At the synagogue that I attended Saturday morning the worshippers downplayed the significance of Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Some of them wondered why anybody should care about any peace prize that Yasser Arafat could win. That’s certainly a valid point. But I think that it’s very easy to underestimate the award’s significance. Most people don’t share the worshippers’ disdain for it. The award will give Obama more personal prestige and it may make him harder to defeat in 2012. But the point that David Frum made earlier cannot be emphasized enough. This award is all about Obama’s potential – or, to put it more bluntly, the Nobel Committee is blatantly trying to influence American foreign policy. As Frum rightly pointed out, how can a Nobel Peace Prize winner attack Iran, wage a long war in Afghanistan, or tell the Palestinians, “Sorry, that’s the best offer, take it or leave it.”
But I think that this is only part of what the Nobel Committee was trying to do. They awarded the prize to an idea – multilateralism – as much as to a man. Multilateralism is a bad idea in conception and it has turned to be even worse in implementation.
Multilateralism asserts that the world is better governed through international institutions, such as the United Nations, rather than through the separate decisions of individual sovereign states. By buying into multilateralism, as President Obama has done, one presupposes that all states are equal, that there is no hierarchy in the moral quality of nations. After all, at the UN what Iran or Libya says counts for exactly as much as what Great Britain or the United States says.
President Obama likes to emphasize how much he reversed the policies of the Bush Administration. Actually, he has reversed at least sixty years of American foreign policy. Read the Truman Doctrine. It explicitly proclaims the superiority of American democracy over Communist totalitarianism, thereby providing the intellectual foundations for the American defense of Western European democracies from Soviet totalitarianism.
Herein lies the theoretical problem with multilateralism. If the small number of countries that are willing to confront the tyrant feel constrained from acting by the absence of international support, then the tyrant wins and he is left to pursue aggression or oppression. Thus, the leaders of Iran who openly declare their hatred of Jews develop their nuclear arsenal with impunity secure in the knowledge that there is no multilateral support for forcing them to disarm.
Frum takes the left’s commitment to “lawfare” at face value. I’m not willing to give it the benefit of doubt. One could write an entire book on the left’s inconsistencies and hypocrisy. Today’s New York Jewish Week carries a story about the difficulty that Israeli generals and diplomats experience traveling in European countries such as Great Britain because of the likelihood that they will be charged with war crimes. The article reports that the charges are often by Palestinian “human rights groups” that often get funding from European governments. At the same time, these European governments push hard for the establishment of a Palestinian state that will almost certainly be autocratic and will not respect any human rights.
In general multilateralism has hurt democracies and helped cruel dictatorships. President Obama has completely bought into this, for which he has now received his first award.
8 responses so far
1 mlindroo // Oct 11, 2009 at 8:01 am
> Multilateralism asserts that the world is better governed through international institutions,
> such as the United Nations, rather than through the separate decisions of individual
> sovereign states.
As always, this can be a good or bad thing depending on how far the concept is taken.
But if we compare the European Union approach to what was going on in the first half of the 20th century, I think we can safely conclude that “separate decisions of individual sovereign states” (based on aggressive militarism and exclusive nationalism/chauvinism) does not work better… If you want free and fair exchange of goods, ideas and people between nations (free trade), multilateralism and common standards and agreements become necessary.
> In general multilateralism has hurt democracies and helped cruel dictatorships.
Well, I think there has been much more “multilateralism” in the post-WW II era. Despite this, I don’t believe the percentage of nominally democratic nations in Europe, Africa, Asia, America and Asia has decreased.
MARCU$
2 sinz54 // Oct 11, 2009 at 10:07 am
The issue isn’t so much “multilateralism” as it is U.S. leadership.
To say the U.S. never acted multilaterally is simply wrong historically:
Both the League of Nations and the United Nations were conceived by U.S. presidents (Wilson and FDR respectively).
The Korean War of 1950 was authorized by the U.N., and U.S. forces fought under the U.N. flag, leading a broad coalition of troops from numerous Western nation. The Gulf War of 1991 was also authorized by the U.N., and once again the U.S. led a coalition of troops from numerous Western nations.
But the operative words for the U.S. were “leading” and “led.” During the Reagan Administration, U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick spoke out again and again about Soviet sins. It was the U.S., not some pipsqueak Third World nation, that asked for the U.N. Security Council resolution to declare war against Saddam in Kuwait. And in the 1990s, the Europeans asked the U.S. for help in the Balkans, and the U.S. responded with military force.
So the issue isn’t so much “multilateralism” as how large of a role the U.S. should have. Should it lead a multilateral effort on Iran, or global warming? Or should it leave the driving to others? So far, Obama has managed to ooze and slide his way past this question with his usual sunny grin, as he has oozed and slid his way past just about every other difficult issue in his administration to date. So far, he hasn’t drawn any firm lines in the sand on anything–not on Afghanistan, or Iran, or even on health care, his signature domestic issue.
I wonder how long he can keep that up.
3 EscapeVelocity // Oct 11, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Yep.
Europe would like to control the US military for their own uses and purposes (while having Americans pay for it), and the dictators and human rights abusers around the world would like the US military to be hamstrung. So its a win/win situation for most of the world.
And of course the Western Left would also like to see the hog tieing of the US as an actor on the world stage, in fact they would like to see the US destroyed, but brought to her knees would be swell too.
4 balconesfault // Oct 11, 2009 at 12:27 pm
If Obama is unable to lead in the world – there will be a legit question about the influence of Republican Congressmen jetting down to Honduras telling military coup leaders to not accede to the Administration demand to restore the elected President to power … of Republican Congressmen jetting to international conferences to declare that the Administration won’t be able to deliver on any agreements made at the conferences because Congress won’t approve it … of Republican Congressmen jetting to Israel to tell how strong the opposition in Congress is to Obama’s Israel-Palestine policies … of Republican Congressment jetting to China to tell the Chinese government that they shouldn’t trust America’s finances.
The only geopolitical “leadership” that Republicans would accept from Obama, seemingly, is leadership that would move completely in the direction that Bush has taken the country over the last 8 years … even when many Republicans recognize how disasterous that direction was. At the end of the day, it really is simply a desire for Obama to fail, no matter what direction he leads, because Obama’s failure is more important than America’s role in the world.
5 sinz54 // Oct 11, 2009 at 1:21 pm
balconesfault:
The job of the “loyal opposition” is to be loyal to the nation while opposing its leader.
What the GOP is doing isn’t all that different from Madame Pelosi journeying to Damascus during the Bush Administration, or Jim Moran going to Iraq before the start of the Iraq War. During the Bush Administration, the Dems were doing everything in their power to undercut the Bush foreign policy.
During the Reagan Administration, Ted Kennedy had met with Soviet leaders to “agree” that it was really Reagan’s alleged bellicosity and military buildup that were the true danger to the world. And if the Dems won, they would change all that. Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill fought the Reagan foreign policy every step of the way, despite the fact that they had been part and parcel of the Carter foreign policy that had led America to the brink of ruin in the world. But that was their job as the “loyal opposition”–to point out alternatives, however stupid those might be in practice.
6 Reason60 // Oct 11, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I see this as a false dilemma, the Charles Krauthammer position that we are to choose between a humbled Amewrica kowtowing to a cabal of Third World dictators and cowardly European appeasers or standing tall and leading the world to a glorious democratic Pax Americana.
I see it as a choice between us becoming an American Empire, arrogant, brutal, and inevitably corrupted by the mad pursuit of power, or on the other hand, being a leader by example, building alliances with like minded nations by respecting their opinions and concerns. This has America being vigilant about our defense, but content to let other regional players work out their own interests.
Thinking that America has to unilaterally and singlehandedly dictate world events is the stuff of republican (small “r”) nightmares. Yet it was literally the policy of the neocons.
We have about 1,000 military bases around the world- it can truly be said that the sun does not set on American Empire, that there is no corner of the world in which we do not have a military presence.
This is not necessary to defend us; But is necessary to maintain a swaggering hegemony over world power.
Feeding this Leviathan of a military machine currently consumes nearly $1 Trillion a year, every year, as long as we are engaged in multiple wars on different fronts. Feeding the accompanying massive domestic security apparatus not only costs an obscene amount of taxpayer money, it costs us the very liberties we supposedly are guarding.
This is all to keep and maintain such absurdities as 72,000 troops in Germany to defend…well no one really knows, but we absolutely must keep them there anyway.
For those who believe that 1,000 military bases on nearly every nation on Earth is somehow a birthright, and to be accepted as a natural course of things, let me ask- how much resentment and hatred is being created by having foreign troops baed on other people’s lands? How would we feel to wake up one morning and see French Mirage jets screaming over Times Square? Or German tanks rumbling across an Iowa field? Or to find a gaggle of drunken Italian soldiers at the local pub? Foreign troops, like guests, smell after a very short time. No matter how noble we think we are, there is coming a time when the world decides that having American soldiers in their local town is not worth whatever geopolitical benefit their politicians tell them they are getting.
America is ennobled, not humbled, by treating other nations as equals deserving of respect. We earn greater power and security in forming genuine alliances, not vassal clients.
7 balconesfault // Oct 11, 2009 at 10:34 pm
What the GOP is doing isn’t all that different from Madame Pelosi journeying to Damascus during the Bush Administration, or Jim Moran going to Iraq before the start of the Iraq War.
Really? What did “Madame Pelosi” say to undermine Bush policies – did she tell the Syrians to continue supporting Hezbollah? What did Jim Moran say to undermine Bush – did he publicly declare that Saddam should stay in office and reject weapons inspectors?
If you can’t see the difference between Congressmen traveling to foreign countries – and Congressmen traveling to foreign countries with the declared intention of subverting the President’s diplomatic agenda – well … it’s gonna be a long 8 years. Because you struggled to come up with *2* examples that aren’t even very good examples, and we’re less than 10 months into the Obama Agenda and we already have 4 prominent examples of Republicans traveling abroad to declare to the world that their President doesn’t speak for America.
8 sinz54 // Oct 12, 2009 at 12:54 pm
balconesfault:
Pelosi went to Damascus to open a direct dialogue with Assad, in direct contravention of Bush policy which was that we don’t negotiate with rogue states, we isolate them. Bush accused Pelosi of helping to legitimize the Assad regime as part of the international community, even though Bush policy said it was not.
Just before the outbreak of war with Iraq, Jim Moran said: “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.” That was not only offensive–raising the old canard about Jews pushing Western nations into war, the same charge that had been leveled against FDR–but it was wrong. (Public opinion polls showed that most Jews opposed the Iraq War; they tend to be politically liberal.)
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