I see that Armand has, with vim and vigor, torn Brooks a new one. Brooks succeeded in irritating me with his column as well, and I thought I'd elevate my comments to a new post rather than tag on Armand.
David Brooks' supposed topic is John Bolton, but in reality he takes on the idea of global governance (whatever that is). The centerpiece of his column is a five-point explanation of:
why this vaporous global-governance notion is a dangerous illusion, and [why] that we Americans, like most other peoples, will never accept it.
The tenuous link to Bolton is that Bolton is firmly against this creeping threat to America, and will steadfastly work in the UN to shine the bright light of truth and rightousness at it (where I guess it will shrivel up and die). Why is "global governance" so bad?
We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions.
Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.
Huh? We certainly can set up a "global democracy" that would make the UN and other institutions more democratic. It wouldn't be (technically) hard. I suspect that all those black-helecopter people would object if we went in that way, but not the globalists. As to "common peoplehood and trust", isn't that the sole reason expressed in Bush's 2nd Inaugruation for pushing freedom around the world? Isn't that why we're in Iraq? If it doesn't exist, why are so many millions trying to get into the US? And why, because of this lack of "common peoplehood and trust" can't we have debate and votes? I don't see, logically, why a lack of trust precludes governance. In fact, it's the lack of trust that makes governance: a formal checks-and-balances legal government allows winners and loser to co-exist and forestalls revolutions. Not for the first time does Brooks make no sense.
As for "unelected elites", what the hell is Bolton? (Or, for that matter, I don't remember voting for Brooks, so what the hell is he?) All modern governments are filled with unelected elites. The American government contains 1.8 million non-postal executive branch employees. Last I checked, we only elected one of those. Is he really proposing elections for all those posts? He might have a good point about "decisions in secret", but international treaties are public (though the deliberations may not be: this is true of every level of government - try sitting in on any executive-branch policy meeting or a House-Senate conference committee meeting and see how public those are). The UN may not be as public as Brooks wants, but that criticism is insufficient as a significant criticism (given the secrecy that US citizens accept of this President). And what the hell is this "Americans will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy" crap? We have signed (and adhere to) many, many international treaties that all remove some of our sovereignty. We have done this for centuries, and I don't see the republic crumbling yet.
Second, we will never accept global governance because it inevitably devolves into corruption. The panoply of U.N. scandals flows from a single source: the lack of democratic accountability. These supranational organizations exist in their own insular, self-indulgent aerie.
This is just pathetic. How does global governance inevitably become corrupt? What reason? What logic? What inevitability? And the UN is accountable: the member states can leave the organization, or can put pressure on it in other ways (the US failed to pay dues for most of a decade). If enough members do this, the UN will change. The fact that it hasn't changed to what the US wants doesn't mean that the UN isn't democratic, it means that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily want what the US is proposing. That's not a lack of "democratic accountability", that actually fairly democratic. We just don't like it.
We will never accept global governance, third, because we love our Constitution and will never grant any other law supremacy over it. Like most peoples (Europeans are the exception), we will never allow transnational organizations to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents. We think our Constitution is superior to the sloppy authority granted to, say, the International Criminal Court.
This is true. This is also true for all the other 200-odd states in the world. Any international treaty can be avoided by the state withdrawing from it. It is worth noting that we, as noted above, have numerous times already allowed "transnational organizations to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents." Look at NAFTA. Look at the WTO. We have signed treaties that superceded our own laws. Brooks must know this, so this is just stupid.
Fourth, we understand that these mushy international organizations liberate the barbaric and handcuff the civilized. Bodies like the U.N. can toss hapless resolutions at the Milosevics, the Saddams or the butchers of Darfur, but they can do nothing to restrain them. Meanwhile, the forces of decency can be paralyzed as they wait for "the international community."
Look, the UN is handcuffed because the states with power in the UN vote to prevent it from acting: it's not inherent in the UN itself. We toss resolutions at Milosevic (actually, didn't we toss bombs at him?) because thats what the UN voted to do. The UN has no power and authority other than what the member states grant it. The world genuinely disagreed about what to do about Saddam. Blaming the UN for a failure to act in Iraq is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the UN operates (and Brooks isn't that stupid). And the UN hasn't done anything in Darfur because there isn't enough global support (money and soldiers) to actually do something. That's not the UN's fault. As for the hamstrung "forces of decency", I didn't see them waiting before invading Iraq two years ago. And the "forces of decency" could stop Darfur if they weren't tied down in Iraq today (and really wanted to do something, which I don't think most Americans would support). The UN is supposed to be a quasi-representative body: it's supposed to take the general support of the "international community" to do something. If there is insufficient support in the community, nothing happens. This sound remarkably similar to getting legislation passed in the US Congress.
Fifth, we know that when push comes to shove, all the grand talk about international norms is often just a cover for opposing the global elite's bêtes noires of the moment - usually the U.S. or Israel. We will never grant legitimacy to forums that are so often manipulated for partisan ends.
I think this paragraph come closest to Brooks' real objection: he hates the UN because the UN might actually do something independent of what the US wants. If the UN is even partially democratic (in the sense of responding to the will of the world's peoples), then given that the world sometimes disagrees with the United States, we should expect the UN to disagree as well. Brooks can't have it both ways: either the UN is democratic, in which case it will oppose the US at times, or the UN becomes a US puppet - in which case the UN will not be democratic and will lose global legitimacy (and then what good is it?).
In the end, I think this is Brooks real point: the UN doesn't do what we want, so it is "elitist" and "undemocratic". He just wants a global body to rubber-stamp US policy, and seems to reject the idea that the rest of the world actually disagrees with us on some policies. If he legitimately believes that, he's not qualified to write columns for the New York Times. If he knows that the world sometimes disagrees with us, and that the UN represents some of that disagreement, then the column is disingenious and Brooks should stop hiding.
If I had to guess which one, I might just go with the former. This sentence: "We will never grant legitimacy to forums that are so often manipulated for partisan ends." is sheer idiocy. What did Congress just do in the Terry Schiavo case? What are most Congressional hearings these days? What is the President's "rah-rah" Social Security privatization campaign about? How are those so very different from the UN?
A monumentally poor column by Brooks.
Posted by baltar at April 14, 2005 12:22 PM | TrackBack | Posted to International Affairs