The National Interest
Winter 2001/02

Seven Tests

by Joseph S. Nye

 

. . . Multilateralists and unilateralists often dismiss each other’s views with no little derision. We would be wiser to take a more dispassionate, analytical view, because this debate has serious consequences: namely, a kind of schizophrenia in American foreign policy that is often but not only played out in a struggle between the president and Congress. We must remember that the Executive Branch took a prominent role in promoting such multilateral projects as the Law of the Seas Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Mine Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and others, but the U.S. government as a whole has failed to follow through with congressional ratification on any of them. In some instances, this schizophrenia has given rise to what The Economist calls “parallel unilateralism—a willingness to go along with international accords, but only so far as they suit America, which is prepared to conduct policy outside their constraints.” For instance, the United States asserts the jurisdictional limits of the unratified Law of the Seas Treaty. It has pledged not to resume testing nuclear weapons but, because of the unilateral nature of the decision, it does not gain the benefits of verification and the ability to bind others. In other instances, such as proposals to ban anti-personnel landmines, the United States has argued that it needs them to defend against North Korean infantry, but it has undertaken research on a new type of mines that might allow it to join by 2006. In still other cases, such as the Kyoto Protocol, President Bush refused to negotiate and pre-emptorily pronounced it “dead.” The result was frustration and anger abroad that undermined U.S. soft power and galvanized others to do things they might not otherwise have done.

This seemed to some ironic, for during the 2000 presidential campaign, candidate Bush had aptly described the situation: “Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that’s why we’ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom. . . . If we are an arrogant nation, they’ll view us that way, but if we’re a humble nation, they’ll respect us.” Yet, of course, our allies and other foreign governments considered the early practice of his administration arrogantly unilateral. In the words of one observer, at the start of his administration, President Bush “contrived to prove his own theory that arrogance provokes resentment for a country that, long before his arrival, was already the world’s most conspicuous and convenient target.” Thus, as candidate Bush had predicted, within a few months, America’s European allies joined other countries in refusing to re-elect the United States to the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in reaction that “gratitude is gone”, while Secretary of State Colin Powell explained that “the ‘sole superpower’ charge is always out there and that may have influenced some.” In the less temperate words of television commentator Morton Kondracke, “we’re the most powerful country in the world by far, and a lot of pipsqueak wannabees like France resent the hell out of it. . . . When they have a chance to stick it to us, they try.” The House of Representatives responded by voting to withhold funds for the UN.

But things are more complicated than such responses acknowledged. . . .