Three Visions

Wretchard of Belmont Club has two exceptional entries that, taken together, give a glimpse of the shape of political and foreign policy argument for perhaps the next fifty years.

In The Common Law of Nations, Wretchard examines the epemeral support for the US after the 9/11 attacks. This support, both in its shallowness and in its hasty withdrawal, is due to the false hope of the Left saw this as a natural way for the US to turn over control of its power to the UN (and particularly, to France and Germany):

As that dominance grew in the last decade of the 20th century, the potential of harnessing American might to the bidding of the "international community" became irresistible to the globalists. Under the model that they tried to construct, sole "legitimacy" would be vested in the world government; i.e. the United Nations, thus acquiring the exclusive lawful use of the US armed forces. As the sole civil authority, the "international community" could constitute a posse, consisting almost entirely of American arms, for whatever purposes they deemed lawful.

The curious antipathy of the Germany and France towards unilateral American action following September 11 was driven not by a sudden revulsion for American culture, but by the loss of something they deeply coveted: the means to exercise supranational police power under the aegis of international treaties. In the days following Osama Bin Laden's attack on New York, hopes ran high in Paris, Berlin and Moscow, that America in her grief would deposit her strength in the hands of the "international community" who, thus armed, promised to put a stop to terrorism and uproot its causes.  To provide the violins, the capitals of Europe expressed the utmost sympathy for the American loss and deluged embassies with flowers and letters of support. "We are all Americans now". For a moment, matters hung on edge, the most critical instant in modern history. Then the haze passed, and America shook the expectant, extended hand and said "I'll take care of it myself". The response was immediate and incandescent. The internationalists rounded on America with as much hatred as the sympathy they had professed mere moments before.

In The Postwar World, Wretchard looks at the need for a new world order from a different light:

t seems clear that any successor institution to the United Nations must be designed for meaningful action rather than intentional paralysis, within a framework of checks and balances. It must come to terms with the single most salient reality of the postwar world: the de facto supranational police power of the United States. The existence of this vast power is a temptation to create a world government, which is for the first time in history feasible, and for that reason utterly to be shunned. Instead of using it directly, which would be corrupting, international institutions should promote the spread of freedom and civil society, exploiting the historical opportunity of the existence of a power that provides a lower bound on the misbehavior and rapacity of rulers.

This opportunity for freedom has come before on a smaller scale, at Runnymede and Philadelphia. Not upon the promise of government but on the absence of tyranny. The world does not need a new framework of treaties, least of all a world government, but the freedom to prosper as nations on a planet in which everything except oppression is permitted. For it is self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that the only excuse for government is to secure these rights and that these words can be translated into every living tongue.

It seems clear to me that there are three competing visions right now for ordering the world.

In the first vision, Transnational Progressivism, nation-states are outmoded. Group identity is the only important identity, with individual and national identities suppressed in favor of a transnational identity, under the control of a global dictatorship of Leftist "vanguard" activists. (It's not phrased this way, of course, but that's the logical end state of an agenda which removes government accountability from the governed, and reposes it in an unaccountable body whose power base and staff are both drawn from the Leftists and Transnationalist cadres.)

The second vision, global Islamism, is remarkably similar in end state to Transnational Progressivism, differing primarily in that the governing body would be fundamentalist Islamic clerics (as opposed to the UN, staffed by a Leftist elite) and the governing law would be Sha'ria (as opposed to "international law" as interpreted by the Transnational Progressivists). The other major difference is that the Islamists believe violence is the first and natural resort in the battle to bring this about, while the Transnational Progressives are far more willing to try to persuade (though they are certainly willing to resort to violence when necessary, and usually by proxy, direct violence having failed during the Cold War).

It appears that each of these two groups is currently trying to subvert the other. Transnational Progressives are hoping the Islamists and other tyrants bring about conditions where the powerful nations of the world turn sovereignty over to them (the Transnationals) in frustration. In turn, the Islamists see the Transnationals as a force to weaken the Western will to fight, as another weapon to be manipulated and weakness to be exploited. This is why you will frequently find groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Communist front) aligned with groups like CAIR (Islamist front) in pushing "anti-war" demonstrations.

The third vision for a post-Cold War international order is what I will term, for lack of a better term, the "League of Free Nations" vision. In this vision, the nations of the world which are fundamentally free (which remarkably align closely with the "Coalition of the Willing" working together in Iraq) will band together in a free trade and mutual self-defense organization, replacing the UN. Such a League would be a free association of nations, and would work towards expanding democracy and free-market economics to the rest of the world. I wrote about such an organization here, but others have explained the same concept more eloquently.

I think that it's up in the air right now. Whether or not we in the post-Enlightenment West will be able to preserve those values in the face of challenges from within and without is not certain. I'd say that the odds are on our side, though, as long as the leaders of the West remain active in their unflinching support of freedom.

Steven Den Beste appears to be thinking along the same lines as Belmont Club.

Posted by Jeff at December 18, 2003 07:24 PM | Link Cosmos