includes the Iraq War (though on this matter Europe itself is very much divided), as well as such issues as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States not only has been willing to oppose such international agreements, but has been much more concerned than European nations with defending the principle of national sovereignty and much more ready to question the moral supremacy of the United Nations or of international opinion.
Yet there is a paradox here. For at the same time, the United States is widely viewed as the prime agent of "globalization" and the homogenization that it brings in its wake. Thus, the anti-globalization movement, which is animated in part by the desire to preserve distinctive national and cultural traditions and ways of life, is a hotbed of anti-Americanism. The United States is charged with being the most universalist of countries, with seeking to impose Western-style democracy on peoples for whom it is inappropriate, with believing that the whole world is--or at least can or should be--like America.
Moreover, throughout the 20th century, the United States was a leader in building the institutions that came to symbolize liberal internationalism. It was President Woodrow Wilson who was the guiding spirit behind the formation of the League of Nations and President Franklin Roosevelt who was the guiding spirit behind the creation of the United Nations. It is also true, of course, that the U.S. Senate, reflecting the isolationist strands in American political culture, rejected American membership in the League. After the Second World War, however, the United States largely overcame its older isolationist tendencies and became the key architect of the ensemble of multilateral institutions that still shape the international landscape.
What accounts, then, for the opposition to multilateralism that is seen as guiding U.S. policy in the new century? Has there been a dramatic change in the U.S. outlook and its approach to international affairs, prompted perhaps by its emergence as the world's only superpower or by the trauma of 9/11? Or has the real change been in the way the concept of multilateralism has come to be understood today, so that U.S. policy, despite a fundamental continuity, now appears to be out of sync with world opinion? In other words, might it be that the United States is hostile to a new version of multilateralism, while largely remaining faithful to the old? Of course, these two explanations need not be mutually exclusive. There probably has been a certain alteration in the expression, if not the substance, of American policy. But the more fundamental shift has occurred in the nature and meaning of multilateralism.
Global Times, Global Measures
This shift has been hailed by the champions of a remodeled multilateralism, who stress the distinction between the old "liberal internationalism" and the new "globalism." The former refers to the vision that is reflected in the United Nations Charter--and indeed in the very name of the United Nations. This is the concept of a league or organization of states whose purposes (to quote from the charter) are to "maintain international peace and security", "develop friendly relations among nations", "achieve international cooperation" in economic, social and cultural matters and in promoting human rights, and "be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends." The UN was understood primarily as an organization of sovereign states, represented by their governments. The very first principle enunciated in the charter states: "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of its Members." But this brand of multilateralism today is regarded in many respects as outmoded, if not retrograde. In the words of former UN Assistant Secretary General John Ruggie,
Simply put, postwar institutions, including the United Nations, were built for an inter-national world, but we have entered a global world. International institutions were designed to reduce external frictions between states; our challenge today is to devise more inclusive forms of global governance.
What exactly is the nature of the new globalism toward which Ruggie and thinkers like him point? This is not so easy to pin down, though the underlying premises of the "globalists" are quite clear: Thanks to technological advances, especially in communications, the world is more interconnected than ever before. Instead of separate national industries and economies, today we have multinational companies and integrated global markets. At the same time, threats as well as opportunities have gone global. Drug traffickers and other criminal networks operate across borders, and of course environmental dangers like global warming and health dangers like aids cannot be confined within national boundaries. Meanwhile, the greatest dangers to peace no longer seem to arise from traditional sorts of interstate hostility, but from non-state terrorist organizations and from internecine conflict within states. So the challenges confronting us are increasingly global, while our political institutions remain essentially national and hence unable to cope with this new wave of problems.
Thus, the agenda of the new multilateralism is to close the "global governance gaps" that result from the mismatch between the global scale of contemporary problems and the merely national reach of the most effective political institutions. Since it is obviously beyond our power to shrink the scale of the problems, the favored solution is to globalize our political institutions. Yet for a variety of both practical and theoretical reasons, the "globalists" do not advocate a world state or even world federalism. Instead, they seem to favor mechanisms of global governance that involve "networks" of international organizations, national governments, the private sector, labor unions and non-governmental organizations. They propose not to abolish existing national states, but to reduce them to one player among many--and one with a weaker claim to moral legitimacy than international organizations or "global civil society." Nor do they seem to worry about the lack of democratic accountability that will inevitably beset these new mechanisms of global governance.
This is not the place to engage in a detailed analysis of the new multilateralism, which is reflected in such initiatives as the Kyoto Protocol and the ICC. The point I want to emphasize here is that "multilateralism" is a term that can cover a wide range of practices and approaches, and that current versions of it are much more expansive than was traditional liberal internationalism. Perhaps a similar example from recent history can help make this point clearer. The isolation of the United States in international organizations is hardly a new phenomenon, as I remember all too well from the years I spent in the early 1980s working on economic issues at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. That was the period when the G-77, the group of developing nations at the UN, was pressing for a New International Economic Order. This involved a range of measures calling for redistribution from richer to poorer nations and for greater regulation of international business. Among the initiatives on which the United States was isolated in opposition in those days was something called "Global Negotiations", which was meant to restructure the world economy under the aegis of the UN General Assembly.
Whatever the merits of the U.S. position on these issues, it is clear that it would be misleading to ascribe it to hostility to multilateralism as such, rather than to concerns about the proper scope and locus of multinational authority. In fact, American opposition to Global Negotiations was based in part on the grounds that they would infringe upon the autonomy of the specialized international agencies dealing with economic issues, especially the International Monetary Fund, another U.S.-inspired creation of the postwar era. There were then, and remain today, all kinds of multilateral activities that the United States regards as vital.
In short, Americans are not unilateralists. They believe, however, that international cooperation should adhere to limits that respect national sovereignty. Despite their universalist tendencies, Americans recognize a germ of truth in the anti-globalist case--namely, that even the expression of universal principles will be significantly shaped by national cultural, religious and legal traditions. Americans believe in universal principles but hold that their implementation should be the business of democratically elected and accountable national governments.
The Declaration of Independence
This outlook, which I believe has heretofore characterized modern liberal democracy as such, is deeply rooted in American history and experience. If we turn to America's founding political document, the Declaration of Independence, we find a striking juxtaposition of an invocation of universal principles--all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights--with an insistence on the right of a particular people to determine its own destiny. In declaring their independence from the British Crown, the representatives of the American colonies affirmed their right to a "separate and equal station" among the "Powers of the Earth" and to do all the "Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
The contrast between the universalist and particularistic aspects of the Declaration was dramatically underlined in 1859 by Abraham Lincoln in paying tribute to its principal author, Thomas Jefferson: "All honor to Jefferson", Lincoln wrote,
"to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression."
Yet the "abstract" or "self-evident" truths cited in the Declaration were an essential part of the justification for the revolution: The proper goal of government is to secure the rights of individuals; government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed; and the people have the right to alter or abolish their government when it no longer secures their rights or retains their consent. The rights of man are the same everywhere, but each people may decide for itself how best to secure them, when to bestow its consent upon government, and when to withdraw that consent and seek a new government.
Lockean Principles
As has often been observed, the doctrine behind the Declaration of Independence is largely derived from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, and an analysis of that work can help us understand the peculiar combination of universalism and particularism that characterizes liberal democracy. It also may illuminate the way Americans still tend to think about foreign policy. At the very outset of his now famous article, "Power and Weakness", Robert Kagan describes contemporary transatlantic divergences in terms of Europeans entering a Kantian "paradise of peace and prosperity", while the United States remains mired in an "anarchic Hobbesian world." It would have been more accurate for Kagan to characterize the United States as Lockean rather than Hobbesian, for the American understanding of the principles of both domestic governance and foreign relations is much closer to that of the former.
Like the Declaration of Independence, Locke's Second Treatise begins with the universal, examining the natural condition of mankind prior to or apart from any political community. By considering what he calls (following Hobbes) the "state of nature", Locke deduces the "equal right that every man has to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man." Since there is no natural basis for the rule of some men over others, Locke plausibly concludes that such rule can be legitimate only if it derives from the consent of the individuals who live under it. Although he does not deny that some human beings may excel in virtue or merit, Locke insists that such superiority does not give them any just title to rule others. Men are naturally equal in the decisive respect--they all have the right to do what they think is needed for their own self-preservation without having to seek the permission of anyone else.
The state of nature, Locke asserts, "has a law of nature to govern it." That law of nature, whose metaphysical and moral status is the subject of great controversy among students of Locke, instructs everyone that, "when [one's] own preservation comes not in competition", he ought to do "as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind." Under the law of nature, human beings all share in "one community of nature", a community coextensive with the species as a whole. In the state of nature, the community of men is no less universal than are their rights.
Why, then, should anyone ever choose to leave the universal freedom and community found in the state of nature? Locke's answer is,
"though in the state of nature he has such a right [to be absolute lord of his own person and possessions], yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain and constantly exposed to the invasion of others; for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure."
Because of the uncertainties involved in establishing the precise commands of the law of nature and the difficulties in achieving its impartial and effective enforcement, mankind in the state of nature is in an "ill condition", one characterized by many "defects" and "inconveniences" and "full of fears and continual dangers." So for the sake of their safety and security, people are willing to give up their absolute freedom and a portion of their natural rights by agreeing with others to join what Locke calls political society. Such a society must supply three key elements that are "wanting" in the state of nature: "an established, settled, known law" that is accepted by everyone; impartial judges with authority to make decisions on the basis of that law; and a power that can give these decisions "due execution."
In contrast with the state of nature, the political communities that men form are not universal but partial societies, even though their goal is protecting the universal rights of their members. Locke draws this distinction between the universal and the particular quite explicitly. In the state of nature, he says, all mankind "are one community, make up one society, distinct from all other creatures." It is only the fact that men cannot be relied upon to obey the law of nature that creates the "necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations." A man must give up certain of his natural rights or "powers" when "he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular politic society and incorporates into any commonwealth separate from the rest of mankind."
The power "of doing whatsoever he thought fit for the preservation of himself and the rest of mankind, he gives up to be regulated by laws made by the society, so far forth as the preservation of himself and the rest of that society shall require." By joining a commonwealth, men exchange their natural but unreliably enforced obligation to preserve all their fellow human beings for a specific and strictly enforced obligation to preserve the other members of their own particular society. To fulfill the latter obligation, they may even be required to sacrifice their own preservation, as in the case of martial discipline, which "requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute the most dangerous or unreasonable of them."
The command of natural law to preserve all of mankind thus comes to be outweighed by the command of positive law to defend the community to which one belongs. More generally, a universal law whose provisions are unclear and whose enforcement is uncertain gives way before a set of particular or positive laws that are clearly promulgated and reliably enforced. The source of those positive laws is the legislature, "the supreme power of the commonwealth", which should be "chosen and appointed" by the people and thus is backed by the people's consent and authority. "And therefore", Locke concludes, "all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties anyone can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme power and is directed by those laws which it enacts." Correspondingly, the obligation of the people's rulers or representatives is not to benefit mankind at large but to serve the public good of the particular society that they govern. And it is to the members of that society that they are accountable.
Relations Among States
What, then, is the relationship among the various particular societies that men voluntarily agree to create? Locke (again following Hobbes) asserts that they are in the state of nature vis-Ã -vis one another. In fact, it is their condition that Locke adduces as the clearest answer to those who question whether the state of nature really exists: "since all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the world are in a state of nature, it is plain the world never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of men in that state." Locke acknowledges that states often form alliances and recognize one another's territorial claims, yet he insists that they nonetheless remain in the state of nature with respect to one another. "For it is not every compact that puts an end to the state of nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community and make one body politic."
Locke never seems to entertain the possibility that these separate communities will ever take the further step of voluntarily agreeing to become part of a single body politic. Much less does he consider the possibility of restoring through a world government the global human community that prevails in the state of nature. While the inconveniences of the state of nature drive individual human beings into society, they do not drive separate commonwealths into uniting to form a common body politic. As Hobbes had put it, though rulers of particular commonwealths are in a state of nature vis-Ã -vis one another, "because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men."
At the very outset of the Second Treatise, Locke defines political power as
"a right of making laws with penalties of death and, consequently, all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws and in the defense of the commonwealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good."
Such power is legitimate--and hence truly "political", as opposed to "despotical"--only where it rests on the consent of the people and aims at preserving their property and pursuing the public good. But such legitimate power can accomplish its ends only if it has behind it the united force of the community.
Locke stresses the right of the commonwealth to impose the death penalty and to compel its citizens to risk death to defend it in war--and he does not, as Hobbes had done in the Leviathan, offer excuses for those who resist arrest or make allowances for those who refuse to fight because of "natural timorousness." Locke shares Hobbes's intense concern with security, but he is much more martial in spirit. For Locke, legitimate political power is much more restricted than for Hobbes in terms of its ends--it must respect the property of the people and pursue the public good--but so long as it sticks to the pursuit of those ends, it has more unlimited authority over its subjects. While force without right is illegitimate, right without force is ineffectual. It is only a properly constructed commonwealth that can combine force with right and thus save men from the defects of the state of nature.
This means, however, that in relations among separate commonwealths, there is no way that force can reliably be aligned with right. Even if they reach agreements mutually recognizing one another's claims to their respective territories, particular commonwealths remain in the state of nature with respect to one another. Only an agreement to form a single community, and to obey a single, visible common power, can put an end to the state of nature. Thus, for Locke international relations remain a realm where force will sometimes be wielded without right, and "in all states and conditions", he affirms, "the true remedy of force without authority is to oppose force to it."
This is not to say, of course, that force alone should rule the relations among independent states. Locke's insistence that conquest gives no right to rule clearly poses an obstacle to aggressive territorial expansion on the part of states. More generally, Locke's frequent condemnation of taking property by force, as opposed to earning it through labor and industry, points in the direction of an international realm characterized more by commercial than by military interactions. Finally, as we have seen, Locke has no objection to independent states entering into agreements that help regulate their mutual relations.
Varieties of Multilateralism
The American perspective on international politics, I would argue, remains fundamentally Lockean. All human beings are endowed with universal human rights, but these can be effectively guaranteed only within particular commonwealths. At least for those who belong to states governed on the basis of popular consent and respect for individual rights, the highest obligation of citizens is to the constitution and the laws of their country. While a state may enter into agreements with other states, this cannot detract from its prior obligation to its own laws and its own citizens.
Yet by recognizing the essential role of particular commonwealths in the protection of universal human rights, the Lockean view implicitly endorses the existence of a multiplicity of independent states. More than that, it recognizes the legitimacy of other states--provided that they too are based on consent and respect the rights of their citizens. Even with states that do not exercise legitimate rule, it is possible to make various kinds of agreements for practical ends, but such agreements will always remain to some degree suspect. For Americans, the moral authority of multilateralism inevitably appears compromised if a multilateral body includes states that do not respect the rights of their own citizens. Thus, when the government of a country like Sudan is re-elected to the Human Rights Commission while it is apparently encouraging horrific abuses against its own citizens in Darfur, Europeans may shrug it off as an inevitable outcome of UN regional politicking, but for many Americans, it severely undermines whatever credibility the UN possesses. This is one reason why there has been growing support in the United States for the concept of a Community of Democracies--that is, a multilateral body whose membership is restricted to democratic states.
This underlines a more general transatlantic difference in perceptions. Many Europeans identify multilateralism as such with democracy. They sometimes ask how the United States can claim to be a champion of democracy when it refuses to go along with the decisions of multilateral bodies. But for Americans, there is no contradiction here. Existing multilateral institutions do sometimes arrive at decisions that are hostile to democracy, as shown by various dictator-friendly votes at the UN Human Rights Commission, and most Americans regard democracy as a greater good than multilateralism. This is not to say that Americans do not care what the rest of the world thinks of them. They are especially uneasy about being at odds with their democratic allies. But they are not particularly troubled by being isolated within multilateral institutions like the UN when they feel that they are in the right.
Americans tend to view the goal of a foreign policy aimed at promoting democracy and human rights as bringing liberal democratic governments to power in as many nations as possible. In this respect, their outlook tends to resemble that of democratic movements around the world. Over the past two decades, in my work at the National Endowment for Democracy, I have been in contact with a wide range of such groups, as well as with the World Movement for Democracy, which seeks to foster cooperation and links among democratic movements. These pro-democracy groups almost always have a strong belief that human rights and democratic government are universal goods that should be available to all, and they show a high degree of solidarity and support for one another's struggles. Yet they invariably view their own goal as the achievement of democracy in their own country, and the goal of their assistance and solidarity with others as the attainment of democracy in those other countries. Despite the universalism of its principles, the global democratic movement is emphatically national in its focus and in its structure.
It must be acknowledged that this is less true of the global human rights movement--or at least of some of its leaders in the advanced democracies. The latter typically put greater stress on achieving international agreements and standards than on achieving political change within countries. Human rights form the universalist side of liberal democracy, and thus it is not surprising that human rights advocates are inclined to a more universalist outlook. In principle, one may say, as Locke's Second Treatise suggests, that all human beings should enjoy these rights as members of the human community. In practice, however, these rights are respected only in particular states that are accountable to their citizens. International standards are of limited help where they cannot be enforced. The most serious human rights abuses--including genocide--are invariably carried out by, or with the complicity of, a nondemocratic government. In many cases, the only way to stop such abuses is through the use of force. But where will that force come from? Only from the militaries of other states. Ultimately, it is national armies that must vindicate the cause of human rights. National armies certainly have shown that they can work in coalition, often under the aegis of multilateral organizations, but they too remain resolutely national in their structure and focus, precisely for the Lockean reasons we have discussed. Whatever other virtues multilateral organizations may possess, they do not appear able to attract soldiers to fight and die on their behalf.
Global vs. International
Let me conclude by returning to the distinction between the new globalism and the old liberal internationalism. The globalists are right about the fact that we are facing problems whose solutions often must transcend international boundaries. In an increasingly interconnected world, the need for international cooperation is greater than it ever has been. I think most Americans recognize this, and they are not reluctant about such international engagement--indeed, they often take the lead in it. Americans are no longer isolationist. But they will embrace international engagement only within certain limits. While they may accept the description of the globalists, they will not accept their prescription for mechanisms of global governance that bypass or minimize the role of national political orders.
This has something to do, of course, with the strength of Americans' devotion to their country. Yet American patriotism is focused not on blood and soil, but on the Declaration of Independence and on the Constitution. It is adherence to these documents that has given Americans a government that protects their rights and reflects their wishes. They can be persuaded of the need for greater degrees of international cooperation in many areas, but not for approaches to global governance that evade or attempt to supersede their constitutional order. Americans are not averse to multilateralism; in fact, I would say that they are naturally inclined to internationalism, but they are hostile to globalism. So to the extent that liberal internationalism really is giving way to globalism in today's multilateral institutions, the prospects are high that the United States will continue to find itself being accused of unilateralism.
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