Deutsche Welle’s cramped view of American multilateralism

In the course of a pretty humdrum and predictable piece on whether American exceptionalism is coming to an end, Deutsche Welle does considerable violence to the history of American multilateralism. Here’s how the piece describes U.S. involvement in international organizations: Self-confident in its power and principles, Washington has aggressively guarded its national sovereignty. Yet historically, ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

In the course of a pretty humdrum and predictable piece on whether American exceptionalism is coming to an end, Deutsche Welle does considerable violence to the history of American multilateralism. Here's how the piece describes U.S. involvement in international organizations:

In the course of a pretty humdrum and predictable piece on whether American exceptionalism is coming to an end, Deutsche Welle does considerable violence to the history of American multilateralism. Here’s how the piece describes U.S. involvement in international organizations:

Self-confident in its power and principles, Washington has aggressively guarded its national sovereignty. Yet historically, Washington’s emphasis on sovereignty has created tensions with the rest of the world.

As early as 1796, US President George Washington used his farewell address to warn America against joining entangling alliances. And after World War I, the US Congress refused to ratify the League of Nations, mankind’s first serious attempt to build political community at the global level.

The US did play an instrumental role in the creation of the United Nations. But Washington has also failed to ratify a host of international treaties including the Kyoto Protocol and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, among others.

Just the United Nations? Wasn’t Washington instrumental in creating the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, NATO, the World Trade Organization, and the international criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda?

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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