Transcripts For CSPAN2 Stewart Patrick The Sovereignty Wars

Jefferson and friends divided. Look for these titles and bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. He is also the director or International Institution and Global Governance program. Known in shorthand as the iigg. Stewart is a quintessential policy practitioner at the rockefeller studies program. As a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University where he was a rhodes scholar. He served on the state Department Policy and planning staff for the george w. Bush of administration and he has been with us here at cfr since 2008. As you might have gathered from stewarts very long title that he is an expert in multilateral cooperation and International Institutions. He has written widely as well on topics ranging from fragile states to u. N. Security Council Reform to the merits of Ad Hoc Coalitions of the willing. I will refer you to the internationalist available here on cfr. Org but tonight we are not here to talk about what stewart has written the pastor held good his blog is or how hes a great guest host on our weekly podcast but rather to talk about the publication of stewarts new book the sovereignty wars reconciling america with the world. I wanted to join me in welcoming Stewart Patrick here tonight. [applause] congratulations on a terrific book. Its got some great blurbs. Copies are available for sale at the end of the evening for people who want to read them. What i would like to do is to begin with Something Interesting which is that you begin this began this book two years ago maybe two and a half years ago and i would say since then the word sovereignty has become somewhat indeed i will note the president donald j. Trump in his first address to the u. N. Security council used the word sovereign or some variant thereof 21 times in his 42 minute speech. So why not you just start us off off. Why is it such a hot topic . I would have to say there were more than a few tweets directed at me wondering whether or not i paid or how much i paid Steven Miller to insert the word sovereignty in the present speech. It was really remarkable and i think that it makes sense in the case of donald trump because to the degree that one can find a constancy and what has been a turbulence since he started off this and fullthroated and a sense promulgation of that idea has been one of the threads that brings his Foreign Policy together or provides some coherent narrative. I got into it after spending several years writing about weak states in other words countries that actually had sovereignty deficit say they will and looking at the connection between those in u. S. National security and other interests that increasingly as going into the literature i kept coming across writings by john bolton the coming war on american sovereignty or a nice gentleman who presented this book from the Hudson Institute to the locusts cfr called sovereignty towards submission will americans be ruled by others . To quite diametrically opposed opposed possibilities and i began wondering what is all the fuss about. I wanted to write what ended up eating in a sense what was said and one of the blurbs that guide to be worlds most powerful country has such a sense of attachment to sovereignty and a sense of that sovereignty is somehow fall my roe and i wanted to take the wheat from the chaff in a debate that is often cliche to use shed more light and it was my effort to try myself as much as anybody else. So words matter so what does sovereignty actually mean . People dont get agree on what it means. No they dont. They mean one of three different things. Its somewhat overlapping but three basic distinct things. First is a story. The idea that the nationstate or the government of the territorial state possesses absolute authority over the inhabitants in the territory of a country and also authority over what crosses the borders so thats one aspect of sovereignty and this part of sovereignty is really you may remember the hotdog commercials, this notion that we make our hotdog so good because we have to appeal to a Higher Authority. The assumption is you dont have to appeal to a Higher Authority in the United States so thats one dimension other than thats really about is the constitution the sole source of law for instance. The other, another dimension of sovereignty is autonomy and this is about freedom of actions. We dont want to be like gulliver on the beach surrounded by which many including a number of trumps senior officials have actually used but thats about read them of action and the third way its often used is a term, the notion influence. Do we have an influence over our country it comes up with this choice or triad that i came up with. Theres three things authority, autonomy freedom of action and influence and people talk past each other and people in clinical debates often wrap themselves in the flag. People have a tendency to wrap themselves in the word sovereignty as a more interesting conversation about where the state should be going and the best policy options in the United States. To make you qualify the word sovereignty with the word war which is a pretty strong claim but i also note you argue that your opening vignette of the book that this has a long history. You begin the book like talking about the debate between a University President and the u. S. Senator in boston massachusetts back in 1919. My hometown and 72,000 people signed up to get one of 3000 tickets. Talk about why you begin talking about that debate and that night. Was fascinating. I heard in the margins of historys i heard the boston Symphony Hall in later march of 1919 and it was just about a month after Woodrow Wilson at the paris peace conference had come up with a scheme particularly in the question was should the United States having emerged as arguably coequals britain in terms of power or certainly a vast arsenal at his disposal and new global aspirations. Should it actually engaged in it share of responsibility so this was a debate about the league of nations and whether or not thats a departure from the admonitions that the founders and others entangling and promoting alliances were against. First of all the debate is fascinating because its very civil and certainly compared to say some of the debates we have had in recent years but its incredibly civil and its between two very thoughtful people and it shows how people can disagree but even more than that it touches on all of the issues that basically we think about when we talk about sovereignty today. It touches on if the United States joins the league of nations will the constitution still matter . Will we still be free to use our military powers . Do we have to worry about signing up two new agreements over admissions of migrants or do we have to worry in the language that they use a flood of chinese and hindu labor into the United States so there are all sorts of things about the balance of power between the executive branch and overreaching executive branch versus what congresss role is inform policy that i was struck by how these topics are and i make the argument of course as we all know the United States did not join the league of nations and we went into an isolationist period and an insular period that has some of the same sentiments that one can hear it echoed in the current environment after the 70, 75 year long period of localism. Will we end up looking back on the 75 year period of an interregnum for whats normal to the United States. The phrase attributed to mark twain about history doesnt repeat but it rhymes. There seems to be a lot of rhyming going on with this sovereignty debate over the course of United States and its not nailed. But its a current context that youve written a lot about heading up our go Global Governance program youve spent a lot of time thinking about how we have to find a transnational threat and things happening over there dont stay over there so how is the rise of globalization changing the debate or is it a more important debate . I think it extension waits the sovereignty debate. I talk about number of enduring forces that make the United States ambivalent at best about giving away its sovereignty rate this includes at least three and during forces and one of them is American Political Culture the fact that we are the first modern country based on the principle that the people rule. That commitment is popular sovereignty that we still exist today makes us suspicious enough of our own politicians to whom we delegate these authorities but it makes us triply more suspicious for an International Organization. Another issue that still remains even notwithstanding the election of trump is american exceptionalism a sense that the United States is in a sense a new form of Political Community and it has a special destiny in the world and their different ways you can do that. Can be a city on the hill or a crusader but those are very strong. They are institutional things like the separation of powers to make it very difficult for the United States to make credible commitments to multilateralism and of course americas power which again sometimes leads us into active ways that are not necessarily multilateral. There are several enduring factors. What is news today is this incredible velocity of International Transactions and the fact as you mentioned that things that occur elsewhere dont necessarily stay there and the real sense that to actually exercise your destiny in the global age whether it has to do with financial instability or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or transnational terrorism or Infectious Disease you actually have to begin to trade and thats what i call sovereignty trade one aspect of sovereignty for another. In particular you have to trade often autonomy. That is this notion of complete freedom of action which is often illusory in a world lowball threat. You have to trade it for the promise of collective action. Not that thats a always going to work but you often get a better result to go down that road. The basic question your approaches seems to me over the course of American History United States has except a lot of constraints on what you would call sovereignty and we have often done so because we believe we are getting something out of it. Is it in the view of the critics on sovereignty their argument that any constraint on american instability to see fit is fundamentally unamerican and a threat to the constitution . I do think and i will preface it by saying this bracket patiently sovereignty is not an entirely partisan issue and will make it to the Global Economy there are many on the left who have often had doubts about International Organizations particularly in globalization. In more recent years though you have to say the balance of this criticism has been coming from the right, their public and party and i think its no accident in this environment that has become almost impossible to get us our colleague John Bellinger has said almost impossible to get any multilateral treaty through the United States Senate Unless the something is pivotal as managing straddling fish stocks. Its virtually impossible and i think he could as there is a mindset within at least enough of a veto group not more republicans but enough of the veto group of senators that any constraint is problematic. At the same time that this is going on the United States has as a matter of course in ways that we dont necessarily always acknowledge this actually seated a certain amount of sovereign autonomy and to some degree Sovereign Authority to International Organizations. Case in point the Chemical Weapons Convention which we joined in the 1990s and the reason briefly joint is we werent making these things anymore and we realized by taking away our options to do it we could have a reciprocal obligations from other countries and not only that we could except challenging that is quite an openness to sovereign intrusion so i have several more examples of that but i will just use the one which is the World Health Organization pre. Dont think of the w. H. O. As an wrenching on americas sovereignty but in the wake of the sars epidemic what i call the International Health regulations were bolstered and they require the United States and all other signatories to actually accept quite a few obligations including providing access to w. H. O. Officials including two of allowing which didnt used to happen w. H. Oto from nongovernmental organizations which is always sensitive. Many developing countries are authoritarian and country so i i think the sovereigntys logic and a ways to get back to your point about localization or what is different now is increasingly running into the practical realities to effectively influence our fate as a nation and our prosperity as consumers and workers. We need to actually come up with new multilateral ways. Let me borrow drum comments on the book. Help those of us who are perplexed to sort through competing impulses. On the one hand the desired to preserve the ability with the United States to chart its own future. That has deep roots in the constitution in terms of we as the common people. At the same time trying to achieve many of the goals you would want him prosperity requires getting others to do things or stop doing things and these require tradeoffs. You talk about the sovereignty part any mention different ones so how do you recommend that policymakers should think about these issues and that competing choice or set of priorities. Im not sure that i have stringent criteria for that but one way of thinking about it when you think about for instance working in International Organizations a lot of people say that joining an International Organization like the United Nations we are sacrificing some measure of our sovereignty and what are we getting out of bed etc. And i make that point which should be obvious that the decisions on entering into an International Organization or u. N. Agency is a completely sovereign choice and it doesnt detract from the embodiment of sovereignty. I challenge the idea that somehow it infringes upon our Sovereign Authority. That things said you can still make the argument well we give up a autonomy and is it really worth it and thats where you get into the core benefit analyses. I think you have to offer. Concrete examples. For instance by participating in u. N. Peacekeeping as perfect as it is the United States has an assessment of approximately 25 and i know Ambassador Nikki Haley is looking to reduce out a little bit more. For 25 cents the United States its basically a dollars worth of effort to be leveraged by the constitutions of other countries that eat them up around a large number of International Eye to the these and youll find as with peacekeeping you dont necessarily want to have United States be sending troops and putting itself in harms way and it wouldnt be diplomatically feasible to have the u. S. Contentions there and yet i participating we get a huge amount out of it. There are other cases where ill be the first to admit there is not every single problem has a multilateral solution to or at least not a good multilateral solution so when you look through arguments about the Test Ban Treaty for instance there are legitimate arguments you can make on both sides about whether or not a universal treaty along those lines prevents others fro outweighs the disadvantages of us perhaps not being quite able to have the exact reliability we would like to have much less improve those. I would tend to follow on the side of saying balances a good agreement. There you get into the cost benefit of measurements and reasonable people come up with different ways. You are the director of our International Institution of local governance program. You talk a bit about this in the book. They are all kinds of ways to quaff break with other countries. Formal treaties only been one type and unilateralism and Ad Hoc Coalition for the willing and the various mechanisms by which we can work in thinking about sovereignty over all. One of the places that i come down in the book is i r