Man Bites Dog

A casual observer can't help but notice that three apparently unrelated news fronts -- the military war on terror, the EU project and the United Nations -- have risen and fallen together as if they were held together by some invisible current. It's possible that the defeat of the Iraqi insurgency (the subject of an excellent roundup by Bill Roggio at Winds of Change), the shocking setbacks dealt to the EU draft constitution and the continuing investigation into criminal activity at the United Nations are only coincidentally linked. Any seeming pattern is simply the result of the "wish being father to the thought" afflicting who want see meaning in them.

The alternative hypothesis, of course, is that these phenomena are positively correlated. How would we know? One possible approach is to make predictions on the assumption that they would rise and fall together and revise our initial belief in the value of their relational coefficient a posteriori; which is a fancy way of saying one could see if that assertion was borne out by events. I was on the point of dismissing this line of thinking as speculative before realizing how widespread was the tacit argument that they were negatively correlated. For example, one of the most frequent claims following 9/11 was that a stronger UN and EU would result in a weaker terrorism. What was needed were alliances, international cooperation and multilateralism. The more of these we had, the less traction international terrorism would get. Kofi Annan forcefully repeated this argument in his proposed enlargement of the United Nations called "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all (PDF)". Make the UN larger and more capable, and you will be safer. When former President Jimmy Carter argued in 2002 that the US should close the prison at Guantanamo Naval Base and leave Saddam to the United Nations, he was proceeding from the same implicit assumption of a negative correlation. In a signed article in the Washington Post  Carter wrote:

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents. ...

We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer. There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted inspections in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies. Apparently disagreeing with the president and secretary of state, in fact, the vice president has now discounted this goal as a desirable option.

We have thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world, disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords. Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism.

In predicting that acting against terrorism without the UN, France and Germany and in opposition to "respected international organizations" would lead to catastrophe Carter was asserting not only a relationship between elements but also its direction. But if the existence of the relationship is admitted, the difficulty of identifying the mechanism through which it works makes it hard to reach any definite conclusion about the direction of correlation. Many Liberals, when confronted by the 'successes' of the War on Terror might argue that America would have met with even greater success had former President Carter's strategy been adopted. Another point of view holds that the dramatic weakening of the United Nations and the European project are tragic consequences of the 'failed' Bush strategy against terrorism, where "captured Taliban soldiers", the UN and multilateral institutions are alike victims of an America gone berserk. Curiously, the unexamined foundation of that belief is that the three elements must somehow share the same fate in a way not at all manifest in Carter's assertion, for why should the UN or the EU be collaterally damaged by the War on Terror? 

What one would have expected, if Jimmy Carter were right, is that persons like Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan would have grown in stature as George W. Bush diminished. What one would have expected is the confinement of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to beleaguered garrisons. What would have been natural is exaltation of the sole remaining Ba'athist state in the region, Syria. Instead of an American President waiting out his last, ignominious days in the Oval Office we have a deathwatch on the leadership in Turtle Bay, Paris, Berlin and Damascus. Why? This is a question that will engage historians in the years to come.