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The "S" Word - The Case for Sovereignty:
Why the World Should Welcome American IndependenceVia Bros. Judd: We live in a world of treaties, international law, and global organizations that have become so numerous and so acronymic that they recall the early days of the New Deal. And it seems more and more that other nations, friendly or not, along with motley organizations and activists, seek to exploit these laws and institutions to constrain American policy.... --SNIP-- ...A realist might conclude that our competitors and allies, now free from the threat of Soviet invasion, are turning international law against us, employing it as just another tool of international politics, and a cheap one at that. But Jeremy Rabkin's new book, The Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome American Independence, gives America's critics and rivals more credit. Unlike many who write in the field of international relations and law these days, Rabkin, a professor of political science at Cornell, has a deep knowledge of American constitutional history and political theory. To him, the conflict between the U.S. and supporters of international law and organizations concerns not merely power and raw national interest, but also ideology. Rabkin shows that the current contest between the United States and other nations who would rely on international law and institutions is not just the effort of middling nations to restrain the world's only remaining superpower through rhetoric and non-military means. It is a competition driven primarily by ideology and belief. Centuries of murderous interstate warfare have led Europeans to seek to bury nationalism within broader supranational entities, a tendency that has disabled their confederation from exercising real national-security powers. As a result of their antagonism to independent sovereign states, Rabkin writes, "Europeans are prepared to cede vast governing power to 'common' institutions, but the different peoples of Europe do not trust each other enough to organize themselves into a single state." Europeans have "learned how to coordinate without compulsion, taking over basic law-setting responsibilities from actual governments without any of the threatening aspects of state power." In effect, Europeans attribute their postwar success to international law and institutions, not the aid and protection of the U.S., and thus want to export the former, and restrain the latter, everywhere. Rabkin notes that Europe "is already so diverse, it can see its governance techniques as almost universal—or as an embryo of a pattern of governance that can be global...." --SNIP-- ...If international law or institutions were permitted to become a policy-making forum, the American people would lose their connection to their government and its founding principles. We would no longer be a nation. For this reason, Rabkin writes, "The United States needs to safeguard its sovereignty in order to safeguard its own form of government. It is not simply a matter of legal technicalities. It is about preserving a structure under which Americans—in all their diversity, with all their rights, and all their differences of opinion—can live together in confidence and mutual respect, as fellow citizens of the same solid republic." So, Rabkin seems to say to our diplomats, cooperate all you like, but always remember that the United States, because of the primacy of its Constitution, has the right to ignore international law or withdraw from its institutions..... --SNIP-- Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-05-03 |
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