We are all praying that Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top officials successfully complete their current quarantine after potential exposure to the coronavirus. In the meantime, information and statistics remain crucial weapons in the fight against further outbreaks of COVID-19. As America and other countries reopen after two months of lockdown, we still have much to learn about the disease. Epidemiologists will still need to crunch data about rates and methods of infection to determine how the disease is transmitted until we develop and distribute a safe and effective vaccine. Experts say this could take as long as two years.
In the meantime, there is an easy way you can help. The Stanford University Medical School is conducting a survey by Internet of Americans to improve the tracking of the disease. They are attempting to determine if potential hotspots can be identified simply by asking how people are feeling and whether they are experiencing any of coronavirus symptoms. After completing a short initial survey on relevant demographic information and the symptoms, you will receive a daily e-mail asking simply if you are feeling better, the same or worse and whether you have any symptoms of COVID-19. It takes less than a minute to complete and the link is at the top of this post. I have been participating for the last two weeks. The more people who participate, the more reliable the study will be and the more we can target our efforts on the truly vulnerable.
Please consider taking the short period of time to complete the survey and participate daily. Working together, we can keep America healthy and open while we look for treatments and the holy grail of a vaccine.
As things are now, such power to command peace throughout the world could best be assured by some combination between those great nations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing aggressions. The combination might at first be only to secure peace within certain definite limits and on certain definite conditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind
Theodore Roosevelt, Nobel Prize Lecture, May 5, 1910
Theodore Roosevelt’s quest for peace has been a goal of mankind since the beginning of time. Three different theories have been proposed to achieve it. The first is the simplest and most radical – world government. This is the globalist solution and springs from old memories of the Roman Empire’s rule of what in Westerner’s minds was the “known world“. The second is the more practical balance of power approach described in my previous post and followed by the European powers in the 19th century.
After World War II, a new strategy known as functionalism concentrated on developing international arrangements to share discrete public sector responsibilities such as collecting meteorological data, coordinating air traffic control and similar uncontroversial areas. Sometimes referred to as “peace by pieces“, the central feature of this approach was the creation of international agencies with limited and specific powers. Functional agencies could operate only within the territories of states that choose to join them and therefore would not directly threaten state sovereignty. In theory, the web of agreements would eventually become so strong that nations would wake up one day and realize that they could not afford to go to war against each other.
Even in the midst of the Cold War, functionalism became the primary working theory of international relations and created useful mechanisms for nations and the public. For example, the Universal Postal Union enables you to send a letter to any member nation for the price of a first class stamp in your home country. I previously highlighted the work of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation as a good example of how transnational efforts can complement rather than threaten national sovereignty. In their early days, United Nations specialized agencies such as UNICEF, the World Meteorological Organization and even the World Health Organization performed useful functions. The original European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) formed in the 1950s stretched the bounds of the functionalist model, but found early success because of its limited goal of reviving the European steel industry and the jobs that came with it.
An ardent American nationalist, Theodore Roosevelt arguably helped develop the tenets of a successful functionalism. As the above quote indicates, TR favored international arbitration and agencies, but believed their jurisdiction should be limited and confined to disputes among great powers who had the strength to insure the limits were respected and the results properly enforced. For example, he signed treaties to submit future disputes with Canada and Great Britain to arbitration, but specifically excluded territorial disputes from their reach. He was furious when Woodrow Wilson abolished this exception. TR also opposed the League of Nations not because of a belief in isolationism, but because he believed it would be either impotent or would submit the United States to the whims of smaller, less important nations. History would eventually exonerate his assessment.
The concept of functionalism began to be abused in the 1970s when international agreements were no longer confined to discrete subjects that were openly negotiated and narrowly defined. Instead, broad grants of power were made to multilateral organizations run by elite bureaucracies unresponsive to the public who made rules with little notice or opportunity for meaningful public input. It was not surprising when these bureaucracies succumbed to the institutional imperative. Instead of simply solving the original problem, they worked to identify new problems in order to perpetuate the organization or ideal. Thus, the limited goals of the ECSC were slowly and deliberately expanded over the decades until it became the European Union with the goal of creating a United States of Europe. Similarly, the process of bilateral negotiation of specified tariff reductions metastasized to become the World Trade Organization with a new goal of eliminating non-tariff barriers. This eventually led to the creation of private dispute resolution courts in agreements like NAFTA. The result was a globalist’s dream – transnational organizations run by fellow elitists with the power to impose rules locally. Conversely, it was TR’s nightmare – talking shops that allowed small states to dictate to the great powers.
How do we escape the straitjacket that functionalism has become? First, current agreements must be revised or, if necessary, abrogated to narrow the scope of delegation, reduce bureaucratic power and recognize great power interests. Instead of being vehicles to achieve a fragmented form of world government, international agreements and agencies could return to the kind of transparency and limited goals that found public support in the past. Free trade pacts should drop private dispute resolution tribunals and any rules or decisions should be subject to prior public notice and comment before becoming final. The World Trade Organization should be converted into simply a arbitral body for resolving trade disputes voluntarily submitted to it by member states. In the alternative, the US should consider withdrawing to develop Its own tariff and trade treaties that preserve national security. Since the euro is one of the EU’s most popular programs, the EU should consider shrinking to become simply a monetary and customs union.
Reviving functionalism’s methodical and limited mechanisms would find favor not only in the US and the Western world, but also among the newly developed nations guarding their own recently- won sovereignty. The next post will show how their nationalism is driving international relations in the 21st century.
In 1963, the economist Robert Heilbroner wrote The Great Ascent, a prescient analysis of the challenges facing the former European colonies after achieving independence. He began by saying that, if world history is defined as the common story of the majority of mankind, then world history did not exist before 1948. Since then, it has been the story of the struggle of these new nations to cement their national sovereignty and spur economic development after decades of colonial exploitation. With the end of the Cold War, this struggle became the primary motive force in international relations. The apparent achievement of these goals by China and India has only whetted the appetite of other nations to reach the same level of international respect and burgeoning power.
Meanwhile, post-Cold War American foreign policy was based on the Wilsonian liberal vision of spreading democracy, social responsibility and capitalism throughout the world. A “new world order” under a watchful American eye would eventually erase the differences between nations and their constituent ethnic and religious groups. The engine powering this new system would be globalization and the Internet. It would effectively mean, as Thomas Friedman and historian Francis Fukuyama argued, the end of history.
It meant something very different to the newly developing countries. To them, it appeared to seek their acquiescence to an unprecedented world hegemony. Far from rejecting history, China, India and other developing nations have clung to and embraced their respective histories. The climate change debate, the COVID-19 pandemic and other security threats take place in the midst of this new nationalism driving the majority of the world’s domestic and foreign policy. To effectively address transnational issues, America must accept an approach that respects these nation’s national rights and aspirations while, at the same time, vigorously defending its own.
As I mentioned in a previous post in this series, the realist theory of international relations offers the best model for such a policy by recognizing that states are the most important actors in the international system. Whether democratic or authoritarian, they must always be building their economic and military power since it is the only way to survive in an anarchic world. While non–governmental organizations like the UN, multinational corporations and social and environmental groups can have an impact, achievement of their goals will always be subject to at least the acquiescence of nation–states. A sustainable American foreign policy would recognize these realities and focus on goals that could be supported by affected states without compromising our own fundamental goals of national and economic security. The Trump Administration’s new National Security Strategy is a welcome and important step in this direction (see this post).
In the climate change arena, a realist approach would accept that the Asia-Pacific nations can never agree to any reductions in their carbon emissions that will interfere with their economic development. To developing countries, the demand to reduce the use of coal smacks of a new form of colonialism designed to prevent them from achieving economic independence. They have been building one new coal plant per month to provide the energy necessary to grow their economies and satisfy their people’s needs.
The Paris climate agreement essentially recognized this fact by allowing participants to comply by stating their Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) of carbon reductions, which are only voluntary in nature. China’s INDC allows it to avoid seriously limiting its emissions until 2030. This modest contribution by the world’s largest carbon emitter, coupled with the general lack of transparency of most developing countries’ economies, means even these commitments will be conveniently difficult to verify, much less enforce.
Since the Asia Pacific region alone now accounts for nearly half of the world’s carbon emissions, this means it will be impossible to avoid the 2-5 degree Celsius increase in world temperature originally targeted in the Kyoto accord without damage to the U.S. and developed countries’ economies that would be domestically unacceptable. Adaptation, as well as carbon reduction, must become an integral part of our response to climate change. The only alternative is imposing tariffs and trade sanctions on China, India and other developing countries to immediately force them off the path of ever-increasing carbon emissions.
In the end, the majority of the world’s nations understand that utopian ideals will not save them from a determined foe or domestic threat. Their history has taught them otherwise and made them the ultimate realists. The sooner Americans understand this, the sooner we will be able to make sustainable progress on the climate change and other national security goals.
