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Yes, France, America Will Keep Acting Unilaterally Robert A. Levine Friday, February 8, 2002
LOS ANGELES The Bush administration has acted and will continue to act unilaterally. More precisely, it will be unilateral insofar as it can. George W. Bush's unilateralism contrasts with Bill Clinton's soft cooperation. Mr. Clinton's too frequent international mode was to agree - so long as he knew that Congress wouldn't go along or that the agreement was just paper anyhow. That applies to global warming, for exampele. Mr. Clinton joined in the worldwide hypocrisy on the treaty, and Mr. Bush doesn't.
The Bush method has done very well in the "war on terrorism," although treatment of civil liberties, including prisoners' rights, is a matter of concern. A surprising number of Democrats have gone on record as being glad that Mr. Bush rather than Al Gore has been running the war. Me, too. States act in their own interests. But interests must be interpreted more broadly than they are by most so-called realpoliticians. Interests include economics and strategic security, but also national self-image (de Gaulle), moral issues (disgust with Milosevic), internal politics (the United States on Israel).
They also include national affinities. The United States is indeed tied more closely to Britain by a common language and traditions than to other nations.
But the nations of the West are tightly bound by their common history and particularly their common democracy. At the depth of U.S.-French clashes toward the end of the Cold War, a French military friend said that when issues turned real, France would always stand with America unequivocally. It has. Within that strong context, however, the United States and France do have different national interests. And on those interests, the United States will continue to act as a unilateral superpower. It will because it can.
The stark fact is that America is a lot more important and visible to France than France is to America. Much of what I read in the French press about the French role in the Middle East, or with regard to Russia, or about President Jacques Chirac's visits hither and thither, never reaches even the most serious American media. To be sure, that is in part because Americans like to be ignorant about the world. But it is also because it is truly not very important to us.
France has reacted in the past in two ways. One is negativism. That was managed magnificently by Charles de Gaulle. It worked because France was important to the United States in the 1960s, and because de Gaulle was de Gaulle. It was necessary because it revived France. But by the time I first personally encountered it in the 1980s, it was funny.
The other French reaction is high morality, for example, the posturing about the U.S. death penalty (which I oppose) - by a state that in 2002 is taking two steps forward and one backward as regards the presumption of innocence. America's justice systems need improvement, but so do France's. Meanwhile, Americans are learning that they can't be unilateral in international trade and economics. In the battles in the World Trade Organization and in such competitive arenas as airliner sales, the United States is not doing so well - because it is up against a whole continent with an economy the size of America's.
It seems possible that common European money will force common economic policies, which in turn will force common decision-making across a much wider spectrum, and ultimately confederation. I'm for it. I think we Americans are too powerful for our own good as well as for that of the rest of the world.
Until then, however, the panoply of paper and verbal gestures - a common foreign policy, a European army (at reduced costs), a common European sovereignty without subordinating national sovereignties - signifies little.
Until the members of the European Union become willing to give up sovereignty in favor of significance - in reality, not just by proclamation - the United States will continue to act unilaterally.
The writer, an economist, defense analyst and former official in the U.S. executive and legislative branches, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.