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325 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
“…it would be an irony if the new millennium’s most distinctive achievement were to turn into a vulnerability…the very process that has produced greater wealth in more parts of the world than ever before may also provide the mechanism for spreading an economic and social crisis around the world. Just as the American economy has been the world’s engine of growth, a major setback for the American economy would have grave consequences transcending the economic realm. Depending on its magnitude, it could threaten political stability in many countries and undermine Americans international standing.”He got that right.
“American foreign policy became increasingly driven by domestic politics…[like when] early in his administration [President Clinton] made the granting of Most Favored Nation status to China dependent on Chinese demonstrations of progress on human rights within a year…Nothing illustrates better the collapse of the Westphalian notion of noninterference than the proposition that freedom of speech and the press, which has never existed in the five millennia of Chinese history, could be brought about through legislation by the American Congress…”I guess that’s a “no” on tying cooperation to human rights.
”The United States has come a long way since John Quincy Adams warned against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy…On one level the growing concern with human rights is one of the achievements of our age and it is certainly a testament to progress toward a more humane international order…There is irony in all this when one recalls that, during the Cold War, the Wilsonians [the ideological Left] had argued that excessive concern with security was leading to strategic overextension and an illusion of American omnipotence. Yet now, in the post-Cold War era, they are urging a global mission for the United States and on behalf of humanitarian and moral values, which risks an even more sweeping overextension.”I grudgingly concede he is right about that, which has led me to an in-depth study of foreign policy at this time. If we must lead by reason of our role as the world’s sole superpower, how can we best to do that? Even as I write this, I wonder if there might be some unexpected and enlightened leadership from an unlikely source, not a superpower, considering our domestic disarray and our navel-gazing populace. Whatever we decide will have to include some accommodation with the massive changes that will come when water rises around the globe and the dislocations resulting from that and changing weather patterns. How can we best face those pressures with dignity, grace, and that insistence on human rights?
“The doctrine of universal jurisdiction asserts that there are crimes so heinous that their perpetrators should not be able to escape justice by invoking doctrines of sovereignty or the sacrosanct nature of national frontiers. …But any universal system should contain procedures not only to punish the wicked but to constrain the righteous. It must not allow legal principles to be used as weapons to settle political scores…”Kissinger sounds horrified that Americans, in particular Americans in leadership, could be judged by such international standards of justice, when they were only pursuing a foreign policy that was for their exclusive benefit. Kissinger tries to explain his role in the CIA overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile and the installation of the notorious Pinochet regime. In any case, he should have known better. When the International Criminal Court later wanted to convict some of the leaders in the former Yugoslavia for “crimes against humanity,” an American judge put in place significant roadblocks which had the effect of raising the burden of proof involved in convicting political leaders. Thus Americans were not indicted for a range of activities that came awfully close to such definitions.
In addition, an International Criminal Court (ICC) is in the process of being created that, when ratified by sixty nations, will invest a prosecutor with the power to start investigations of alleged violations of international law at the request of any signatory state and, when backed by three of eighteen judges, to bring indictments against any suspected transgressor anywhere in the world (including against citizens of nations which have refused to accept the ICC’s jurisdiction).
World order requires consensus, which presupposes that the differences between the advantaged and those disadvantaged who are in a position to undermine stability and progress, be of such a nature that the disadvantaged can still see some prospect of raising themselves by their own effort.
A permanent worldwide underclass is in danger of emerging, especially in developing countries, which will make it increasingly difficult to build the political consensus on which domestic stability, international peace, and globalization itself depend.
The dark cloud that is hanging over globalization is the threat of a global unraveling of the free market system under political pressure, with all its attendant perils to democratic institutions.
No economic system can be sustained without a political base.
find partners not only for sharing the psychological burdens of leadership but also for shaping an international order consistent with freedom and democracy.