MIXED MESSAGES: American Politics and International Organization, 1919-1999.

MIXED MESSAGES: American Politics and International Organization, 1919-1999 by Edward C. Luck Brookings, $19.95

IT'S ONE OF THE GREAT IRONIES of the 20th century: The same country that's done more than any other to build international organizations has also done more to undermine them.

The United States has led the charge and done the spadework for multilateral cooperation almost since the beginning of the century. In 1919, no one fought harder than Woodrow Wilson to build a League of Nations (although America never joined). Twenty-six years later, Washington again led the way, scrabbling together a United Nations from the ashes of World War II and footing half the bill. But today the United States is almost $1.8 billion behind in its U.N. dues. Having sidestepped the Security Council on Kosovo and rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Washington is accused of retreating into angry isolationism. Yet at the same time, Americans citizens, as individuals and through non-governmental organizations are doing more today than ever to bulwark the causes of international law and human rights.

Edward C. Luck isn't the first writer to take on America's confounding ambivalence towards international organizations. A few months ago, former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali did the same. In Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga, he bitterly denounced the Clinton Administration for being a fairweather friend, for taking cheap shots at the U.N. when expedient, and for giving the organization impossible jobs (Somalia, Bosnia), only to blame it when it inevitably failed.

Luck's book stands out from this sort of diatribe, however. Despite his obvious sympathies (he's a committed internationalist and a former head of the U.N. Association), what emerges from his book is a deeply insightful discussion of American concerns with multilateralism.

Rather than simply attacking the isolationists, Luck tries to understand them. He asks the rare question: why "have Americans again and again been the first to create international institutions and then the first to forsake them?" His answer dates back to 1919 and the Senate debate over the League of Nations. Fundamental questions about America's role in world affairs, its obligations to other countries or lack thereof, were never answered. Nor were they addressed in 1945, when, in the aftermath of the Allies' triumph and with interventionist feelings running high, President Truman forced the U.N. Charter through the Senate without a chance for meaningful debate. Jeffersonians' fears of foreign entanglements and the traditional American distaste for big and distant government were never assuaged.

These underlying fears and questions remained submerged for the first years of the U.N.'s life when, despite the Cold War, Americans were able to muster a consensus in the General Assembly. That began to change in the 1950s, however, with the success of anticolonialism--a movement the United States had championed. Suddenly, the West no longer controlled a majority in the Assembly, and the new nations of the South quickly turned on their former patrons. Anti-American rhetoric proliferated. In a series of disastrous votes, culminating in 1971 with the ejection of Taiwan from the U.N. China seat and in 1975 with the infamous "Zionism equals racism" resolution, the United States grew increasingly alienated from the organization it had created, nurtured, and which it had, for years, regarded as its own.

In the face of such hostility, the old splits between those interested in coalition-building and those who thought America should go it alone once again rose to the surface. By 1975, Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan was calling the U.N. "a dangerous place." As the organization became harder for its champions to defend, the consensus in Congress turned against it. Yet as Luck recognizes, had the East-West or rich-poor split been the whole problem, things at the U.N. would be better today. After all, with the end of the Cold War the U.N. has become a friendlier place. Most General Assembly decisions are now made by consensus. The Security Council functions tolerably well, at least on most issues. "Zionism equals racism" has been repealed. Communism is dead. American market values have triumphed.

The U.N. has similarly reformed its structure as Americans have demanded, attacking corruption and mismanagement from within, enhancing transparency and oversight, cutting redundancy and holding to a zero-growth budget. And yet instead of softening, the U.S. Congress has grown even more hostile. This is partly explained by a vicious cycle that the U.S. government has helped create: it guts various U.N. programs or pulls out of peacekeeping operations midstream, thereby ensuring their failure.

Yet to explain the origins of U.S. antipathy, Luck looks deeper, straight into the heart of American political culture. What he finds there is a cult of exceptionalism: the old notion that the United States, founded on ideas and not ethnicity, is different from and better than all other countries in the world. Which raises a problem: When you're better (or luckier) than everyone else why bother with multilateralism?

Such exceptionalism, grounded in a hostility to government and linked to the quasi-messianic fervor with which many Americans regard the founding of the country, helps explain the vitriol with which many of today's U.N. critics write. These hard-boiled "realists" suspect that the U.N. is a ruse for duping Americans into surrendering their power and sovereignty to the barbarians at her gates. As Charles Krauthammer has written, "the international community is a fiction. Different countries have radically different geographies, histories, and levels of power, and therefore radically different interests. There may be ad hoc coalitions of interest ... [but] what community of interests is there among, say, Brazil, Iraq, Zimbabwe and the United States?" In other words, what has America to gain from the rest of the world?

Luck doesn't really answer. His project is descriptive. Having uncovered this passionate American exceptionalism, rather than joining the fight or simply wringing his hands--as America's critics tend to--Luck urges U.N.-backers to accept and accommodate the isolationists. Which isn't to say that he's happy with American isolationism. In fact, he finds plenty to dislike. On the American front, he faults exaggerated, sometimes racist attacks on a caricatured U.N. that is far more ominous than the real thing. President Clinton also comes in for criticism, for not making a stronger stand.

Looking abroad, Luck faults the new coalition of liberal human rights groups and middle powers for pushing the international agenda faster than the United States is comfortable with (witness the Land Mines Convention and the creation of the International Criminal Court, neither of which has been accepted by the United States).

But the point of Mixed Messages is not to assign blame. Just the opposite; Luck wants to move past the recriminations to a "New Compact" based on mutual acceptance and frank discussion. His problem, however, is that he so convincingly describes the sources of U.S.-U.N. tensions that when he gets to his optimistic conclusion--that, if they really try, Americans can talk their way through this impasse--it seems implausible. The realist of the first ten chapters trades places with an idealist, the kind Luck himself chastises for not taking American concerns seriously. If, as Secretary of State George C. Marshall remarked in 1948, with "a complete lack of power equilibrium in the world, the United Nations cannot function successfully," then what chance does the organization have in this age of unchecked American hegemony? What good is it to simply call for more dialogue between friends and enemies of multilateralism?

While Luck's suggestion that internationalists stop demonizing and start listening to American conservatives is a good one, what will make conservatives do the same? Especially when, as Bob Dole discovered in 1996 and as Jesse Helms continues to recognize, there is great political capital to be gained from such xenophobic broadsides? Even Clinton has acknowledged that there's not much to be gained by standing up for the U.N. In calling for a "New Compact" and greater dialogue, Luck seems to assume that both sides are ready to talk in good faith. That's quite a leap, considering the rhetoric one hears on Capitol Hill.

Moreover, the reader comes away from the book wondering whether Luck gave up the fight too quickly. Why should the U.N.'s backers give in? Why not make more of the inconsistencies in the isolationists' arguments? After all, even by a narrow definition of American interests that angrily dismisses concern for such "values" as human rights and democracy abroad (again, Krauthammer: "In private conduct, altruism is the ideal; for a nation, however, it can mean ruin") multilateralism in general and the U.N. in particular remain vital to the United States. Never mind Churchill's old saw, that it's better to "jaw, jaw than fight, fight." There are other, more compelling, reasons why the U.S. still needs the U.N.

First, the U.N. makes jobs such as peacekeeping cheaper and safer for the U.S. Second, like it or not, most conflicts left unchecked wind up engaging American interests after all. Chaos has a way of spreading--witness the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

And then there are the increasing number of problems--such as global warming, the internationalization of crime, the spread of radical, politically-minded brands of religious fundamentalism, the trade in atomic weapons hemorrhaging from former Soviet republics, and so on--that no single country, no matter how powerful, can manage alone. These are issues that American isolationists tend to ignore. Why should Luck or anyone else let them?

Still, perhaps the world has enough polemicists in it already. The U.N. debate needs more understanding, less harsh rhetoric, and Luck provides plenty of the former. There remains much in his book to recommend it. For its history, for its frank discussion of the roots of American ambivalence, Luck's is a valuable contribution. Whether it will make any difference in today's angry, polarized debate remains far less certain.

JONATHAN D. TEPPERMAN is an Associate Editor at Foreign Affairs magazine.