By John R. Bolton
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Much like Covid-19, some bad ideas never disappear.
One misbegotten, potentially dangerous idea holds that we live in a
“rules-based international order,” or should at least aspire to. At first
glance, this notion seems innocuous. In the domestic law of constitutional
republics, don’t we have “rules-based order”? Why not internationally?
References to the “order” are now ubiquitous, but its
meaning remains unclear. Possible definitions abound, since Western diplomats
seem determined to mention “rules-based international order” everywhere, in
G-7, G-20, U.N., EU, OECD, OSCE — even NATO — communiqués and speeches. It’s as
if intoning the words often enough, as in religious ceremonies, will make them
true. But as Ben Scott, an analyst writing in the Interpreter, observed,
“although the ‘rules-based international order’ is central to Australian
strategy, what exactly this concept means remains a work very much in
progress.” In a 2017 speech, Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland
offered her take: “Canada has a huge interest in an international order based
on rules. One in which might is not always right. One in which more powerful
countries are constrained in their treatment of smaller ones by standards that
are internationally respected, enforced, and upheld.”
Whatever the “order” is, the Biden administration is for
it. The president endorsed it in addressing the U.N. General Assembly last
September, in his 2021 U.N. Day proclamation in October, and in his first talk
with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi after becoming president. Secretary of
State Antony Blinken invoked the “order” to open his and National-Security
Adviser Jake Sullivan’s embarrassing March 18, 2021, Alaska meeting with their
Chinese counterparts.
Commentators, too, are for it. Fareed Zakaria, as he
wrote in the Washington Post, supports a “liberal, rules-based
international order” but also endorses Sullivan saying that “the object of the
Biden administration is to shape the international environment so that it is
more favorable to the interest and values of the United States and its allies
and partners to like-minded democracies” (sic). That sounds like vintage
Barry Goldwater, thus highlighting a problem that arises when the “order” flubs
one of America’s priorities, which happens more frequently than its acolytes
like to admit. Whose “order” are we talking about?
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov opined on this
oratorical flood in 2019: “There have been attempts . . . to replace the
universal norms of international law with a ‘rules-based order.’ This term was
recently coined to camouflage a striving to invent rules depending on changes
in the political situation so as to be able to put pressure on disagreeable
states and often even on allies.” Ironically, devotees of “international law” (another
vague, shape-shifting term) worry that the “order” is so much broader than
“law” that the former may undermine the latter.
* * *
What should we make of all this? Cynical politicians
likely think: “Why not endorse the ‘rules-based international
order’? It means everything and anything, so what’s the harm?” Unfortunately,
however, severe consequences can flow from national-security policies based on
illusions. To the extent the “order” possesses any coherence, its implications
for countries that prize their constitutional sovereignty, as America still
does, are troubling.
History provides context and a better understanding of
the lineage of the “rules-based international order.” Starting in 1945, with
the United Nations replacing the failed League of Nations, there was a burst of
support for “world government,” through either enhancing the U.N. or other
means. Some envisioned a “world federation,” although it was, like “world (or global)
government,” ill defined. In 1949, otherwise sensible young congressmen such as
Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, and Gerald Ford endorsed resolutions embracing
these concepts in various ways. Even Ronald Reagan was a member, albeit
briefly, of the United World Federalists. Despite its initial appeal, “global
government” didn’t fare well in America and the less toxic brand “world
federalism” quickly replaced it, but they traveled in the same direction. The
Cold War froze debate about global government for almost four decades. Other
ideas for “international order” nonetheless still abounded.
As Europe’s empires decolonized, many newly independent
states used the U.N. system to increase concessional assistance flows from the
“first world” to the less developed “third world.” (The Communist “second
world” offered ideology and armaments but had little wealth to share.) Gossamer
concepts like the “new international economic order” and the parallel “new
world information and communications order” envisioned global wealth
redistribution and regulation. Third-world diplomats and their Western
advocates weaponized entities such as the U.N. Conference on Trade and
Development, to oppose the free-trade-oriented General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade, and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to
transfer intellectual property and other assets of “the common heritage of
mankind” from developed to less developed countries. These efforts ultimately
foundered during the Reagan administration, which flatly refused to play the
game, pursuing American interests unashamedly and ignoring the unrealistic
leftist ideologies embodied in the sundry “orders.” Other ploys to redistribute
“the common heritage of mankind” and simultaneously undermine sovereignty, such
as the Law of the Sea Treaty, remain afloat, but Washington never ratified
that one and hopefully never will.
Nonetheless, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR’s
dissolution unleashed a revival of post–World War II euphoria for supranational
institutions. Even President George H. W. Bush endorsed a coming “new world order”
after the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War and communism’s collapse. Others, however,
including even nominal American allies, focused, typically under the radar, on
constraining Washington, the “sole superpower,” or, in French foreign minister
Hubert Védrine’s more pejorative term, the hyperpuissance.
Rebranding was again required, and “global governance”
became the prevailing buzzword. The lineal descendant of “global government,”
this new variant sounded less all-embracing and therefore less threatening; but
its ultimate (perhaps hazier) objective was essentially identical because of
the reductions in national sovereignties that both required for implementation.
A Commission on Global Governance, no less, comprising self-appointed
luminaries and embraced by the U.N., informed us in 1995 that “the development
of global governance is part of the evolution of human efforts to organize life
on the planet, and that process will always be going on.”
For its supporters, the European Union was the apotheosis
of the global-governance trend, with European leaders gleefully transferring
“competencies” to the growing mega-state. Not surprisingly, European
enthusiasts were eager to help the United States give away its sovereignty to
global institutions as well.
Along with the EU’s seemingly inevitable greater glory
(Brexit not even a cloud on the horizon), in 1999 came the International
Criminal Court (ICC), purportedly exercising jurisdiction even over citizens of
nonmember states and second-guessing whether states dealt adequately with war
crimes or crimes against humanity. Other international courts, such as the Law
of the Sea Treaty’s tribunal, seemed intent on expanding their jurisdiction to
extend global governance. Multiple efforts by these bodies to restrict national
decisions on the international use of force, often under “human rights” cover,
included arguing that any use of force without express Security Council
approval was illegitimate.
Even the Clinton administration rejected certain of these
initiatives; for example, it didn’t sign the International Land Mines
Convention. In 1999 the Senate unexpectedly but decisively rejected the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, intended to ban all nuclear testing. During
George W. Bush’s administration, global governance lost momentum. America
“unsigned” the ICC’s founding treaty, withdrew from the 1972 Anti–Ballistic
Missile Treaty, blocked U.N. efforts to impose international gun control, and
tanked a hopelessly ineffectual, counterproductive draft verification protocol
for the Biological Weapons Convention.
During Obama’s presidency, however, the “rules-based
international order” emerged. Underground during the Trump years, the “order”
was resurrected by Biden’s arrival, and it is once again “game on.” The most
benign effect of incessant incantations about the “order” would be
irrelevance. Much like the endless repetition of the U.N. Charter phrase
“international peace and security,” it doesn’t bring either notion closer to
reality. Simple indifference, therefore, is an appealing response.
* * *
Unfortunately, whether political leaders believe or even
understand what they say, their statements have consequences. Westerners who
worship “international order” may not realize that the idea has an unsavory
history, long predating 1945, where we began above, and much of it shocking. In
the most hateful and extreme forms, Nazism was an aspiring world order, and
Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was similarly
motivated. In more palatable variants, the Roman and British empires were
proto–world orders, as were successive Russian and Chinese empires and many
others. Americans have long been skeptical of international orders. Napoleon’s
ambitions prompted Thomas Jefferson to say, “It cannot be in our interest that
all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy.” Not just any “international
order” will do.
So, does the appeal turn instead on the phrase
“rules-based”? Certainly not, because “rules” can also be objectionable, some
of them savagely so. In fact, “rules-based” is only one aspect of “order”
itself, making for a definition both repetitive and incomplete. One of Minister
Freeland’s sub-rules, that “might is not always right,” doesn’t solve the problem;
might is very frequently employed precisely because countries can’t decide
peacefully what is right. Nor does her view that rules should be
“internationally respected, enforced, and upheld” help, since historically the
only truly effective means to uphold and enforce rules is through force or the
threat of force. As for “international respect,” force has always warranted
more respect than incantations, unpleasant though that reality may be.
Advocates of the “rules-based international order” make
the same fundamental mistake as their “global government”/“global governance”
predecessors, trying to equate managing global disputes with managing domestic
disputes. International affairs are ultimately about power and politics, not
law. The historical absence of international institutions, such as courts,
prosecutors, and jails, that actually “enforce and uphold” rules is not
accidental. Creating them ex nihilo, without the prerequisites that exist
within countries, where citizens have renounced the use of force to settle
disputes, does not change that reality. The manifest ineffectiveness of the
International Court of Justice has made it a joke. The International Criminal
Court, after just over 20 years, is nearly there. U.N. peacekeeping forces are
deployed almost uniformly in conflicts where the concrete stakes for the great
powers are trivial, insufficient to energize them to attempt some kind of
lasting dispute resolution. Even nation-states that believed they had renounced
using force internally have found themselves engaged in bloody civil wars. We
live in one. Pretending to play at law-and-order internationally has come
nowhere close to making it so but, sadly, has likely deluded many people into
believing that they need not take more-effective steps to ensure their peace
and safety.
One example of an ineffectual “rules-based international
order” was the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact, an attempt to outlaw war. It failed
(although Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg did get a Nobel Peace Prize). As
noted on the State Department’s Office of the Historian website, the pact “did
little to prevent World War II or any of the conflicts that followed. Its
legacy remains as a statement of the idealism expressed by advocates for peace
in the interwar period.” Kellogg–Briand’s real-world impact effectively ended
before the ink on the treaty dried, subsequent Nuremberg convictions producing
no deterrent effect. So much for renouncing force as an instrument of national
power.
* * *
Optimistic advocates of the “rules-based international
order,” conveniently disregarding millennia of earlier human history, would
respond that drawing conclusions from Kellogg–Briand ignores how times and
conditions have changed. But consider how incantations about the “order” might
affect today’s crises. The “rules” against changing Europe’s borders through
force apparently never made it to Moscow. Russia illegally annexed Crimea and
successfully used force in the Donbas, creating another “frozen conflict,” as
in several other former Soviet republics. Vladimir Putin has ignored sanctions
and other reprisals and appears fully prepared to ignore them again. As
recently as New Year’s Eve, he threatened a complete rupture in
Moscow–Washington relations, which he knows is the one thing, other than
military force, most likely to rattle the State Department.
China is playing a similar cat-and-mouse game with Taiwan
and is ignoring international judicial rejection of its territorial claims in
the South China Sea. Beijing is violating, without consequences, its treaty
with the United Kingdom that returned Hong Kong to full Chinese sovereignty.
The “rules-based international order” is meeting cultural genocide against
China’s Uyghurs with symbolic diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Olympics.
Beijing, like Moscow, has its own ideas about what the right “order” is,
visited upon two of Freeland’s fellow citizens. In 2018, China seized two
Canadians as hostages to exchange for a senior Huawei official arrested in
Canada for extradition to the United States. Ultimately, the Biden
administration broke down and agreed to a swap.
Neither Russia’s nor China’s belligerence will be
resolved in the Security Council, where their vetoes ensure inaction. Nor will
the threat from Iran, which has torn up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). As the U.S. and others beg Tehran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal,
its obstruction of International Atomic Energy Agency officials remains in full
swing. Iran also continues arming and funding Houthi rebels in Yemen’s grinding
conflict, which long ago passed from civil strife to surrogate international
war. North Korea violated the NPT, then withdrew from it, and is closer to
having deliverable nuclear weapons than ever before. The “rules-based
international order” is clutching its pearls but doing very little else in
either case.
Biden accepted Trump’s deal with the Taliban (but not the
legitimate Afghan government) and withdrew U.S. and NATO forces from
Afghanistan. His “rules-based international order” adherents watched the
country descend into chaos and brutality, as the capability to carry out
terrorist attacks against America, by the Pentagon’s own admission, is now less
than six months away. More pearl-clutching.
It is never prudent to base national-security decisions
on delusion, but that is the palpable risk of taking seriously notions of a
“rules-based international order.” What order exists in the world today results
from American military, political, and economic strength and the alliance
structures we created globally post-1945. No other nation or combination of
nations could do what we have done, nor could any international organization.
We did all this not out of altruism but because it was in our national
interest, and we have benefited enormously in economic terms alone but also
politically and militarily. Our allies too often fail to meet the mutual
obligations they have agreed to shoulder, about which we should vigorously
remind them. But we made these commitments not for their benefit, but for our
own. No other country will safeguard our interests or our jury-rigged order
better than we will. When we exit some area on the globe, as Afghanistan is
proving before our eyes, no better order emerges.
Until lions lie down with lambs, a “rules-based
international order” is a fantasy. The world will see only partial orders, such
as ours, facing vigorous resistance from competing visions and philosophies.
Today, the partial order that suits America best is the one we created and
sustain. We “respect, uphold, and enforce” it, along with willing allies, whom
we should not abandon. There is no better alternative.
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