American Unilateralism

This American confidence and self-identity as a chosen people elicits admiration and anger, particularly from Europeans out of which much of the American tradition has emerged. Much of the world admires American prosperity while at the same time tries to console itself with the notion of moral superiority over the United States. Europeans disapprove of us because they cannot stand the fact that they love us so much.

Europeans love to ridicule the United States for its crassness, but hunger for American music and movies. Europeans fancy themselves as the stewards of western culture and a caring society, but lack the creativity of American culture and suffer under the burdens of their welfare states. Europeans lecture Americans on economics, while capital continues to flow from Europe to the United States. It must be infuriating for Europeans to proclaim concern for workers, while they labor with double-digit unemployment rates, and freer markets in the US produce low unemployment rates. Europeans also neglect to support a US place on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, while the commission finds a place for China, Libya, and the Sudan.

In a recent essay, Charles Krauthammer argues that George W. Bush is tacking back to American unilateralism in part based on an American understanding of its own uniqueness and importance. Consult, be polite, but act in American interests. For example, while the Europeans have failed to ratify the Kyoto accords on carbon dioxide emissions, they are angry when President Bush states the obvious that the accords are dead. One might have thought that a 95-0 defeat in the Senate for the treaty would have been sufficient warning to Europeans, but it wasn't. American explicit rejection of the Kyoto accords actually creates political cover for European governments reluctant to embrace the accords. European leaders get to criticize American at little political expense.

George Bush is pushing for missile defense, while Europeans, perhaps more vulnerable to missile strikes from rogue nations, fight what they see as renewed American militarism. Half the time they confidently assert that such a system cannot work and the other half of the time they fret that a protected America would disengage from European defenses.

America, under George W. Bush, refuses to have its interests forgotten in a faux multilateralism that ignores real issues and undermines American and in the long run European interests. What is generally good for the United States will benefit free nations everywhere. When you occupy the City on the Hill, many will be envious. Perhaps more will be inspired.