REIMAGINING FOREIGN POLICY: Responses
Slaughter, Anne-Marie
SUZANNE NOSSEL'S diagnosis of the problems facing the United States, regardless of who wins the November election, is spot on. As she writes, the United States is "less popular and less...
...they would return with a portfolio of collaborative projects that Congress should fund...
...and the G-20, itself a network of finance ministers of the world's biggest economies and key regional powers—as by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank...
...Invitations would go to ministers and their deputies, reaching far beyond usual diplomatic circles to the government officials responsible for making things work...
...government to get things done...
...As an "ism," rather than as opposition to specific U.S...
...the International Organization of Securities Commissioners...
...The gradual erosion of U.S...
...It is the idea of responding to networked threats through a networked world order...
...But beyond symbolism, they should aim to produce institutionalized networks, precisely along the lines of the Global Competition Network...
...The only shortcoming of Nossel's piece is that she does not go far enough on the prescriptive side...
...DISSENT / Fall 2004 n 41...
...popularity and legitimacy dates back at least to the beginning of Bill Clinton's second term, with the striking and, to many of our closest allies, inexplicable divergence of the United States from the rest of the world on the Land Mines Treaty and the International Criminal Court...
...It is an idea that is compatible with all Nossel's proposals in this more recent piece, but that would incorporate them into a more sweeping strategy...
...Above all, they must allow us to meet networked threats in a networked world...
...TO INSTITUTIONALIZE new and necessary habits of cooperation, starting with its own behavior, the United States must take the lead in building new global institutions...
...Judges too REIMAGINING FOREIGN POLICY are networking intensely, creating what the chief justice of the Canadian Supreme Court refers to as a global human rights dialogue among supreme court judges...
...The global financial system is regulated as much by the Basel Committee— a network of the most powerful central bankers...
...in an article published in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, she made a compelling case for the use of "smart power," urging the Democrats to "recast the fight against terror and nuclear proliferation . . . transforming it from a dark, draining struggle into a hopeful, progressive cause aimed at securing an international system of liberal societies and defeating challenges to it...
...policies, anti-Americanism is developing its own momentum, becoming an easy axis of division for any politician to exploit...
...Those seeking to stay in power can manipulate it to deflect internal opposition...
...They would be actual institutions capable of adopting and enforcing policies (subject to political review), of being tasked by political leaders, and of providing a mid-level infrastructure of global governance made up of the people who must actually get things done within and across national borders...
...These networks already exist in many areas of government...
...Nossel also identifies an important and alltoofrequently overlooked corollary of rising anti-Americanism...
...These institutions must require member states to listen and learn...
...Nossel proposes that a Kerry administration should reach out to the Islamic world in part by sending all Cabinet secretaries, including those with domestic responsibilities, to lead delegations of influential Americans to Islamic countries...
...He does not realize what he has already, much less what he could have...
...But they lack one big idea, and she doesn't supply it...
...They must be networks themselves...
...Legislators are following suit, although more slowly, reaching out to one another on specific issues such as human rights and environmental protection, as well as helping to strengthen fledgling legislators in transitional democracies...
...It also creates a dangerous domestic political dynamic in countries around the world: an invitation to demagoguery...
...Cabinet secretaries, in every domain, to convene a conference of their global counterparts with a particular emphasis on reaching out to their Islamic colleagues...
...homeland...
...The danger is not just that anti-Americanism makes it harder for the U.S...
...On more specific issues, global efforts to counter money laundering are most effectively run through the Financial Action Task Force, which brings together the relevant officials from twenty-eight member countries...
...These are all sound, sensible, and right...
...She is no stranger to bold visions...
...enable them to coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate...
...the International Organization of Insurance Supervisors...
...As she writes, the United States is "less popular and less legitimate in the eyes of the world than at any point in its history as a superpower...
...and yet still allow them to act quickly and flexibly...
...Ironically, George W. Bush has created and strengthened many networks along these lines...
...A Global Justice Network, a Global Immigration Network, a Global Health Network—these would not be amorphous contacts through which interested parties, public and private, share information and brainstorm...
...Outside the financial arena, environmental regulators have formed the International Network for Environmental Enforcement and Cooperation...
...But Bush does not believe in institutionalizing cooperation of any kind, for fear of creating a constraint on what the United States can do whenever and however it decides to do it...
...In antitrust, the Bush administration took what was becoming an ever denser network among antitrust officials and created the Global Competition Network...
...Suzanne Nossel is one of the Democratic Party's brightest young lights...
...leadership in a radically altered world...
...ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER iS dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and author of A New World Order...
...TIIESE CONFERENCES would have enormous symbolic value...
...While he is feuding with leaders such as Gerhard Schroeder, for instance, John Ashcroft and the German justice minister, Otto Schily, as unlikely a pair of political bedfellows as it is possible to find, are working closely together with their European and Asian counterparts to track and capture terrorists...
...It will be up to him actually to prove it, and he will face an uphill battle in many corners...
...They must be institutions that can co-exist profitably with existing institutions...
...So anti-Americanism is not just a problem for Americans—and, at the same time, it is a far bigger problem for Americans than one election can easily fix...
...A bolder step, with far greater long-term consequences, would be for U.S...
...She notes, correctly, that the Democrats have lots of ideas—fox-like...
...borders away from the U.S...
...But together they make up only a moderately ambitious strategy for trying to regain what we have lost, rather than a bolder vision of U.S...
...And border officials are working together more closely than ever before to expand U.S...
...The idea of building global institutions directly connected to the daily lives of citizens in all countries and charged with reaching out to and bolstering the expertise, the professionalism, and the resources of government officials around the world answers this call...
...Those seeking to gain power have a readymade "them" against which to build, in timehonored fascist, communist, and now fundamentalist fashion, an "us...
...George W. Bush has both escalated and exacerbated the crisis, but Nossel is exactly right to argue that the best John Kerry can hope for if he is elected is a chance to prove that we have seen the error of our arrogant ways...
...Financial regulators are trying to expand cooperation with counterparts in many other countries to cut off terrorist financing...
...The Financial Stability Forum brings together all these entities— central bankers, treasuries, and financial supervisory authorities—in the service of global stability...
...She offers a menu of post-election measures: listening tours, securing a genuine multinational force in Iraq, making much better use 40 n DISSENT / Fall 2004 of the UN anti-terrorism committee, cleaning up Guantanamo, intervening at a high level in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and reengaging the UN...
Vol. 51 • September 2004 • No. 4
