The hubris of unilateralism

Stanley Hoffmann took a relatively early look at the fatal hubris of the Cheney-Bush administration's foreign policy in The High and the Mighty The American Prospect 01/13/03. He argues that American foreign policy has always been based on some form of belief in American exceptionalism. But, he writes, "With the coming of the Bush administration, American exceptionalism has become something entirely new and particularly troubling."

Even before 9/11 "changed everything", the Cheney-Bush administration was practicing a form of arrogant unilateralism, as evidenced by:

... the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the scuttling of the Land Mine Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The extraordinary vendetta conducted (largely but not exclusively by John Bolton, Bush's controversial undersecretary of state) against the International Criminal Court revealed not just the administration's paranoia - conjuring nightmares of a malevolent United Nations indicting innocent American soldiers and officers - but also how punitive it could be against countries (allies or not) unwilling to meet its demands. [my emphasis]

As this current administration is thankfully only weeks away from becoming history rather than current events, Republican partisans will be eagerly trying to rewrite that history. Which comes naturally to them now, after years of changing the Party line on a dime in response to the latest White House direction. So it's important for the rest of us to look at that history as realistically as possible.

In this case, we should be fair to Bush and note that the administration's fear of Americans being indicted for war crimes before the International Criminal Court may not have been just paranoia. Given the attitude that we know now they had toward international and American law, that may have been a rational calculation on their part.

The justifications made for the unilateralist policy in the early years of this administration should have been embarrassing for adults to articulate:

What are the new exceptionalists' main arguments for liberating the United States from the constraints imposed by allies and treaties? Most bizarre may be the claim that the U.S. Constitution allows no bowing to a superior law, such as international law, and no transfer, pooling or delegation of sovereignty to any international organization. Also far out there is law professor W. Michael Reisman's argument that because the United States, as a result of its strength, is responsible for world order, it is justified in rejecting whatever parts of international law it decides would make order more difficult.

Somewhat subtler is the claim of benevolent imperialism, developed in particular by the policy analyst Robert Kagan, who has called the United States "a Behemoth with a conscience." In an article in which valid criticisms of current European policy are mixed with a great deal of condescending hubris, Kagan explains that Europeans think they approach problems with "greater nuance and sophistication" than the United States, but their concentration on "challenges" such as "ethnic conflict, immigration, organized crime, poverty and environmental degradation," rather than on the kinds of "threats" that preoccupy the United States, demonstrates their weakness - and their reliance on the protection of American military power.

And then there is the argument of brute force: We have it in abundance, others do not. Hence allies, when they do not bend to our will, are both nuisances and unnecessary, and international laws and organizations that stand in our path can be ignored. This case has been made by Bolton and Rumsfeld. [my emphasis]

The Constitution of course makes international treaties approved under the Constitutional procedures equally the law of the land with the Constitution itself. And the Supreme Court has held that treaty obligations can supersede the Constitution. But when you're operating on a theory of unlimited Executive power that says the President can ignore even the Constitution as long as he claims a national security hook, the notion that no international law can overrule the Constitution becomes largely irrelevant to Presidential claims of power in foreign policy.

Writing before the invasion of Iraq began, Hoffman said:

In truth, our attempt to eliminate Hussein and his weapons may well provoke the very disaster that we say we want to prevent. The optimism of those who tell us that we'll win easily, that Hussein's regime will crumble and democracy will then prevail in a liberated nation, is eerily reminiscent of the disastrously wishful thinking of the Vietnam War. And even if militarily victorious, a U.S. administration with deep doubts about nation building and very little help from other nations would then be stuck running a vast Muslim country racked by ethnic and religious divisions and aspirations for revenge - a sure formula for further anti-Americanism and terrorism in the Muslim world. Meanwhile, our unilateral action would have shaken many of our carefully built alliances in Europe and the Middle East.

These are alliances that even a sole superpower needs. What the unilateralists forget is that we cannot achieve any of our new goals - from finding terrorists to creating democracies - alone. But if we want those alliances to last, it is in our interest to concentrate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the war on terrorism before we turn on Iraq. (Indeed, for some of the hawks in the Bush administration, one of the attractions of an early war on Iraq is that it would postpone and render even more difficult an evenhanded solution to the Palestinian problem.) [my emphasis]

Hoffmann was clearly right about the risk of unilateralism in that war. So, because he was right, the traditional media doesn't often feature him as a commentator. Because having been correct about the Iraq War back then is still treated by the Beltway Village as a sign of lack of "seriousness". Yes, the national press is that broken. (Hoffman is the director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University and is one of the few actual experts on terrorism in the United States.)

His warning about the weak basis for this enormous arrogance was on the mark:

Empire, or the dream of empire, has invariably gone to the heads of the imperialists. Today's American dream of a benevolent empire is sustained by an illusion of the world's gratitude, but in fact it rests only on America's ever more flattering self-image. [my emphasis]

Tags: bush administration, bush doctrine, stanley hoffmann