he attacks of Sept. 11 and the death of thousands of civilians from more than 80 countries have provoked at least two significant, and contradictory, international reactions. The first is the war in Afghanistan in which the United States has emerged as a proactive and successful leader. The second is the global effort to bring those responsible for the crimes committed on Sept. 11 to justice and to prevent future acts of terrorism. Here, unlike the war effort, Washington has been reluctant to engage in a visionary, internationalist leadership role.
President Bush deserves credit for principled, inclusive and proportional military action. Responding to a crime against humanity - including the destruction of the World Trade Center, a global symbol of commerce in one of the world's most multicultural cities - the president has engineered an impressive multilateral operation (including Britain and diverse factions of the Afghan opposition) against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In less than three months, U.S.-led forces have toppled a truly repressive regime, weakened a dangerous terrorist network and offered many Afghans hope of a brighter future.
At the same time, the Bush administration has turned inward, establishing an Office of Homeland Security, dismantling certain international treaties and refusing to create or support appropriate global institutions of law and justice. The president's selective multilateralism tempers the commitment of our allies to cooperate in areas in which he is seeking their help - intelligence gathering, air travel security and the blocking of terrorist funds. Worse, it may jeopardize our ultimate goal - the restoration of "homeland security" and a return to pre-Sept. 11 normalcy.
At a minimum, the attacks on New York and Washington demonstrated that the security of the world's 200-plus countries is highly interconnected. Today's security threats - including terrorism, weapons proliferation, infectious diseases and climate change - do not stop at national borders, nor are they necessarily posed by nation states. To address global threats effectively, we must seek the broadest available protection - international intelligence, inclusive multilateral cooperation and total resolve.
In accepting the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10, U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan acknowledged as much. "Humanity is indivisible," he stressed. "This era of global challenges leaves no choice but cooperation at the global level."
Annan's comments stand in stark contrast to recent U.S. actions outside of Afghanistan. On Dec. 7, the Bush administration imposed a one-year freeze on multilateral negotiations aimed at strengthening the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention with effective enforcement mechanisms. Despite the recent anthrax scare, and to the disappointment of the assembled international community, the administration rejected the proposed multilateral BWC inspection mechanisms, arguing that they could hurt American business and military interests.
On Dec. 13, the United States announced its unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM treaty, originally adopted in an effort to curb the arms race between superpower antagonists, is broadly regarded as a cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime. Despite claims that its elimination will increase our security by allowing missile defense testing, the undoing of the ABM risks creating a new global arms race. China has already indicated that it intends to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal, India and Pakistan are likely to follow suit, and President Putin has expressed serious Russian concern. Whatever remains of the international nonproliferation regime will be dealt another blow if U.S. policymakers make good on the Pentagon's announced desire to weaponize space and to store rather than destroy thousands of outdated nuclear warheads.
Likewise, the president's Nov. 13 military order that the U.S. will try foreign terror suspects before secret military tribunals undermines our commitment to the rule of law and has created serious schisms in the international community. Our European and Canadian partners have noted the inconsistency of asking for their participation in multilateral military action while refusing to abide by minimal international standards of justice. Almost all of them, including Britain, have ratified the Rome Convention that calls for the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court. Far from offering U.S. support to the ICC, a tribunal designed to prosecute transnational outlaws like Osama bin Laden, the President's announcement sounded of unilateral militarism rather than global justice. To otherwise like-minded states, the misguided notion of secret military proceedings in which authorities would have judicial, prosecutorial and defense powers, is simply unacceptable. Spain and Germany, for example, have flatly refused to extradite suspected Al Qaeda members to the United States. Notwithstanding the indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid in federal rather than military court, even our closest allies remain wary of our actions.
Indeed, the U.S. stance with respect to the BWC and ABM treaty, our increasing distrust of treaty diplomacy and our apparent preference for secret military tribunals rather than an international criminal court, erodes the spirit of cooperation that has characterized collective military action since Sept. 11. By undermining treaties designed to enhance international security, we may unwittingly diminish security here at home.
In an interdependent world, credible efforts to restore homeland security must extend far beyond our national boundaries. Quarantine measures, Maginot lines (or their modern-day successor, missile defense systems), national export controls and secret military courts do not shield us from the global threats of epidemics, climate change, the proliferation of weapons-grade uranium or terrorist attacks. To win the peace as well as the war, the activities of the Office of Homeland Security should be coupled with a forward-thinking foreign policy that promotes worldwide security. If the cost of that policy is continued international cooperation, so much the better.
Urs A. Cipolat is a lecturer in interdisciplinary studies and international affairs at the University of California at Berkeley. Noah B. Novogrodsky is an associate at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco.
