Participants' Reports
Working Group 1: Security Issues
Day 2: Doom, Gloom, and Economic Convergence – with a Caveat...
Bad news right from the beginning of this second day of the Washington Conference in Working Group 1: There are, according to all three speakers on this day’s first panel, only few „prospects for disarmament“ right now, not at least due to the unilateral instincts of the present Bush Administration. One could get the pessimistic feeling of „doom and gloom“, as Natasha Bajema summed it up when oulining the chances of a revival of multilateral approaches in global disarmament policies and arms control. The problem: a „Cold War thinking“ dominating the powers that rule the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11/01, which prohibits the effective use of mulitaleralism to clear the world of Weapons of Mass Destruction, in particular.
This view is too narrow, according to Bajema, who used the examples of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) to stress the advantages of multilateral approaches: they are all-inclusive; extend, through their implementation in national legislation, beyond purely state-centered actors; may include counter-measures; are not limited to their text, but can permeate, through monitoring on a regular base, their ideas deeply into the political systems of those states supporting them; finally, they can adapt to new circumstances („review conferences“).
Why is it, then, that multilateralism ranks so low in today’s U.S. foreign policy? Bajema notes, first, a crisis of leadership with the Bush Administration’s emphasis on a „selective multilateralism“, which seems to be nothing more and less than unilateralism in disguise; second, a shift from policies of ‚non-proliferation‘, which seek to counter the problem from the demand-side – i.e. making it un-necessary, non-desirable for states to seek WMD possession – to ‚counter-proliferation‘, a supply-side approach which threatens, she contends, to achieve the opposite of what it’s supposed to do, namely, to increase states’s intention to acquire WMDs in order to protect themselves from possible U.S. military ‚counter measures‘; third, a lack of political will to implement existing international disarmament treaties, to ‚give them teeth‘.
In other words: multilateralism can work, if there is sufficient political will to enforce it. The problem: Right now, the world’s only remaining superpower, the United States, doesn’t see it that way. Bajema invests some hope in the European Union taking the lead, yet without the U.S., that hopes looks rather weak.
Emma Belcher picked up on that theme in her presentation on „American exceptionalism and the CTBT“. The ‚idea that the U.S. should get special treatment and remain free from the legal restraints that apply to other states‘ (Moravsik) can be demonstrated, she argues, time and again in the history of U.S. foreign policy; it is, therefore, no entirely ‚new‘ phenomenon of the current president and his administration. Citing the example of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), she traces the current height of unilateralist temper in Washington back to the days of the Clinton Administration, which failed to get the CTBT confirmed by a Senate increasingly wary of international treaties and their binding obligations for the U.S. Belcher’s pessimistic assessment: With the current administration, there is not much hope for a revival of ‚internationalist‘ thinking in global arms control policies, and it remains quite unclear whether ‚regime change‘ in the U.S. will actually occur – and produce better results from a multilateral point of view.
Cathleen Fisher, speaker No. 3 on this panel, broadened the scope of analysis on arms control and disarmament, demonstrating how since the 1990s, an ever-growing „crisis of confidence“, a „conceptual crisis“, according to her, has developed within the U.S. foreign policy elite. Thus, ideas of a ‚radical alternative‘ to traditional multilateral approaches fell on fertile ground.
With the attacks on 9/11, a new threat emerged: So far, the debate had focused largely on traditional state-centered actors („rogue states“) and their desire for WMD, in particular. But what about non-state actors like transnational terrorist groups, religious fundamentalists, or criminal gangs? One answer the Bush Administration came up with was a so-called ‚effective‘ multilateralism, coupled with a general skepticism about international treaties. Thus, the new ‚National Security Strategy‘ of 2002 emphasized prevention and preemption as possible tools of a ‚counter-proliferation‘ strategy. More traditional ideas of deterrence have not vanished completely, however; Fisher points towards ongoing research on ‚bunker busters‘ and ‚mini nukes‘. To her, the U.S. approach at this time looks „muddy“, with „some deterrence plus some missile defense plus some counter proliferation plus some multilateral cooperation“.
Europe – and Germany in particular - , however, reaffirms traditional multilateral ideas, based on international treaties and regimes, acting coercively only under the U.N. charter, with a firm commitment to the multilateral system. Fisher speaks of a ‚stalemate‘ between those two often opposing approaches, a ‚lack of transatlantic consensus‘. Her conclusion: practical cooperation accross the Atlantic will continue in some areas, but the fundamental debate is far from being over. That debate could be summarized in two questions: What is the greatest threat – and what is the non-proliferation goal?
Money talks...in both Europe and the United States – at least that’s what you could think when listening to the final two speakers of this working group on the last panel, „Security and World Economic Order“. Indeed, on the economic front, the transatlantic divide appears to be much smaller and, in some areas, even to be non-existing. The question, however, remains of whether the apparent rift on military and security issues will spill over into the economic realm.
Bernhard Speyer, the first speaker on the panel, gave a cautiously positive assessment of the present state of transatlantic economic affairs. According to him, it is too early to tell whether the current wave of unilateralist thinking on security matters will come to dominate economic foreign policy in equally strong shape. The ongoing Doha round of the WTO started in the wake of widespread pro-American sentiment around the globe in November 2001; it took time to prepare them, and, as Speyer notes, it is quite difficult to suddenly change strategy in complex international trade talks. But that does not preclude a slow unilateral swing, of course: „There is, at best, mixed and inconclusive evidence.“
In addition, Speyer emphasized that the U.S. has been, throughout the last 50 years, a champion of a strong multilateral system in the international economy; turning unilateral, the U.S. could seriously damage its chances on key export markets. Interwoven with that rationale is the equation of more trade means more wealth means security in the best U.S. ‚national interest‘. Destroy that, and you could have even more terrorist threats!
Speyer concludes that despite the uncertain picture the U.S. presents right now in its foreign economic policy, one thing seems to be for certain: As the recent collapse of the Cancún trade talks demonstrated, the traditional multilateral trade system is under pressure from both skeptical emerging market economies like Brazil and India, flexing their muscles, demanding a better share on agriculture, textiles and raw materials, in particular, and a United States which has grown increasingly ambivalent about its traditional role as the guardian of a strong multilateral approach on foreign trade.
What, then, does the future hold for „economic development and global security“, the title of Markus Schulte‘s final presentation in this working group? There is, he argued, no direct link between economic prosperity and international security, but vice versa: When a state loses control of its internal security, when non-state actors, guerilla and terrorist groups take over, when public order breaks down, the economy is destroyed as well. Schule points towards the problem of „failed states“, countries which do not participate in the ongoing process of globalization and which therefore pose the biggest threat to international security today: Their territory, free of ‚law and order‘ with a functioning economy, is thus prone to become a ‚safe haven‘ for terrorist groups – probably the biggest threat to international security in our time.
From these groups’s point of view, there is indeed no difference between the U.S. and Europe, no matter how often and intense our debates on security or the economy may be. Could terrorism after 9/11 become the new common threat which unites the two continents, despite their many disputes and different perceptions of such threats? Stay tuned!
Trier, November 13, 2003