US tendencies towards isolationism will in the end hurt the US more than anyone else, argues Chris Patten
The US, almost above all nations, has been internationalist - and a tremendous force for good in this world - over the past half-century. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for which we fight from China to Yugoslavia, was a US legacy. Men like George Marshall had no doubt that it was America's national interest to accept wider obligations.
In a remarkable piece in Foreign Affairs about a year back, Tom Friedman described two different perspectives; two ways of looking at the world.
One, which he called America On-duty, sees the world built around walls: walls of containment around enemies and outsiders; walls of defence around the US .
It means being largely indifferent to what is going on behind the walls of other countries as long as they are not bothering the US - but ruthlessly interventionist if they are. It means missile defence, rogue states.
The other perspective, which Friedman labelled America Online, sees the US at the centre of an increasingly integrated web: a web of trade, telecommunications and finance; a single global ecosystem. Foreign policy is about protecting, strengthening and expanding that web.
And that requires active engagement. It means working with others to solve problems. It means joining forces with others to help, for example, when key strands of the web such as Mexico, Thailand, Turkey or Argentina are threatened with financial crises which could infect the whole network.
I believe that the great generation of US statesmen after the second World War were instinctive Onliners. Today, there are those whose instincts are for walls: for America On-duty. I hasten to add that I am not talking just about this administration, though President Bush's State of the Union reference to an "axis of evil" might be thought to reflect the approach. The issue has been around for some time. It was already a live debate under President Clinton over an International Criminal Court, over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or over the Landmine Treaty of 1999.
I recognise the suspicion, in some US minds, of multilateral obligations. I also recognise the temptation for the world's greatest power to assert unilateral extraterritorial jurisdiction: telling European countries, for example, that they will be penalised if they are so unwise as to trade with Iran, Libya or Cuba on terms which have not been approved by US lawmakers.
Such reflexes will only be overcome if there is widespread recognition, not least in Congress, that acceptance of obligations in a multilateral framework is in the interests even of the world's greatest power.
Let me offer five reasons why I believe that to be the case.
First, because the concept of a nation whole unto itself has become increasingly anachronistic. I have already argued that nation-states are here to stay, but the state is becoming but one element in a complex international network, rather then the undisputed king of the global hierarchy.
In the modern world, the concept of "national" has become harder and harder to define. The Internet is only the latest assault on national boundaries and national jurisdictions. An essay entitled "Who is us?", published in the Harvard Business Review more than a decade ago, argued that efforts to protect national industry through subsidies, tariffs, anti-dumping actions and so on were increasingly self-defeating because national labels bore so little relation to the underlying economic realities.
Second, multilateralism makes sense because, as the US discovered on September 11th, even the greatest powers need allies and friends. They are not always comfortable. As Winston Churchill remarked: "In working with allies it sometimes happens that they develop opinions of their own." But they are necessary, opinions and all.
Third, and perhaps counter-intuitively, great powers need to work constructively with others precisely because they are dominant. As the world's only superpower, the US carries a responsibility to maintain moral authority for her values. If the US has a neuralgic resistance to any external interference in her affairs, how can she expect others to respect her authority?
I need hardly say that as well as love for the US around the world, there is also jealousy and resentment. The US needs to bend over backwards to show that she is a beneficent and responsible influence. Resistance to multilateral engagement and its twin - the assertion of a US unilateral right to control the behaviour of others - erodes the legitimacy and credibility of US global leadership.
As my colleague Javier Solana put it in a recent speech: "Acting alone has the advantage of clarity of purpose, but at the cost of legitimacy and, thus, of effectiveness in the longer term."
Fourth, because what Friedman called the Online approach to international affairs is more than ever necessary in today's world as the phenomenon of globalisation gathers pace.
As an ideological free-trader and someone who has read some history, I welcome the revolution brought about by global telecommunications, travel, integrated financial markets and international commerce.
Perhaps my experience in Asia, and the extraordinary times in which I was there, contributed to my enthusiasm. The combination of open trade, capitalism and technology creates unparalleled opportunities.
But globalisation has its dark side, too. I do not need to read the litany of horrors from drug-trafficking, which has become a bigger industry than iron and steel or cars; to trans-national crime; to climate change and environmental degradation, with its implications for poverty and security.
From the failure of international trade to bridge the divide between the billions who are benefiting, and the billions who are left in squalor; to illegal migration; to the spread of AIDS and other diseases.
These are not issues which can be left to resolve themselves. Yet individual countries, even countries as large as the US, cannot tackle such problems on their own, or through the mechanisms of classic international co-operation.
The nations of western Europe created their union for the reasons I adduced: of reconciliation and mutual prosperity. Yet almost by accident we find ourselves with an organisation which can make a serious contribution to the new global challenges. In its inadequate way, the EU is trying to confront such issues, i.e. in the negotiations which led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Fifth, even the greatest powers need to engage multilaterally, because the Bretton Woods institutions are more important than ever today if we are to enjoy a free and prosperous world. We need a United Nations, an IMF, a World Bank, a World Trade Organisation. These are the institutions which provide a structure for the civilised resolution of global disputes and a civilised approach to the new global agenda. It is in the common interest that they should be strengthened.
Yet the legitimacy of such institutions is under threat. Democratic legitimacy is a fragile commodity, slow to build and quick to destroy. At the international level, it is especially problematic because the concept of a world society is not one towards which people are naturally attracted by sentiment or tradition.
Nationally, we have our flags, our anthems and our myths. At the international level, it is much harder to build loyalty and legitimacy, and more tempting to throw brickbats.
If we do not support these institutions, and try to give them deep democratic roots, they will lose their authority and the whole world will be the poorer for it. The muddled but passionate movement against globalisation shows the fragility of institutions which do not have democratic underpinning. In an interesting article in the Financial Times at the end of last month, Robert Cooper pointed to the risk that "as trans-national action becomes more important, people may resent decisions on which they have had onlya very indirect influence, or lose interest in national democracies since the really important decisions seem to be taken elsewhere. Domestic legitimacy has been at the heart of European politics for five centuries. Solving the problem of international legitimacy will be the primary challenge for the 21st century."
It is the duty of every government to look after its own citizens. National interest then. But enlightened self-interest means accepting shared sovereignty and multilateral commitment.
I conclude with something which Churchill wrote in an article in the Saturday Evening Post of February 1930: "The stages of human development press upon one another's heels and, now here, now there, block or trample down one another. Loyalty to the tribe is overtaken by loyalty to the nation; loyalty to the nation obstructs loyalty to the continent . . . From every man will some day be required not the merging or discarding of various loyalties, but their simultaneous reconciliation in a complete or larger synthesis."
This article was extracted from a Newman Lecture delivered last night in University College, Dublin, by Chris Patten, EU Commissioner for External Relations