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Bush: The World Needs an Executive

HB: But the paradox is even bigger because this would appear to come after the first part of the Bush Administration where it was accused of “unabashed unilateralism” for not wanting to cooperate with the world community in terms of the Kyoto treaty, Missile defense etc. That would, at least on the surface, seem to contradict your reading of this shift?

CC: I think that a lot of this has changed suddenly after September 11th. You can draw parallels to domestic policies. But I am not sure if that contradicts the reading. There are some very strange unpredictabilities to sovereignty in the world now. There are all these inchoate, incomplete institutions that are in their infancy, and I think that Davos and Porto Alegre are examples – the United Nations is another one. The United States is beginning to be one of these institutions itself. There are these competing sovereignties that are each part of a global constitutional order. The United Nations is a legislative without an executive. The United States seems to want to act as an executive without a legislature. Or rather, it seems to be seeking an appropriate legislature. The American perspective is that the UN is not a suitable legislature, it is not accountable under any constitutional understanding - it’s like a “rotten-borough” system.

I mean, there is no reason that Surinam should have the same vote as China. But also, you could say that there is no reason that China should have the same vote as France – if you really think that the world should work on democratic principles. Even in our Montesquieuan, Lockean democracies not anyone can vote. In America, if you are convicted of a violent crime, if you’re a felon, you cannot vote. There are certain people who are not competent to vote. I don’t see that North Korea should have a vote in any future world constitutional order, and I think that the Europeans believe that too. So there is something that strikes the Americans as disingenuous about the European … you cannot be absolutist about the UN, it may the beginning of good world legislature, but it is only the beginning.

HB: If we put aside the obvious – classical national interest – objections the French would have to any reorganization or change within the UN, for fear of losing their permanent seat in the Security Council, and look at value communities, what you are saying is basically that there is a lack of comprehension in Europe for the extent to which the American administration is acting within or on what is a set common, shared values across the Atlantic. That this is fundamentally about liberal democracy. In a way, and I hope to provoke you a little bit, it thus not far from the Clinton administration’s vision?

CC: There has been a break with the Clinton administration: not only the unilateralism you mentioned, but also the belief in small sovereignties. The Bush administration would not have fought the Kosovo war. The Bush administration’s initial position on the Middle East was that the Israelis and the Palestinians know more about it than we do, and we won’t meddle with that. That was a departure from the Clinton style of conflict resolution, which was a more European style.

Since September 11 Bush has been groping his way towards his own post-national understanding of the world order. But that does not mean that it is the same as Clinton’s – I do not see a lot of continuity between them. There is a certain Democratic style of American assertiveness – the Madeleine Albright circle is an example of that. These people tend to support Bush on the war. But the Bush perspective is still very different from the Clinton perspective, which was much more modest. The Bush view is that there must be some sort of executive power for this world order. I may be thinking more conceptually about this than the people in the Bush administration, but I’m sure they think that the world order will break down if it lacks an executive.

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foto: Weekly Standard