Two World Orders [2003 Oldie but Goodie]

The Wilson Quarterly ^ | Autumn 2003 | Jed Rubenfeld

[Uncle Ralph]

Whether out of hubris or principle, or both, the United States has not understood its support for international law and institutions to imply a surrender of its own commitment to self-government. As the international system became more powerful, and international law diverged from U.S. law, the United States inevitably began to show unilateralist tendencies -- not simply out of self-interest but because the United States is committed to democratic self-government. The continental European democracies, with their monarchical histories, their lingering aristocratic cultures, and their tendency to favor centralized, bureaucratic governance, have always been considerably less democratic...

The American and French revolutions tied democracy to the ideal of a self-determining nation... Two hundred years later, there remains no realistic prospect of world democracy, and if there were ... the United States would resist it, because world decision making would very likely be unfriendly to America. But though the United States would be no friend of world democracy, it ought to be a friend to a world of democracies, of self-governing nation-states, each a democracy in its own politics...

Europeans tend to neglect or minimize the damage that universal constitutionalism does to the prospects for variation, experimentation, and radical change opened up by national democracy. So long as democracy is allied with national self-government rather than with world governance, it remains an experimental ideal, dedicated to the possibility of variation, perhaps radical variation, among peoples with different values and different objectives. Democratic national constitutionalism may be parochial within a given nation, but it's cosmopolitan across nations. Democratic peoples are permitted, even expected, to take different paths. They're permitted, even expected, to go to hell in their own way...

[ETL]

From National Public Radio (NPR):
"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been visiting countries such as China, Iran and Russia as part of an effort to build a 'strategic alliance' of interests not beholden to the United States. He considers the United States his arch enemy.":
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5729764

From the Russian News and Information Agency:
"'I am determined to expand relations with Russia,' Chavez, known as an outspoken critic of what he calls the United States' unilateralism, told the Russian leader, adding that his determination stemmed from their shared vision of the global order.":
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060727/51913498.html

From the Sino-Russian Joint Statement of April 23, 1997:
"The two sides [China and Russia] shall, in the spirit of partnership, strive to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag01.html