Should We Take Global Governance Seriously

Should We Take Global Governance Seriously? John R. Bolton* I. INTRODUCTION Even the apparently simple act of entitling a conference "Trends in Global Governance: Do They Threaten American Sovereignty? is likely to expose the vast disparities which exist between two quite different factions within the United States. One party, small but highly educated, voluble and tireless, knows instinctively (and often emotionally) what global governance is and why it is desirable. Consisting of academics (largely, but nor exclusively, law and international relations professors) and media professionals; members of self-styled human rights, environmental and humanitarian groups; ratified circles within the "permanent government," and at present even in the White House; and a diverse collection of people generally uneasy with the dominance of capitalism as an economic philosophy and individualism as a political philosophy, these "Globalists" find allies all around the world. Their agenda is unambiguously statist, but typically on a worldwide rather than a national level. The other faction, consisting silently of virtually everyone else in the United States, has no clue whatever that "global governance" is even an issue worth discussing, since, among other things, it has formed no part of any political campaign in recent memory. This large party cannot define global governance, does not think about it, and-when it is explained-typically rejects it unhesitatingly. Although overwhelmingly predominant numerically, these Americans (who are comfortable with individualism and capitalism) are little recognized abroad, lost from view beneath the prolific production of academic papers, endless international conferences, and international media appearances of the diverse and often contradictory views of those whose primary urge, if not their ultimate objective, enrolls them in the party of global governance. Accordingly, when the "Americanists" speak out, foreigners often assume that they are simply the knee-jerk voice of reaction, the great unlettered and unwashed, whom the cultured and educated Globalists simply have not yet gotten under proper control. Europeans in particular will instantly recognize the disjunction between elite and mass political opinions that has characterized their societies for almost their entire democratic experience, and they will empathize, needless to say, with their elite, Globalist counterparts. In both the Globalist and Americanist parties, for purposes of this analysis, we are considering attitudes and opinions about people in their public capacities, issues of politics and government. Although "globalism" as a buzz word can be made to cover almost anything, we are less concerned here with what people do in their private capacities, in the fields of business and commerce, religion and culture. Certainly, there are significant areas of overlap, but we are assessing "global governance," which we can perhaps all agree has a narrower scope than the more often invoked "globalization." By this point, some readers will doubtless have cried out that the categories of Globalists and Americanists are oversimplified, and they are of course correct, to an extent. Analytically, however, this philosophical divide is real, and marks an important fault line in the United States that is duplicated in few other countries (the United Kingdom being a notable exception). It is certainly true that the party of "Americanists" has generally not taken "global governance' seriously as a phenomenon, has ignored or derided its huge body of academic and polemical literature, and has allowed "Globalist" theories and organizations to develop with little or no scrutiny, debate or opposition. My thesis, as a convinced Americanist, is that these happy days are over. Like it or not, the Globalists have seized more readily the opportunities provided by the end of the Cold War to advance their agenda, building on an iceberg-like mass produced by years of writing, conference-going, resolution-passing and networking. …