How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty

How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That

John R Bolton

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781594034916
• eBook ISBN: 9781594035012
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Today, American sovereignty is more challenged than ever before, not from enemies that threaten us militarily but from "friends” who urge us to share or reduce our sovereignty for larger global objectives. How Barack Obama is Endangering our National Sovereignty reveals what sovereignty means to Americans, not as an abstraction but as a vibrant component of self government.Former Ambassador to the U.N. John R. Bolton looks at specific threats to U.S. sovereignty, from "global governance” to the White House, and recommends what Americans can do to defend their sovereignty and resist encroachments from the wide array of challenges we face, internationally and in our own domestic politics.

IMMINENT THREATS TO U.S. SOVEREIGNTY AND CONTINUING EROSIONS

Threats to U.S. sovereignty are both imminent and long-term. They do not all share common characteristics, nor are they necessarily immediately obvious as threats. One element that runs through many of them, however, is the concept of international “norming” - the idea that America should base its policies on the international consensus, rather than making its own decisions as a constitutional democracy. Using norming, the international Left seeks to constrain U.S. sovereignty by moving our domestic political debate to align with broader international opinion. Because of the centrality of individual freedom in the United States, norming advocates are invariably on the left of the political spectrum; there are simply no other nations out there are as liberty-oriented as we are.

One way to drive norming is through votes in multilateral organizations like the 192-member United Nations. Operating under the “one nation, one vote” principle, the General Assembly routinely passes resolutions where the United States finds itself not only in opposition, but often with only a handful of others voting with it. “One nation, one vote” has a surface democratic ring to it, but it is in fact profoundly antidemocratic and certainly affords no legitimacy to what happens on the General Assembly floor. While being “isolated” in international bodies may be uncomfortable, a point the international Left stresses to embarrass us, it often may be the only way to protect our sovereignty and our interests. After all, if American exceptionalism means only that it took us longer and a different route to get to European social democracy, the whole enterprise would hardly have been worth it.

If American exceptionalism means only that it took us longer and a different route to get to European social democracy, the whole enterprise would hardly have been worth it.

Let us turn now to several critical areas where U.S. sovereignty is under siege.

American National Security

Strong defenses are critical to national survival, so it is hardly surprising that opponents of unfettered U.S. sovereignty strive endlessly to constrain our ability to act in self-defense. Limiting or transferring decisional authority on security issues to international bodies is thus a core divide between Americanists and globalists.

Nowhere is this issue more graphically framed than in debates over the legitimacy of the use of force. In 1999, during NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia - which the U.N. Security Council had not authorized because of a threatened Russian veto - Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained that “[u]nless the Security Council is restored to its preeminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on a dangerous path to anarchy.” Shortly thereafter, Annan said that military action taken without council approval constituted a threat to the “very core of the international security system. . . . Only the [U.N.] Charter provides a universally accepted legal basis for the use of force.”

This, of course, is conceptually identical to Kerry’s argument for a “global test” for U.S. foreign policy, namely, that someone else must approve it before it can be considered legitimate. Interestingly, shortly after Annan’s comments, then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said, “Nobody in the Senate agrees with that. Nobody in the Senate agrees with that. There is nothing to debate. He is dead, flat, unequivocally wrong. . . . It is a statement that an overexuberant politician like I am might make on another matter, but I hope he did not mean it, if he did. I love him, but he is flat-out wrong.” We will now see, of course, whether Vice President Biden’s opinion remains the same under President Obama.

A dramatic contrast to the global-test approach to foreign policy, which still involves effective multilateral activity, is the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). PSI now has more than 90 participating countries working to stop the international trafficking of weapons and materials of mass destruction. PSI has no secretary-general, no bureaucracy, no headquarters, no endless diplomatic meetings. It simply focuses, often clandestinely, on working to prevent or interdict shipments of contraband material. As one British diplomat put it, “PSI is an activity, not an organization.” In fact, PSI is precisely the kind of multilateral activity that protects our national security while respecting our sovereignty, and th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• .
• IMMINENT THREATS TO U.S. SOVEREIGNTY AND CONTINUING EROSIONS
• PROTECTING AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY IN THE AGE OF OBAMA
• Copyright Page