The American Spectator

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A crucial but underappreciated element of a successful policy is getting as many countries as possible not to develop WMD in the first place. The United States has dissuaded Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey from going nuclear by forging stable alliances that offer these countries better security than they could achieve through unconventional weapons programs of their own. A peaceful and just world order led by the United States is the reason why only a few of the world’s nearly 200 nations are proliferation “rogues.”

br> Ganguly is right that dealing properly with India despite the irregularities in nonproliferation policy that result. But Carter is just as right to insist that consensus and control have an inherent value — not just to “international peace and security” but to the tangible national interest of the United States. In a world where the only rule is there are no rules, it can be exciting but exhausting to be a hegemon. That the modern international order has often failed the world and disappointed American hopes to enforce it with a coalition of willing states does not mean that we should learn to do without an international order that works.

THIS IS THE REASON why Bush is right to have paid so much attention to the United Nations, and why Bolton is right to diligently earn the respect of his international colleagues. But it is also the reason why we should take a look at the institutions that work — NATO is paradigmatic for the U.S., and the EU for Europe — and ask ourselves why they do. The inevitable answer is that organizations like NATO and the EU embody the consensus that defined their creation. Nations that share that consensus apply for membership and are accepted upon meeting measurable criteria. The Kyoto treaty on global warming was bad, from this perspective, because it failed to hold all would-be member states to criteria acceptable to the membership as a whole.

As we think about the real and necessary project of overhauling the international order in tune with consensual legitimacy, we should be prepared to establish new institutions that reflect the desires of the world’s representative democracies — and in so doing, lift international law out of its own limbo.