By Michael J. Glennon
Sunday, August 12, 2001; Page B02
"Unilateralism," the pejorative-du-jour for disliked foreign policy initiatives, is in danger of taking on the scent of its rightly discredited forebear, "isolationism." Critics both abroad and at home, most recently Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle and House Minority leader Dick Gephardt, have lambasted the administration for a series of initiatives undertaken alone. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer even turned the tables recently by charging that the administration's critics, who oppose Mexican trucks on U.S. roads in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, were the real unilateralists. Surely no one, he implied, would in this day and age wish to be seen as what in a previous era was known as the Ugly American.
That's too bad. Unilateralism has always been a centerpiece of American foreign policymaking, and the world is the better for it. The unilaterally promulgated Monroe Doctrine shielded the Western Hemisphere in the early 19th century from foreign colonization and exploitation of the sort that afflicted Africa and Asia. In the early 20th century, Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points served as a unilaterally delivered agenda for the Versailles peace conference, at which World War I was formally ended. At mid-century, the Truman Doctrine unilaterally committed the United States to a worldwide effort to stop the spread of communism. In 1956, President Eisenhower unilaterally blocked the military campaign of Britain and France to overthrow Nasser and capture the Suez Canal. President Kennedy unilaterally announced that the United States would halt atmospheric nuclear testing provided the Soviet Union did the same. The first President Bush helped take the African elephant off the road to extinction by announcing -- unilaterally -- that the United States would ban ivory trading.
Other nations have not shrunk from unilateralism when it has served their interests. France, one of the foremost critics of what its foreign minister calls American "hyperpower," alone rejected the declaration of the Community of Democracies, which 106 countries signed in Warsaw last year, pledging cooperation in support of democratic institutions in newly emerging democracies. New Zealand in the mid-1980s unilaterally banned visits from nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships. Britain, declining thus far to participate in a single European currency, is a prominent -- but hardly the only -- European nation that unilaterally resists full integration. Norway refuses to join the European Union. Switzerland takes a pass on the United Nations. The list goes on.
Why does the United States act alone? Both friends and foes of American preeminence claim that the United States acts unilaterally to advance American hegemony. But in reality, it's hard to tell when it does advance it and when it doesn't. Consider American rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the 1997 ban on anti-personnel land mines, the nuclear test ban treaty or restraints on small arms sales. Each of these actions irritated other nations and clearly did not benefit U.S. diplomatic influence. Yet nixing Kyoto probably enhanced relative American economic power, and retaining the option to use land mines could conceivably tip the balance in a conflict on the Korean peninsula.
As someone who has advised Congress, the executive branch and international organizations for nearly 30 years on issues of international law and policy, it seems clear to me that the real reasons for the persistence of American unilateralism have little to do with advancing our hegemony.
First, acting multilaterally can carry huge costs, even for longtime allies. The United States sacrificed operational efficiency for political consensus in waging a committee-run war in Kosovo. NATO's target selection procedure initially gave 18 coalition partners a veto over every target that the U.S. military wished to hit -- even though destruction of that target could have been essential to the protection of American forces committed to combat. While that subsequently changed, "coalition warfare" could have turned into a bureaucratic nightmare had the need arisen to improvise a coordinated ground attack.
Second, multilateralism doesn't transform a bad idea into a good one. The fact that a group of nations favors a given solution to some problem does not mean that that solution advances the interests of every other nation -- or even members of the group. Man-made global warming is no myth. But the Kyoto Protocol will not significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it. In this century, most of those emissions are likely to come from India, China and other Third World nations to which the pact does not apply. What the protocol demonstrably would do is slow economic growth dramatically in the United States.
Third, as often as not, the United States acts alone not to assert power over other nations, but to prevent them from asserting power over this country. The Senate's 1919 refusal to approve the covenant of the League of Nations -- an act that set the stage for American unilateralism throughout the 20th century -- can be traced to the belief of Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge and the Senate "Reservationists" that the covenant would have committed the United States to go to war when so directed by the League. More recently, the treaty that would establish an International Criminal Court raises similar questions by permitting amendments or court decisions that, the Clinton administration concluded, "could effectively create 'new' and unacceptable crimes."
None of this is to suggest that all or even most of the challenges confronting the United States are amenable to unilateral solutions. The most serious contemporary international problem, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, cannot be resolved by the United States alone. The cooperation of other states -- Russia and China foremost among them -- is required. Nor, appearances notwithstanding, can a missile defense system be put in place unilaterally. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty can be terminated with or without Russian consent -- but building a full-fledged, operational system would require the approval of at least Britain, where radars would almost surely have to be located.
Further, a willingness to act unilaterally does not resolve the elaborately difficult question that underlies several of the administration's recent unilateral initiatives: Whenthe two aims conflict, should the United States act in its own national interest, or should it act in the interest of the international community? As recently as 25 years ago, the United States often was able to avoid confronting this issue because American and international interests did not conflict nearly as often as they are now perceived to: Policies such as maintaining global peace and security normally benefited both. With issues such as global warming, however, the dilemma cannot be escaped. As with ranchers whose cattle overgraze a common pasture, the rational course for a given country may lie in continuing to destroy the global commons and "free riding" on the efforts of other nations to clean it up -- a course that many Americans would be loath to see their country take.
If the United States wishes to maintain global preeminence, it will have to think through carefully at what point that objective requires it to oppose further constraints on its behavior. Some universal constraints, such as those directed at protecting free trade, intellectual property rights and fundamental human rights, may sustain or advance American preeminence. Others -- aimed at delegating American governmental functions to international organizations -- may impede it. Which are which -- and whether the long-term benefits of hegemony compensate for the sacrifices needed to maintain it -- should be the focus of the debate. Flinging charges of "unilateralist" at opponents merely confuses the issue.
Acting alone is not the same as acting for yourself.
Moreover, it's important to remember that acting alone is more risky than acting with others. Had the United States approached Vietnam as it did the conflicts in Kosovo and the Persian Gulf -- had it conditioned American willingness to intervene on its ability to assemble a coalition -- the war probably would never have been fought. America's reluctant allies were right; listening to them would have spared the nation an unparalleled tragedy.
The way to avoid future Vietnams, however, is not to renounce the unilateral use of force. The judicious use or threat of force -- multilateral when possible, unilateral when necessary -- can advance both international peace and justice.
Still, in a disorderly international system, in which nations continue to use force against each other with impunity, sovereignty remains the central organizing principle. The power to act alone is an indispensable attribute of sovereignty. Forgoing that option through gradual attrition can be dangerous, especially for a nation such as the United States that relishes its difference from the conformist, group-oriented cultures that pervade most of the world. Individualism is and has been the factor most responsible for the vibrancy of American law and politics, economics and diplomacy. Much of the United States's success in the world traces to its taste for risk, its sense of independence, its willingness to experiment and take the initiative.
The road less traveled is never the most popular path, for individuals or for nations. But the readiness to strike out alone has made America and Americans what they are. It would be a shame, for us and the world, if fear of being labeled "unilateralist" caused that readiness to diminish.
Michael J. Glennon, a 2001-2002 fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1977 to 1980 and is the author of "Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo," published this month by St. Martin's/Palgrave.