Foreign Policy: Home Alone?

In a time of world peace and stability, it can be hard to pick holes in a president's conduct of foreign policy, but George W. Bush's critics have found a bad rap to hang on him: He is an isolationist.

Senate majority leader Tom Daschle picked the moment of Bush's departure on his second European trip to say that "we are isolating ourselves" and "minimizing ourselves." As instances of Bush's isolationism, Daschle cited his reluctance to broker peace in the Middle East and stop AIDS in Africa, and his eagerness to pursue a missile-defense system over Russian and European objections. Other critics stressed Bush's failure to sign on to international treaties and agreements: the latest version of the Kyoto protocol on global warming, signed in Bonn; a draft of a pact on germ warfare; and a proposed International Criminal Court.

Many of the specific charges, especially Daschle's, are bogus. The AIDS epidemic in Africa is a catastrophe of African politics and mores, not to be solved by infusions of cash. What would the majority leader suggest-a new imperialism? The Middle East peace process is in hopeless shape because Bush's predecessor tried to race through an agreement; when the Clinton process ran out of gas, the vehicle broke down. After Daschle wrung his hands about Russian objections to Star Wars, Vladimir Putin announced he might well go along with it. The Bonn version of the Kyoto protocol is grandstanding on the part of all its European signatories, designed to please the Greens who are their domestic coalition partners. No industrial countries will sign an actual treaty that cripples their economies.

The Bush administration has specific objections to other proposed international agreements. The germ-warfare pact is unenforceable because of recent expansions in biotech facilities; one American expert on chemical and biological weapons called it "a sieve." The Pentagon argues that an International Criminal Court could arrest American troops who are following the president's orders. This argument impressed President Clinton-until the waning days of his tenure, when he gave the court a green light, and left his successor to deal with the consequences.

The difference between Daschle's foreign policy and Bush's is not between engagement and a solitary existence, half hermit, half pariah. It is between two forms of internationalism: the traditional variety, and what NR's John O'Sullivan calls "supra-nationalism." Traditional internationalism favors alliances and pacts with concrete goals and specific obligations; member nations often have veto power over collective decisions, and always have the freedom to pull out. Supra- nationalism commits those who are unwise enough to go along with it to vague, open-ended projects, with transnational enforcement bureaucracies, and no mechanisms for demurral, or even escape. Traditional internationalism recognizes national sovereignty. Supra- nationalism empowers unelected and irresponsible administrators and bureaucrats-a managerial revolution of international law.

This clash of philosophies looks to be with us until some cataclysm reshuffles the world's deck. President Bush's instincts and actions have been correct. Nation-states have been the launch pads for the gains in liberty, legality, and prosperity that the modern era has witnessed. For the last century, the preeminent launch pad has been the United States. Bush is President of the United States, not President of the World, nor yet water boy for the International Criminal Court. He understands his role better than Tom Daschle.