Multilateral Schism
To hear European critics explain it, the United States has gotten drunk on its own superpower. But that’s empirically wrong.

By Jonathan Kay, editorials editor of Canada’s National Post. This column was adapted from an editorial that will appear in tomorrow’s National Post.
June 15, 2001 11:40 a.m.

E-mail Jonathan Printer-Friendly E-mail a Friend

uring the past week, George W. Bush has subjected himself to diplomatic catcalls in each of the EU's 11 official languages. The specific flash points were Mr. Bush's endorsement of a national missile shield and his rejection of the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Yet for all the Eurofuss, the substance of the disagreement on these two issues is lighter than it appears.

Though the Kyoto protocol was drafted four years ago, it has not been ratified by a single member of the EU. Few, if any, European nations have any chance or evident intention of meeting Kyoto's ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse has emissions. Officials from several European nations have also discretely expressed interest in working with the United States on some kind of missile-shield project. In truth, the arguments traded between Mr. Bush and his European Union hosts were more symbolic than real — proxies for a larger fight about how world affairs should be conducted. Among EU heads of state, the doctrine of multilateralism has attained the status of unshakable truth. It is Mr. Bush's threat to this dogma that is the real source of transatlantic friction.

To what does multilateralism owe its revered status in Europe? The answer takes us to the end of the Cold War and the beginning of what Mr. Bush's father dubbed the New World Order. In 1989, just as the Soviet Union was crumbling, a U.S. State Department official named Francis Fukuyama wrote his influential essay, "The End of History." With the eclipse of Soviet Communism, he argued, mankind's ideological evolution was at an end; Western economic and political liberalism had become the "final form of human government." In the decade that followed, the broad sweep of world events seemed to bear out the thesis. The Berlin Wall fell. China increasingly stroked the black cat of capitalism. Democracy swept away despots in Latin America, East Asia, and Africa. The word on everyone's lips was globalization. Chinese peasants were drinking Pepsi. Arab accountants were using Windows. With the exception of Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and other backwaters, the world was becoming a smaller, gentler place.

There was a feeling that the nations of the world were moving toward a single, democratic, globalized ideal that animated the flurry of international agreements and initiatives springing up during the 90s. Before that time, multilateral bodies had narrowly defined goals. NATO was pledged to defending Western Europe from Russian tanks. And no one was protesting the World Trade Organization meetings because the World Trade Organization didn't exist. All of this changed when globalization replaced the Cold War as the dominant foreign-affairs paradigm. In the 80s, formerly obscure bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund began taking an active role in the management of an increasingly interconnected global economy. In the 90s, the UN and NATO no longer confined themselves to stopping war between sovereign countries. Peacekeeping, peacemaking, and nation-building within war-torn nations — Bosnia, Indonesia, Angola, and Congo, for instance — was now on the agenda. The belief also spread that murderous historical rivalries would fall victim to the warm and fuzzy political spirit that accompanied globalization. The Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998. The first Oslo agreement was signed in 1993. Peaceniks mused that Israel might someday join the Arab League.

This utopian brand of multilateralism created a utopian brand of leader. Globalization was always dear to the hearts of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The idea that the whole world was gradually embracing the same values was consistent with the sunny, inclusive Third Way attitude they sought to project. The hyper-rational Al Gore was a huge fan. He put global warming on the American agenda and championed the Kyoto protocol.

Where free trade and military adventurism are concerned, the Americans have led the multilateral charge. But despite Clinton-Gore boosterism, there arose a growing gulf between the European and American approaches on every other issue. Aside from the Kyoto Protocol, the second half of the 90s brought us the 1998 Rome Treaty on the International Criminal Court, the 1997 Land Mine Treaty and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In every case, the pattern was the same: The European nations piled in enthusiastically, while the Americans kept their distance.

The message from the United States always has been clear. In October 1999, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has been ratified by every other member of NATO, by a solid margin of 19 votes. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 against any global-warming resolution that, like the Kyoto protocol, bound industrialized countries but not developing nations. On December 31, 2000, President Clinton put America's signature on the International Criminal Court as an 11th-hour gesture of multilateralist goodwill, but said that the treaty had "significant flaws," and that, "I will not, and do not recommend that my successor submit the Treaty to the Senate for [ratification] until our fundamental concerns are satisfied."

To hear European critics explain it, however, the United States has gotten drunk on its own superpower now that it doesn't have to share the bottle with Soviet Russia. But that's empirically wrong. Every one of the so-called U.S. "rebuffs" has clearly — or at least very arguably — been in the American national interest. According to the projections of the United States Energy Information Administration, the strictures imposed by the Kyoto Protocol would lop as much as US$500-billion off of the GDP in 2010. Land mines help protect the 37,000 American soldiers stationed in South Korea from North Korean attack. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would tie American hands without establishing adequate provisions to keep tabs on rogue states. And the International Criminal Court would subject G.I. Joe to the jurisprudential whimsy of human-rights lawyers.

Why do Europe and the United States see things so differently? There are two main reasons. The first is perspective. With the creation of the EU, the whole structure of Europe itself became multilateral. And it is natural for member countries to see multilateralism in positive terms. Over a broad range of issues — such as capital punishment, on which Mr. Bush took considerable hammering during his European trip — there is very little substantive disagreement on the continent. European leaders seem to have internalized the view that every disagreement can be settled through rational discussion. It is telling that when Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, the leaders of France and Germany respectively, met with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, they argued that the threat from rogue nations should be settled with "diplomacy" instead of anti-ballistic missiles. To Americans, the belief that the plots of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il can be defused with talk and good intentions is laughable. They are the ones who get their embassies blown up, and they do a lot more dangerous mucking about in the world's dark corners than the French or Germans.

The second reason has to do with national goals. The United States has rejected multilateral initiatives and instruments because they are inconsistent with American foreign-policy objectives. But in Europe, creating a multilateralist bulwark to American "hyperpower" isn't just consistent with foreign-policy objectives, it is a foreign-policy objective. For this, blame lies mostly with France. It was French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine who coined the term hyperpuissance and it is France that has most explicitly embraced the goal of planting in European soil a second Western pole of global power.

Obviously, George W. Bush and European leaders hold very different views on issues such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto protocol on global warming. But the squabbling on those subjects is also a proxy struggle for a larger ideological battle about multilateralism — and all signs indicate this fight will still be with us long after Kyoto and the ABM fall off the agenda.