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[Excerpt from my speech/essay, US Counterterrorism Policy and Superpower Compliance with International Human Rights Norms, 30 Fordham International Law Journal 455 (February 2007).]
The Conjoined U.S.-International System
Another way of framing the superpower versus multipolar world–one which offers some explanations–is through the familiar terms of classical international relations theory. That, in the hands of Morgenthau, or Waltz, or Mearsheimer, among others, each with his or her particular version of the story, tells us that the international system of States can be a condition of anarchy among States, or, under some circumstances, it might be dominated by a hegemon able to enforce a certain amount of status quo order. Classical international relations theory also offers various possibilities for what can happen to hegemonic order when that order is perceived as threatening–smaller States, feeling threatened or seeing opportunity, might band together at least temporarily to counteract the hegemon. Or the hegemon might exhaust itself internally. Or a new power might arise to challenge hegemony. There are many possibilities. I have no special idea where to place the United States today in such an array of realist paradigms. It does seem to me, however, contrary to pure realist international relations theory, that at least in the short to medium term, an analysis of U.S. power in the world must take account of at least the following “extra-realist” considerations:
? The role of values and ideological considerations in the world today, partly reflected around the ideology of human rights, but also increasingly around other ideologies, most powerfully political Islamism, but also in such ideologies as democratic authoritarianism ? la Putin or Chavez.These ideologies carry independent causal weight in the behavior of States, international actors, and sub-State actors that affect State behavior.
? The role of values and ideologies in U.S. politics, as with other large democracies, whether France or Germany, India or Japan. It cannot all be simplified to “material” State interests.
? The discernible reluctance in U.S. political culture to play the role of overt imperial power (leaving aside Latin America), even when Niall Ferguson or Michael Ignatieff thinks the United States should –a reluctance so considerable that it raises a question as to whether the term “hegemon” actually fits U.S. behavior.
? The long-standing response by other countries to the United States’ cultural reluctance to be an overt imperialist. That response–a crucial feature of the “international system” as it exists today–amounts to acquiescence in the U.S. security role; as Michael Mandelbaum correctly says on this point, other generally friendly States trust, not this policy, but rather the underlying cultural tendency–one which tends to revert to the cultural mean over time–against what realism might otherwise be thought to dictate. They therefore tacitly accept the U.S. security status quo, and think it worth more, with relatively few costs or demands for imperial tribute, than what such international institutions as the Security Council or international law or the international system construed without U.S. hegemony might offer.
? A firm belief running across the partisan range in mainstream U.S. politics–Democrats as well as Republicans, liberals as well as conservatives–in some form of U.S. exceptionalism, an exceptionalism not based on the fact of power alone, but on a belief in its internal moral order legitimating a certain moral place in the world, however differently the partisan actors within U.S. politics interpret that exceptionalism. This may be folly, the “fantastic dogma,” that Rieff says it is, but I take it that he would grant, as a descriptive matter, that it accurately captures a deeply-held view of the U.S. political center.
? A U.S. belief–again, broadly held across the mainstream political spectrum, Democratic as well as Republican–that International Law, norms, and institutions are to be treated and interpreted pragmatically, according to the “broad-minded” interests of a superpower interested in status quo order, stability, and the promotion of economic interconnectedness–and against, despite the rhetoric sometimes offered by Democrats, making a fetish of international law or institutions for their own sake. It is not the narrow and material self-interest of rising powers such as China–selling, for example, its Security Council veto for commercial gain in Sudan–but it is a view of the international system, the U.N., and International Law according to pragmatic criteria centered in, not precisely sovereign State interest, but the broader interests of the democratic sovereign State which also happens to be the superpower, and with a range of special considerations.
All these bullet points, especially the last four, can be and are disputed. One might think matters were very much otherwise if all one were to consider, for example, was the debate in the Security Council over Iraq. But when one looks to the medium term behavior of States, I suggest that this description is reasonably close to the truth of how States actually, in fact, act today. There is a kind of equilibrium in which such structures as the U.N. and its norm-system, the international system, and the international State system–all these partially overlapping circles, operate with a certain weight and effect, while simultaneously being limited, not precisely by the power of the United States coercing or prohibiting them from acting, but instead by the preferences of significant actors, who prefer the implicit security order offered by the United States irrespective of the U.N., the Security Council, and the whole edifice of institutions and norm-structures giving rise to the ideal of collective security. They can loudly pay lip service to the international system precisely because they trust for their security elsewhere.
The existence of a hegemon offering security puts a limit on actually testing what the international system on its own might, or might not, accomplish if States overall had to look to it for security. Does anyone want genuinely to rest the Thucydidean “argument upon your safety” on the logic of collective U.N. security? There are populations who have no choice but to do that–the inhabitants of Darfur, for example, and before that, the men and boys of Srebrenica. There are also, to be fair, more positive examples as well evident in the relative successes of U.N. peacekeeping missions in recent years. But it is perhaps not surprising that a significant number of the world’s States, starting with Europe, have not, since 1945 (or even since 1990), been willing to test the naked proposition of collective security, fearing precisely the outcome that the international system so often amounts to–insincere promises and easy defection. As measured by their behavior at least, they prefer to trust, grudgingly, the superpower’s offer of an undemanding order over the uncertainties of collective action–so much so that they neither look to nor spend significantly for their own defense, but instead let the superpower do it. This does not stop everyone from loudly complaining, sometimes justifiably and sometimes not, about the superpower’s behavior. But the complaining is integrally part of the logic of insincere promising and insincere protesting. Likewise the attempt to bend the superpower to the will of smaller powers through a combination of ideological flattery (”you can be civilized like us”) or the ideological guilt trip (”we won’t love you anymore”).
One may, and indeed should, treat each individual dispute with the United States on its own merits, of course. My point concerning the relation of the superpower to the international system, the U.N. and its norm system, is a different one, and merely a descriptive observation of how the system works over time. The “conjoined system” of U.S. hegemony and the international system–and the United Nations in particular, as a place for countries (and international elites, non governmental organizations (”NGOs”) and international civil servants, not just *465 countries) to get angry and let off steam while not intending, not really, to challenge the fundamental bases of that conjoined system (insincere protesting, again)–has, it seems to me, reached a fairly immoveable equilibrium. A lot of key players are invested in both the security and the protesting, invested in dependency and insincerity. If the question, therefore, is getting the superpower to go along with a set of norms defined by the international system, then it is relevant to consider the idea that the international system is not actually one of everyone profoundly frustrated and angry–certainly not to the point of actually changing it, or challenging the superpower by organizing against it materially rather than merely symbolically. Instead, it is what it has long been, a system in relatively stable equilibrium, in which the shouting, and the periodic amplification of the shouting, is part of how the system works over time.
Could all this change? Of course. The United States could gradually lose the economic power required to be the security-providing hegemon. Other powers could gradually arise, China, India, etc. The United States could gradually lose ideological steam to maintain its place in the system. The logic of collective security could start to look more attractive to key players currently under the U.S. security blanket. Risk assessments differ, too– Western Europe at this moment is worried about Russia and its energy supplies, which worries the United States far less than North Korea or China is, after all, to Europe, just a large market far away and unthreatening. All sorts of things can and will happen over time.
But the system for now exhibits a certain stability, provided one sees it as a conjoined system. Key players, even when they protest, are also deeply invested in the system for their own reasons. Change, particularly change of norms, is not easy, because insofar as the norms are specifically part of the values of the international system, appeals for change inevitably raise questions of whether the participants are genuinely serious, or whether instead the exercise is mostly part of the international system’s (and especially the United Nations’) inherent cycle of insincere promising-insincere protesting-easy defection. The conjoined US-international system (excerpt from my Fordham speech/essay on counterterrorism)
Topps’s Predictable Postponement
Indiana cities, townships & counties would be undergoing drastic reorganization & reform under 27 proposals from the governors Commission on Local Government Reform announced today.
Conceived of back in May, just after the close of this years session of the Indiana General Assembly, Governor Mitchell Daniels created the Commission in July to develop recommendations to reform and restructure local government in Indiana.
Its findings, in a nutshell, were that for its size and population, Indiana has far too much local government.
Full Report Indiana Local Government Reform
International humanitarian law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaInternational humanitarian law (IHL), often referred to as the laws of war, the laws and customs of war or the law of armed conflict, is the legal corpus “comprised of the Geneva .
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At 7, NBC has a new Dateline. 
