[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 29, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1729-S1731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER'S ``AMERICAN UNILATERALISM''
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, In a December 2002 speech delivered by the
commentator, Charles Krauthammer, at the Hillsdale College Churchill
dinner entitled ``American Unilateralism,'' Mr. Krauthammer superbly
articulates the necessity of American action to confront today's
challenges in the international arena, most notably Iraq. He makes a
compelling case against the two kinds of multilateralist thinking that
are common today: that of the liberal internationalists and that of the
pragmatic realists.
Liberal internationalists, Krauthammer shows, cling to
multilateralism as a shield for their real preference--in this case,
inaction. He aptly points out that those most strenuously opposed to
U.S. military action in Iraq are also the strongest supporters of
requiring U.N. backing. The reason, Krauthammer concludes, is that
``they see the U.N. as a way to stop America in its tracks.'' The
liberal internationalist fails to take into account that there is no
logical, or moral, basis for depending upon the member of the U.N.
Security Council to confer legitimacy on U.S. actions.
Pragmatic realists, Krauthammer explains, understand the absurdity of
the liberal internationalist's arguments, but believe that,
nonetheless, the U.S. needs from a practical standpoint, international
support to act. They believe that shared decisionmaking will result in
good will, improved relations, and greater burdensharing. But, as
Krauthammer demonstrates, our experiences in the gulf war prove
otherwise.
It is important to note that Krauthammer does not see unilateralism
as a first choice. Rather, he advocates taking actions that are in the
best interest of the United States, bringing others along if possible.
What he wisely cautions against is allowing ourselves ``to be held
hostage'' by the objections of countries that don't have America's
interests at heart. He describes unilateralism as ``the high road to
multilateralism.'' This may sound paradoxical, but it makes sense. It
is American leadership, asserting a firm position and committing to
take whatever actions are necessary to see if through, that enables a
solid coalition to be built.
Charles Krauthammer's remarks are both timely and insightful as the
United States discusses Iraqi noncompliance with members of the U.N.
Security Council and contemplates military action in Iraq. I highly
recommend them to my colleagues in the Senate.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Krauthammer's December 2002 speech
be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
American Unilateralism
(By Charles Krauthammer)
American unilateralism has to do with the motives and the
methods of American behavior in the world, but any discussion
of it has to begin with a discussion of the structure of the
international system. The reason that we talk about
unilateralism today is that we live in a totally new world.
We live in a unipolar world of a sort that has not existed in
at least 1500 years.
At the end of the Cold War, the conventional wisdom was
that with the demise of the Soviet Empire, the bipolarity of
the second half of the 20th century would yield to a multi-
polar world. You might recall the school of thought led by
historian Paul Kennedy, who said that America was already in
decline, suffering from imperial overstretch. There was also
the Asian enthusiasm, popularized by James Fallows and
others, whose thinking was best captured by the late-1980s
witticism: ``The United States and Russia decided to hold a
Cold War: Who won? Japan.''
Well they were wrong, and ironically no one has put it
better than Paul Kennedy himself, in a classic recantation
emphasizing America's power: ``Nothing has ever existed like
this disparity of power, nothing. Charlemagne's empire was
merely Western
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European in its reach. The Roman Empire stretched farther
afield, but there was another great empire in Persia and a
larger one in China. There is, therefore, no comparison.''
We tend not to see or understand the historical uniqueness
of this situation. Even at its height, Britain could always
be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. It had a
smaller army than the land powers of Europe, and its navy was
equaled by the next two navies combined. Today, the American
military exceeds in spending the next twenty countries
combined. Its Navy, Air Force and space power are unrivaled.
Its dominance extends as well to every other aspect of
international life--, not only military, but economic,
technological, diplomatic, cultural, even linguistic, with a
myriad of countries trying to fend off the inexorable march
of MTV English.
Ironically, September 11 accentuated and accelerated this
unipolarity. It did so in three ways. The first and most
obvious was the demonstration it brought forth of American
power. In Kosovo, we had seen the first war ever fought and
won exclusively from the air, which gave the world a hint of
the recent quantum leap in American military power. But it
took September 11 for the U.S. to unleash, with concentrated
fury, a fuller display of its power in Afghanistan. Being a
relatively pacific commercial republic, the U.S. does not go
around looking for demonstration wars. This one being thrust
upon it, it demonstrated that at a range of 7,000 miles, with
but a handful of losses and a sum total of 426 men on the
ground, it could destroy, within weeks, a hardened fanatical
regime favored by geography and climate in a land-locked
country that was already well known as the graveyard of
empires. Without September 11, the giant would surely have
slept longer. The world would have been aware of America's
size and potential, but not its ferocity and full capacities.
Secondly, September 11 demonstrated a new kind of American
strength. The center of our economy was struck, aviation was
shut down, the government was sent underground and the
country was rendered paralyzed and fearful. Yet within days,
the markets reopened, the economy began its recovery, the
president mobilized the nation and a unified Congress
immediately underwrote a huge worldwide war on terror. The
Pentagon, with its demolished western facade still
smoldering, began planning the war. The illusion of America's
invulnerability was shattered, but with the demonstration of
its recuperative powers, that sense of invulnerability
assumed a new character. It was transmuted from
impermeability to resilience--the product of unrivaled human,
technological and political reserves.
The third effect of September 11 was the realignment it
caused among the great powers. In 1990, our principal ally
was NATO. A decade later, the alliance had expanded to
include some of the former Warsaw Pact countries. But several
major powers remained uncommitted: Russia and China flirted
with the idea of an anti-hegemonic alliance, as they called
it. Some Russian leaders made ostentatious visits to little
outposts of the ex-Soviet Empire like North Korea and Cuba.
India and Pakistan sat on the sidelines.
Then came September 11, and the bystanders lined up.
Pakistan immediately made a strategic decision to join the
American camp. India enlisted with equal alacrity. Russia's
Putin, seeing a coincidence of interests with the U.S. in the
war on terror and an opportunity to develop a close relation
with the one remaining superpower, fell into line. Even
China, while remaining more distant, saw a coincidence of
interest with the U.S. in fighting Islamic radicalism, and so
has cooperated in the war on terror and has not pressed
competition with the U.S. in the Pacific.
This realignment accentuated a remarkable historical
anomaly. All of our historical experience with hegemony
suggests that it creates a countervailing coalition of weaker
powers. Think of Napoleonic France, or of Germany in the 20th
century. Nature abhors a vacuum and history abhors hegemony.
But in the first decade of post-Cold War unipolarity, not a
single great power, arose to challenge America. On the
contrary, they all aligned with the U.S. after September 11.
So we bestride the world like a colossus. The question is,
how do we act in this new world? What do we do with our
position?
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld gave the classic formulation
of unilateralism when he said, regarding Afghanistan--but it
applies equally to the war on terror and to other conflicts--
that ``the mission determines the coalition.'' This means
that we take our friends where we find them, but only in
order to help us accomplish our mission. The mission comes
first and we define the mission.
This is in contrast with what I believe is a classic case
study in multilateralism: the American decision eleven years
ago to conclude the Gulf War. As the Iraqi Army was fleeing
the first Bush administration had to decide whether its goal
in the war was the liberation of Kuwait or the liberation of
Iraq. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who was
instrumental in making the decision to stop with Kuwait, has
explained that going further would have fractured the
coalition, gone against our promises to our allies, and
violated the U.N. resolutions under which we had gone to war.
``Had we added occupation of Iraq and removal of Saddam
Hussein to those objectives,'' he wrote, ``our Arab allies,
refusing to countenance an invasion of an Arab colleague,
would have deserted us.'' Therefore we did not act. The
coalition defined the mission.
liberal internationalism
There are two schools of committed multi-lateralists, and
it is important to distinguish between them. There are the
liberal internationalists who act from principle, and there
are the realists who act from pragmatism. The first was seen
in the run-up to the congressional debate on the war on Iraq.
The main argument from opposition Democrats was that we
should wait and hear what the U.N. was saying. Senator
Kennedy, in a speech before the vote in Congress, said,
``I'm waiting for the final recommendation of the Security
Council before I'm going to say how I'm going to vote.''
Senator Levin, who at the time was the Chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, actually suggested giving
authority to the President to act in Iraq only upon the
approval of the U.N. Security Council.
The liberal internationalist position is a principled
position, but it makes no internal sense. It is based on a
moral vision of the world, but it is impossible to understand
the moral logic by which the approval of the Security Council
confers moral legitimacy on this or any other enterprise. How
does the blessing of the butchers of Tiananmen Square, who
hold the Chinese seat on the Council, lend moral authority to
anything, let alone the invasion of another country? On what
basis is moral legitimacy lent by the support of the Kremlin,
whose central interest in Iraq, as all of us knows, is oil
and the $8 billion that Iraq owes Russia in debt? Or of the
French, who did everything that they could to weaken the
resolution, then came on board at the last minute because
they saw that an Anglo-American train was possibly leaving
for Baghdad, and they didn't want to be left at the station?
My point is not to blame the French or the Russians or the
Chinese for acting in their own national interest. That's
what nations do. My point is to express wonder at Americans
who find it unseemly to act in the name of our own national
interest, and who cannot see the logical absurdity of
granting moral legitimacy to American action only if it earns
the prior approval of others which is granted or withheld on
the most cynical grounds of self-interest.
Practical Multilateralism
So much for the moral argument that underlies
multilateralism. What are the practical arguments? There is a
school of realists who agree that liberal internationalism is
nonsense, but who argue plausibly that we need international
or allied support, regardless. One of their arguments is that
if a power consistency shares rule making with others, it is
more likely to get aid and assistance from them.
I have my doubts. The US. made an extraordinary effort
during the Gulf War to get U.N. support, share decision-
making and assemble a coalition. As I have pointed out, it
even denied itself the fruits of victory in order to honor
coalition goals. Did this diminish anti-Americanism in the
region? Did it garner support for subsequent Iraq policy--
policy dictated by the original acquiescence to that
coalition? The attacks of September 11 were planned during
the Clinton administration, an administration that made a
fetish of consultation and did its utmost to subordinate
American hegemony. Yet resentments were hardly assuaged,
because extremist rage against the U.S. is engendered by the
very structure of the international system, not by our
management of it.
Pragmatic realists value multilateralism in the interest of
sharing burdens, on the theory that if you share decision-
making, you enlist others in your own hegemonic enterprise.
As proponents of this school and argued recently in Foreign
Affairs, ``Straining relationships now will lead only to a
more challenging policy environment later on.'' This is a
pure cost-benefit analysis of multilateralism versus
unilateralism.
If the concern about unilateralism is that American
assertiveness be judiciously rationed and that one needs to
think long-term hardly anybody will disagree. One does not go
it alone or dictate terms on every issue. There's no need to.
On some issues, such as membership in the World Trade
Organization, where the long-term benefit both to the U.S.
and to the global interest is demonstrable, one willingly
constricts sovereignty. Trade agreements are easy calls,
however, free trade being perhaps the only mathematicaly
provable political good. Other agreements require great
skepticism. The Kyoto Protocol on climate change, for
example, would have had a disastrous effect on the American
economy, while doing nothing for the global environment.
Increased emissions from China, India and other third-
world countries which are exempt from its provisions
clearly would have overwhelmed and made up for what-ever
American cuts would have occurred. Kyoto was therefore
rightly rejected by the Bush administration. It failed on
its merits, but it was pushed very hard nonetheless,
because the rest of the world supported it.
The same case was made during the Clinton administration
for chemical and biological weapons treaties, which they
negotiated assiduously under the logic of, ``Sure, they're
useless of worse, but why not give in, in order to build good
will for future needs?'' The problem is that appeasing
multilateralism does not assuage it; appeasement only
legitimizes it. Repeated acquiescence on provisions that
America deems injurious reinforces the notion that legitimacy
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derives from international consensus. This is not only a
moral absurdity. It is injurious to the U.S., because it
undermines any future ability of the U.S. to act
unilaterally, if necessary.
The key point I want to make about the new unilateralism is
that we have to be guided by our own independent judgment,
both about our own interests and about global interests. This
is true especially on questions of national security, war
making, and freedom of action in the deployment of power.
America should neither defer nor contract out such decision-
making, particularly when the concessions involve permanent
structural constrictions, such as those imposed by the
International Criminal Court. Should we exercise prudence?
Yes. There is no need to act the superpower in East Timor or
Bosnia, as there is in Afghanistan or in Iraq. There is no
need to act the superpower on steel tariffs, as there is on
missile defense
The prudent exercise of power calls for occasional
concessions on non-vital issues, if only to maintain some
psychological goodwill. There's no need for gratuitous high-
handedness or arrogance. We shouldn't, however, delude
ourselves as to what psychological goodwill can buy.
Countries will cooperate with us first our of their own self-
interest, and second out of the need and desire to cultivate
good relations with the world's unipolar power. Warm feelings
are a distant third.
After the attack on the USS Cole, Yemen did everything it
could to stymie the American investigation. It lifted not a
finger to suppress terrorism at home, and this was under an
American administration that was obsessively multilateralist
and accommodating. Yet today, under the most unilateralist
American administration in memory, Yemen has decided to
assist in the war on terrorism. This was not the result of a
sudden attack of Yemeni goodwill, or of a quick re-reading of
the Federalist Papers. It was a result of the war in
Afghanistan, which concentrated the mind of recalcitrant
states on the price of non-cooperation.
Coalitions are not made by superpowers going begging hat in
hand; they are made by asserting a position and inviting
others to join. What even pragmatic realists fail to
understand is that unilateralism is the high road to
multilateralism. It was when the first President Bush said
that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would not stand, and made
it clear that he was prepared to act alone if necessary, that
he created the Gulf War coalition.
America's Special Role
Of course, unilateralism does not mean seeking to act
alone. One acts in concert with others when possible. It
simply means that one will not allow oneself to be held
hostage to others. No one would reject Security Council
support for war on Iraq or for any other action. The question
is what to do if, at the end of the day, the Security Council
or the international community refuses to back us? Do we
allow ourselves to be dictated to on issues of vital national
interest? The answer has to be ``no,'' not just because we
are being willful, but because we have a special role, a
special place in the world today, and therefore a special
responsibility.
Let me give you an interesting example of specialness that
attaches to another nation. During the 1997 negotiations in
Oslo over the land mine treaty, when just about the entire
Western world was campaigning for a land mine ban, one of the
holdouts was Finland. The Finnish prime minister found
himself scolded by his Scandinavian neighbors for stubbornly
refusing to sign on the ban. Finally, having had enough, he
noted tartly that being foursquare in favor of banning land
mines was a ``very convenient'' pose for those neighbors who
``want Finland to be their land mine.''
In many parts of the world, a thin line of American GIs is
the land mine. The main reason that the U.S. opposed the land
mine treaty is that we need them in places like the DMZ in
Korea. Sweden and Canada and France do not have to worry
about an invasion from North Korea killing thousands of their
soldiers. We do. Therefore, as the unipolar power and as the
guarantor of peace in places where Swedes do not tread, we
need weapons that others do not. Being uniquely situated in
the world, we cannot afford the empty platitudes of allies
not quite candid enough to admit that they live under
the protection of American power. In the end, we have no
alternative but to be unilateralist. Multilateralism
becomes either an exercise in futility or a cover for
inaction.
The futility of it is important to understand. The entire
beginning of the unipolar age was a time when this country,
led by the Clinton administration, eschewed unilateralism and
pursued multilateralism with a vengeance. Indeed, the
principal diplomatic activity of the U.S. for eight years was
the pursuit of a dizzying array of universal treaties: the
comprehensive test ban treaty, the chemical weapons
convention, the biological weapons convention, Kyoto and, of
course, land mines.
In 1997, the Senate passed a chemical weapons convention
that even its proponents admitted was useless and
unenforceable. The argument for it was that everyone else had
signed it and that failure to ratify would leave us isolated.
To which we ought to say: So what? Isolation in the name of a
principle, in the name of our own security, in the name of
rationality is an honorable position.
Multilateralism is at root a cover for inaction. Ask
yourself why those who are so strenuously opposed to taking
action against Iraq are also so strenuously in favor of
requiring U.N. support. The reason is that they see the U.N.
as a way to stop America in its tracks. They know that for
ten years the Security Council did nothing about Iraq;
indeed, it worked assiduously to weaken sanctions and
inspections. It was only when President Bush threatened
unilateral action that the U.N. took any action and stirred
itself to pass a resolution. The virtue of unilateralism is
not just that it allows action. It forces action.
I return to the point I made earlier. The way to build a
coalition is to be prepared to act alone. The reason that
President Bush has been able and will continue to be able to
assemble a coalition on Iraq is that the Turks, the Kuwaitis
and others in the region will understand that we are prepared
to act alone if necessary. In the end, the real division
between unilateralists and multilateralists is not really
about partnerships or about means or about methods. It is
about ends.
We have never faced a greater threat than we do today,
living in a world of weapons of mass destruction of
unimaginable power. The divide before us, between
unilateralism and multilateralism, is at the end of the day a
divide between action and inaction. Now is the time for
action, unilaterally if necessary.
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