TWO FRIDAYS ago, political scientist and well-known blogger Daniel Drezner spoke at the University. He argued that we could be entering a future in which international politics will be determined less by law and more by power.
Drezner's argument was based on an important if somewhat paradoxical insight. He pointed out that although the number of international institutions grew rapidly in recent decades their collective power to enforce sovereign states' adherence to a rule-based order might be diminishing. This is an alarming sentiment given the instability of great power balancing.
Essentially, Drezner's argument is that proliferation of international institutions with similar jurisdictions allows powerful states to "forum shop" to obtain their preferred outcome in policy disputes with other states. For instance, in international trade disputes a case could be brought to arbitration before both a regional trade bloc and the World Trade Organization. While all states can forum shop, Drezner argued that great powers like the United States have structural advantages over less powerful states in the process.
Since the United States is currently the strongest, though hardly the most admired country on the planet, the ability to have our way through forum shopping might seem well and good. The Bush administration certainly has seen international institutions as a tool to impose America's will on the world, but only with great reluctance been constrained by them.
Only in rare cases, such as the rescinding of steel tariffs in the wake of a hostile decision by the WTO, has the United States yielded to international bodies on any major issues. Generally the Bush administration has sought to achieve its goals through whatever international body or alliance is convenient. If NATO can be convinced to attack Afghanistan, great, but if it can't be browbeaten into going to war with Iraq we will create a "coalition of the willing" and denigrate our long-standing allies.
One example Drezner gave is a long-running dispute between the United States and Canada over the importation of Canadian soft lumber into the United States. The World Trade Organization ruled against American import restrictions, but the Bush administration chose to give precedence to a NAFTA arbitration panel that ruled in America's favor. Drezner explained that since international institutions are non-hierarchical, in the sense that there is no clarity in treaty law whether NAFTA decisions takes precedence over WTO decisions or vice-versa, ignoring the WTO was not illegal. Of course, the administration would have done precisely the reverse had the decisions come down differently.
Unfortunately for American nationalists, the United States won't remain so dominant in economic and military affairs indefinitely. As the world catches up with the United States, other states will follow America's example with respect to treatment of international law. If the United States treats international bodies as tools to be played off against one another, we will encourage China, Russia, India and other countries to see in them merely a cynical but obligatory layer of hypocrisy through which they must work to exercise their power. The creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, led by Russia and China, counts Iran as an observer and pointedly excludes the United States, is a first step down the path of foreign imitation of our own policy toward international institutions.
Even more alarming, as Drezner expressed it, there is a "closing window" of time in which the United States has the opportunity to effect important changes in the international system by embracing and endeavoring to create a stronger rule-based international order. Such a change might require a consolidation of existing institutions within the international system and a clearer delineation of legal authority and enforcement capabilities to specific international bodies, both of which would likely require bold American leadership and certainly American acquiescence. We must take advantage of the high ground and lead by example while we still can.
A reorientation of American policy to the liberal internationalism of the pre-9/11 years is crucially important toward regaining respect for the United States around the world. But to be credible in this effort we will also have to recommit to the principles that defined America before that fateful September day. I grew up believing, without irony, that the United States was a city on a hill. I now find myself a citizen of a country whose president believes simulated drowning is not torture.
The path forward will be difficult. First we must reclaim our moral heritage and then we must recommit ourselves to a conception of international politics grounded in justice in more than just rhetoric.
Andrew Winerman's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at awinerman@cavalierdaily.com.
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