Much ink (and hypertext) has been spilled over the past few years concerning the Bush administration's rejection of traditional Republican realism, embrace of neoconservative idealism, and the appropriate liberal response to all this. So much so that one could be forgiven for thinking this is the only important controversy in American foreign policy. The nomination of Undersecretary of State John Bolton for the job of UN ambassador is a reminder that it is not.
During the first Bush administration, Bolton was often referred to as a neoconservative mole in Colin Powell's State Department. This is rather misleading. Unlike such prominent neoconservatives as Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, and Lawrence F. Kaplan, Bolton has no interest in deploying American military power for humanitarian or other idealistic purposes. Whether this makes Kaplan right to claim that Bolton isn't a neocon at all is for others to judge, but it is an important difference. It is also important that he frequently served as a key ally for neoconservatives in the Pentagon and served on the vice president's staff during the interagency disputes of the past several years. The basis for this alliance, however, was not a shared interest in muscular advancement of idealistic principles but, rather, a radically unsound view of multilateral institutions and international law.
The Bush administration's general disregard for such things is well known, but Bolton's views on the subject are an outlier -- at least compared with what others in the administration will admit publicly. Many people are skeptical, to one degree or another, of the efficacy of this or that treaty or UN resolution as a means for achieving worthwhile goals. Bolton's view, as he stated in 1999, is more radical. He believes that "it is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States." The point here is that, as the world's strongest military power, we should encourage the international arena to resemble as closely as possible a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all, where might makes right. We have the might, and making the world otherwise could only serve to constrain us.
A sounder view of the world is suggested by Norman Angell's 1910 classic The Great Illusion in which he observed that a modern, market-oriented society has nothing to gain from war. As he observed, "Conquest in the modern world is a process of multiplying by x, and then obtaining the original figure by dividing by x. For a modern nation to add to its territory no more adds to the wealth of the people of such nation than it would add to the wealth of Londoners if the City of London were to annex the country of Hertford." The reason is that American -- or Englishmen or Mexicans -- need to buy goods in reasonably free markets, irrespective of the location of national boundaries. When Hong Kong passed from British rule to Chinese, British citizens lost nothing of value. Before the transfer, if they wanted to buy goods or services made in Hong Kong, they had to buy them. That the goods and services in question were, formerly, in some sense "British" is of no consequence to the U.K.'s citizens. Angell thought that for these and related reasons war was a thing of the past -- even the winners would be made worse off by combat, so no leaders would be so foolish as to let war break out.
Angell was wrong, of course, and, by 1914, Europe was at war. But he was also right. The war's primary loser -- Germany -- was devastated by the conflict. But so were the primary victors: England and France. Efforts to replace what had been lost by means of onerous reparations utterly failed to compensate for the damage but did succeed in wreaking havoc with the world economy and plunging Europe into a second, even more destructive, general war. Leaders, it turns out, sometimes miscalculate, and states sometimes fall into the hands of malign rulers who are utterly unconcerned with the good of their citizens. In such a world, power matters after all, and even countries that wish for peace must prepare for war. But, since the second World War, responsible leaders have struggled mightily to do what they can to bring the Hobbesian dynamic to an end, through the creation of enduring institutions that provide a rule-based framework for settling disputes and making decisions. International law, in other words.
These institutions do not always work as well as one might like. Throughout the Cold War, the United Nations was essentially useless at its core mission of enforcing a collective security regime. But NATO and the European Union successfully ended the previously endemic military clashes between the Western powers. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United Nations has become more useful. Power is by no means irrelevant, and this network of institutions remains clearly imperfect. But insofar as they do work, they show Bolton's fears be groundless. Germany can no longer invade and conquer Belgium; but, in submitting to this constraint, it loses nothing of value to its citizens. What we need are more and better institutions that can, over time, make military power as unimportant as it is across the U.S.-Canadian border, or the Franco-Spanish one. America's dominance is only valuable insofar as such a world does not yet exist; insofar as it fades because we have created one, we come out ahead. At its best, American power is used -- as it was during the Gulf War -- to strengthen and enforce a rule-based, global security regime.
It has been suggested by some that Bolton's history makes him an ideal candidate to push for useful reform on Turtle Bay. Yet his history suggests his only interest is in delegitimize the very concept of international institutions, not making them work better. It's true that skeptics of the UN and tough talkers alike have proven successful in the role of ambassador. But surely tough talk is not in such short supply on today's right that no one can be found who will ground his criticisms in a desire to see the internationalist project succeed, rather than one committed to its failure. It's not as though tough talk is in short supply on today's right. Surely the Bushies can find a UN ambassador who will ground his or her criticisms in a desire to see the internationalist project succeed, rather than one committed to its failure.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
