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July 23 - August 5, 2018
One problem, though, is that bringing democracy about elsewhere is easier said than done. Not every society is ripe for democracy.
that outsiders are normally limited in what they can do to affect democratic prospects.
As we have seen all too often of late in the Middle East, the alternative to a flawed political system can be an even more flawed political system.
Third, incomplete or what Fareed Zakaria terms “illiberal” democracies can be dangerous both to those living in the country and to others.
Fourth, foreign policy (or public policy of any sort, for that matter) involves the need to determine and stick with priorities.
It is important to underscore that what is being suggested here pertaining to sovereign obligation assumes respect for sovereignty.
Sovereign obligation clearly overlaps with realism. But realism, with its emphasis on relations between major powers, is simply too narrow for a world in which global issues, regional states, and all sorts of nonstate actors possess influence.
elements of the traditional order would carry over in a world predicated on the principle of sovereign obligation. The first would be respect for borders and a commitment not to use military force or other coercive means to change them.
When this norm is violated, there will be resistance, be it physical (as was the case when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait) or financial (as when Russia annexed Crimea).
A second aspect of the classic or traditional order that needs to be considered is the notion that governments enjoy a relatively free hand to act as they wish within their borders.
Regional approaches also tend to reduce the role of great-power politics. This said, and as the Middle East demonstrates, turning to regional approaches to prevent or stop massive civilian suffering and genocide is no panacea when the regional body is hamstrung by disagreement or constrained by a lack of capacity.
If the United States or any other party calls for and carries out an intervention in the name of R2P, it must be limited to a humanitarian intervention.
One alternative to the management approach (and a companion or complement to both diplomatic efforts to roll back North Korea’s nuclear capability and deployment of antimissile systems) would be to live with proliferation until intelligence suggests that such weapons are about to be used or transferred to a nonstate actor such as a terrorist group.
A second alternative for the United States would be to try to gain international support for the legitimacy of preventive action to stop proliferation.
strategy published in September 2002 by the administration of George W. Bush. The document made this clear, stating that “in an age where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather.”8 Prevention in principle provides a means to disrupt a program before it produces nuclear weapons or, even if one or more weapons exist, to prevent the expansion of an arsenal and, more ambitiously, to destroy those weapons that do exist.
other problems with a preventive approach that uses military force. First, such an attack would necessarily be based upon incomplete and possibly inaccurate information; the case of Iraqi “WMDs” is a warning here. Second, it is impossible to assume that any preventive attack would in fact accomplish what it set out to do, as the systems are increasingly well hidden and protected. Third, a preventive attack would be an act of war, one likely to trigger some form of retaliatory response.
Cyberspace is in many ways the newest domain of international activity, and as is often the case, what makes it complex is the existence at one and the same time of areas of overlap and cooperation and those of disagreement and potential conflict.
The goal should be to create international arrangements—a “regime” in the academic jargon—that would encourage certain uses of cyberspace and discourage others.
The United States needs to accept special obligations in the economic realm given the role of the dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency. This means taking into account the views of others when deciding on interest rates or asset purchases (quantitative easing). Regular, serious consultations between the Federal Reserve and its central bank counterparts around the world are essential. Trade disputes should be taken to the WTO rather than acted on unilaterally, as well.
another issue, that of authority or approval.
no government will accept that it can act only if it receives “permission” to do so from some international body, such as the United Nations.
What could get in the way of building support for making sovereign obligation central to a modern notion of legitimacy? One possible obstacle is that some governments might disagree with a specific objective either as a matter of principle or in certain contexts. A second potential obstacle is that a government might agree in principle but for one reason or another be unable to act. It could lack resources or domestic law or sufficient domestic political support. A third reason would be that it is deemed unacceptable to make the trade-off described in the paragraph just above, namely, that any
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conclude this discussion of process with three thoughts. Multilateralism needs to be rethought and reconfigured if it is to
encourage the adoption of sovereign obligation as a central element of what constitutes legitimacy in this era. First, “best practices” multilateralism ought to become the norm for those issues that mostly involve domestic policy but that have global impact.
Second, pragmatism will need to play a large role when it comes to multilateral efforts to deal with collective challenges.
Third, relevant nonstate actors need to be included in whatever process is selected.
North Korea is a necessary second subject of consultations, again with allies (South Korea and Japan) and with China. The goal should be to pressure North Korea to give up all its nuclear weapons; failing that, there ought to be an understanding as to the conditions under which a preemptive or preventive military attack might be undertaken.
“What worries you most?” I quickly responded, “Pakistan,” explaining its toxic mix of nuclear weapons, terrorists, weak civilian authority, and limited governmental capacity, and the intensity of its animosity toward India. Making it all even worse was the frustrating reality that U.S. options for dealing with it were extremely limited.
“Stare decisis” is a legal concept in which judges and courts emphasize precedent and allow existing decisions to stand unless there is strong reason to overturn them. Such a bias is meant to discourage individual courts from “doing their own thing,” which could create a dysfunctional patchwork quilt of rulings.
reflects an understanding that the integrity, reputation, and legitimacy of the legal system would suffer were the law to shift with any frequency.
The process of pulling back began in the opening minutes of Donald Trump’s presidency, in his inaugural address. The new president espoused a doctrine of “America First,” suggesting that for decades what the United States had spent and done abroad had been to America’s domestic detriment, and that the United States would no longer put the interests of others ahead of its own. The focus was on sovereign rights, not obligations, and on promoting national recovery rather than international order.
History suggests that governments are not always willing to put global considerations (in this case, opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons) ahead of what they see as their immediate strategic interests. China, for example, opposes proliferation, but even more it wants to maintain a divided Korean peninsula and North Korea as a stable buffer state on its border. This concern constrains the economic pressure China is prepared to place on North Korea.
