Is the United States Turning Inward?

Abstract

BROODING ABOUT WHETHER THE UNITED STATES IS TURNING FROM its postwar internationalism to a new isolationism cannot get very far without some definitions. What is internationalism? What do we mean by isolationism?To begin with what internationalism is not; it is not; in my view, romantic, uncritical support of the United Nations or an indiscriminate belief in the virtues of world government. It is not a desire to spend money on overseas 'development,' regardless of whether that money is spent wisely and achieves its intended - or any benign - effect. Notwithstanding the late Princess Diana and others, internationalism is not a belief that all landmines, no matter how they function or where they are deployed, are bad. And internationalism is not unbridled enthusiasm for non-governmental organizations with liberal agendas.Far too often, discussions on this topic subside into confusion between internationalism and liberalism. (This is not a distinctive Canadian practice, but Canadians are pretty good at it.) A failure to define terms at the outset only increases the likelihood of confusion.There can be - indeed there is - what for want of a better term I will call hard-headed internationalism, an approach to world affairs that simply does not accept liberal dogma about the decline of the nation state, the virtues of multilateralism a la United Nations, or the 'feel good' policies with which the liberal disposition is often preoccupied. It is interventionist and, when circumstances demand, unilateralist. For there is no necessary contradiction between an occasional American willingness to 'go it alone' in world affairs and a fundamentally internationalist outlook.Understood this way, the United States is, has been throughout the postwar period, and will remain internationalist. Indeed, the main threat to hard-headed American internationalism is not the appeal of classic isolationists, but romanticism among leaders in the current American administration who, in the supposed interest of multilateralism, have been abdicating American leadership in such places as Bosnia, Iraq, and Iran.Scepticism of the efficacy of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions is easily mistaken for isolationism. Yet there is a strong case for scepticism about the efficacy of the United Nations and its associated multilateral institutions. This is hardly surprising. First, there is no relationship between the voting rights and the power of individual United Nations member nations. This is particularly true of the General Assembly, which cannot exert any real influence, especially in crisis situations, and could not do so even if a vast majority of its member states were joined in a common programme. Even in the Security Council, where Britain, France, China, and the Russia Federation can all exercise a veto (even though their effective power is dwarfed by that of the United States), there is a serious gap between power and authority. Neither the United Nations nor even a smaller and far more cohesive organization like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) can act effectively without the United States. Yet the United States, increasingly, is reluctant to act without the approbation of the United Nations Security Council, which has been weak and ineffective in such important matters as Bosnia and Iraq. The result is a sort of derivative paralysis of the United States, at a time when what the international community needs most is leadership and activism. In the anarchic world in which we still live, a multilateral institution like the United Nations has and will always have profound limitations. Recognizing this does not make one an isolationist. That the United Nations has become an inhibition to American action is deeply troubling. I would sooner worry about the heavy hand of the United Nations in blocking American internationalism than any self-generated failure of an internationalist outlook on the part of the United States. …