If violations are widespread, cooperation breaks down. But the greater interdependence which we do have today makes it more injurious to more countries to have the system break down. So I expect more and more subjects to be covered by more and more elaborate rules which are embedded in agreements, and a pretty high degree of compliance. Yes, we think of ourselves as an enormously law-abiding people, but many foreign observers regard us a little on the roguish side, that we use our power to carve out individual exceptions, or we refuse to participate at all in treaty regimes enjoying wide support. We recently refused, for example, to join the land mine treaty because of rather marginal concerns about possible benefits from using land mines in one or two conflicts that we could envision.
Every country is what it is for complex and deep historical reasons.
In the first part of our national history we were protected largely by geography, the luck of geography, from the threat of invasion, and we were able to live our national life without too much concern for what was going on in other countries. In the more recent phase of our national history we have been the most powerful country in the world, and that has also enabled us to act as we deem appropriate without too much reference to the preferences of other countries. But the deeper point is that if you look at our history, we have a history of being a Lone Ranger in the world. So that's just one area where clearly we need to cooperate, to accept cooperative schemes, in order to realize our national interest. But it's a little counter-cultural, it's a little hard for us to do that.