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December 1, 2004
Our Greatest Threat
Every week the Homespun Bloggers poses a symposium question for it's members. Following is this week's question and my answer to it.
What, in your mind, represents the single greatest long-term threat to the United States of America, and what should be done about it?
The greatest threat that we face is becoming more involved in international institutions such as the United Nations, and signing onto treaties such as Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. The reason why these represent such a threat is twofold: One, they infringe on our sovereighty, and two, they place unacceptable limits on our ability to respond to security threats. What makes these a problem for us is that the other nations involved in these organizations and treaties use them specifically to further their anti-America agendas.
Terrorism is a threat, yes. But they cannot bring us down, nor is it long-term. A nuclear attack by terrorists on one or more of our cities will be devastating, to be sure. This, however, we can recover from, terrible though it would be. The United States is good at fighting wars, and with enough will power we can and will win the War on Terror.
Infringement on sovereignty is the death of a thousand cuts. There will be no one moment when we give up our rights. Rather, it will be like the ever growing burden of regulations eminating from some governement bureacracy like the EPA. I see it as a long-term threat because it slowly but surely trespasses on our liberties, both individual and as a nation.
The Threat Next Time
As things stand now, we are able to act as we see fit to defend our country. If we think that a nation or group threatens us, we will do what we need to do to end that threat.
But this may not be the case in the future. As long ago as 1990, during the run-up to the Gulf War, it made me uneasy when George H W Bush's insisted on getting proper Security Council resolutions before taking any action against Iraq. I worried "what if the other nations don't vote how we want them to?" Even though we got what we wanted, I worried that this was setting a bad example. I didn't know how right I was.
Over the past few years we have seen the dangerous precident set back in 1990 come back to haunt us.
We almost lost our ability to act independenty this time, while planning actions in the war on terror.
We got what we needed from the UN Security Council for Afghanistan and al Qaeda. But that was an easy one. We had been directly attacked, and needed to respond.
On Iraq, it was a struggle just to get the Security Council to approve 1441. Kofi Annan declared that if the Us and others were to go outside the (Security) Council and take military action, it would not be in conformity with the charter." Iraq flouted UN resolutions for years with little consequence
But what about the next time we believe there is a threat that requires military action? Unless we suffer a direct, obvious attack such as what occured on Sept 11 2001, it is problematical as to whether we can get the resulutions we need.
The Failure of the UN
While the United Nations may have originally served a useful purpose, any benefits to membership are now clearly outweighed by it's drawbacks.
The turn came in the late 1960's when the UN experienced a surge in membership due to many former colonies achieveing their nationhood. These new nations quickly discovered that they could dominate the UN General Assembly. In the words of one author, the assembly became "...a strident, antineocolonialist ideological talkfest."
As we all know, the latest insult is the Oil-for-Food scandal. This has mushroomed into what is probably the biggest financial scandal in history. Latest estimates are that Saddam and his cronies took $21 billion. This under the watch of the UN. The organization has proved utterly incapable of investigating itself on this matter, and it is uncertain as to whether the Volcker commission will get to the bottom of it, given that he lacks subpoena power.
The Security Council used to be useful but is no longer so. Jed Babbin points out that with the end of the cold war, "...the alliances upon which it was founded no longer exist, and the interests of the powers that have a veto over Security Council resolutions have diverged to the point that consensus and action cannot be achieved."
But perhaps the biggest problem with the UN is it's assumption of moral equivalency. All nations, whether murderous dictatorships or benign democracies, are treated equally. The one nation that comes under regular attack: Israel.
Article 51 of the UN charter may say that each nation has the right to self-defense, but this is increasingly being rendered irrelevant. Kofi Annan is hardly the only critic of the U.S. to say that our invasion of Iraq was "illegal" because it did not receive "proper" Security Council authorization.
The European Frankenstein
The Europeans are in the process of destroying the sovereignty of individual nations. The proposed EU constitution is to be superior to the laws of individual countries (Article 10) Member states agree to take no measure inconsistent with the objectives of the constitution (Article 5, Section 2). Foreign and defense policy will be defined by the EU, not individual nations (Article 11, Section 4). To be sure, the constitution has not actually been adopted, as objections to some of it's many provisions have been raised. But it seems clear that any changes will not alter it substantially.
And it all started so innocently, as the "Common Market" (European Common Community), in the late 1950's. What was originally an agreement designed to facilitiate commerce has evolved into a supra-national state.
It is not that I think that we are on the verge of joining this monstrosity. It is rather that is serves as an example of how our enemies wish to restrict our ability to act freely. This is how they will do it. They will try to tie us in knots by involving us in as many treaties and international institutions as possible.
Terrible Treaties
One of the best things George W Bush has done is to extricate the United States from several treaties that were designed to work against us.
His first step was to remove us from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. While important, this was a treaty negotiated with a single other country (the Soviet Union) and thus is not the direct subject of this writing. It is important in that it signals a new attitude towards treaties.
The Kyoto global warming treaty was more insidious. It's sponsors claimed that it's purpose was to end the threat of global warming. However, even a cursory inspection of it's provisions revealed that it would have the effect of destroying the US economy. This treaty was a sop to the environmental extremists, and was taken up by anti-American third-worlders in an attempt to gain economic and political advantage. Again, President Bush did the right thing when he "unsigned" the US.
Most dangerous of all is the International Criminal Court. Our soldiers and politicians could be hauled before a court with judges from countries such as Libya or Sudan. They could be accused of "enviromental crimes" or "crimes against humanity." The recent incident of the young Marine in Fallujah illustrates the dangers perfectly. Insurgent terrorists commit atrocity after atrocity, and violate every rule of war known to man, and who comes under the harsh criticism of the world's elites? The Marine, of course. President Bush wisely repudiated this treaty too, and has even negotiated immunity for US forces serving as UN peacekeepers.
Judicial Tyranny
Our own courts have begun to buy into the idea that we should look to international law as a guide, even in instances when it does not directly apply. Justice Sandra Day O'Conner has several times extolled the role of international law (here, here, and here).
This may sound alarmist to some. After all, it will be said, Justice O'Conner was only saying that we need to look at other countries in cases where the US does not have much legal history, such as physician-assisted suicide. But the Netherlands, the country she suggests we look to, hardly is an example that we would want to follow.
More to the point, given the outrageous judicial activism that dominated much of the latter half of the twentieth century, we need to be more attuned than ever to what the counts are doing. Given that it is virtually impossible to remove a judge once installed, the damage a bad one can do is enormous.
Non-Answers
As Jed Babbin says, it a is fools errand to try and reform the United Nations. The General Assembly is powerless, and dominated by third-world kleptocrats. The Security Council is a relic of the balance of power that existed in 1945 (and barely even that, France only being on the council becuase we felt sorry for them). Any changes would require the approval of our enemies.
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is often touted as an alternative to the UN. It is said that since we were allied with them for fifty years against a common enemy, we are already well used to working with each other. This, however, ignores several factors.
First is simply the fact that the enemy that the treaty was designed to stop has gone away. The assumption that "the allies" still have common interests is not supported by the history of these past few years.
Second, do we serve the interests of the treaty or does it serve us? It seems that the attitude of so many on these things is "the treaty exists, therefore it must be good." It's as if we serve the interests of the treaty, not the other way around. The point is that we need to move away from the attitude that just because something has existed for a period of time it must not be changed.
Third, NATO is limited geographically. If there is an emergency in the Pacific rim, say with China, NATO is useless. The Europeans have no ability any more to project power beyond a very limited range.
Lastly, there is nothing in the NATO charter to authorize offensive action against third parties. Those who continuously berate the US for "illegal actions" would do well to read it's charter. The NATO treaty only stipulates that "...an armed attack against one of more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all...."
That said, NATO is still useful and should not be disbanded. But it is not the answer.
In an ideal world we would form a membership of democracies that was not geographically limited. The advantage is that members would consist of legitimate governments, those chosen and approved of by their citizens. However, not all democracies share common goals, as recent discord between the US and France illustrates. When it comes to military action, reliance on the cooperation of other democracies is unwise.
Possible Solutions
More encouraging is the Proliferation Security Initiative. The PSI is an initiative announced by President Bush in May of 2003 to counter the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The president saw that other options were not working, and in September of 2003 advised the UN that we would do the job independently of them.
Members of the PSI are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US. Members work together to interdict shipments of WMD or their delivery systems. While the Bush Administraton says that the PSI will "reinforce, not replace, other nonproliferation mechanisms," it seems that this is the wave of the future.
It would seem that this type of arrangement might be well suited for future challenges. Ad hoc arrangements of "like-minded" nations could be formed as needed. These could be based on regional needs as well as global ones.
The Council for a Community of Democracies may also provide a useful model. Although, as stated above, such organizations are not always well suited for military action, they can be quite useful in furthering our goals. And no goal is more important than the spread of democratic institutions and societies.
I can think of no one answer as an alternative to traditional international institutions. But in my mind they do represent an enormous danger and need to be replaced.
Lastly
Be sure and visit the Homespun Bloggers for other answers to this question. As of this writing, seven bloggers have responded with posts. I have deliberately not read their work yet, so as to see what I could come up with on my own, but once my piece is posted I'll read each one.
Update
Check out my post on my other blog site for more on this subject
Posted by Tom at December 1, 2004 10:58 AM
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