KANGAROO COURT :

Europeans Courting International Disaster (Robert Kagan, June 30, 2002, washingtonpost.com)

Europeans, along with many other less influential and less worthy nations, are trying to advance their vision of international civilization, with a web of international laws and institutions assuming authority over individual nation-states. Not surprisingly, the world they're trying to create looks an awful lot like the European Union, where rules and laws are more important than military power. And not surprisingly, they're none too happy about the militarily dominant United States placing itself above or outside their new international legal system before it'seven begun.

Americans are hardly hostile to international law -- the United Nations was their idea. But the United States has a special problem, one that its European allies ought especially to appreciate. As the world's most powerful democratic power, the United States is called upon--yes, called upon--far more frequently than any other nation to dispatch its troops overseas for any number of purposes.

Does anyone seriously doubt that we'd have been indicted over Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, etc.? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 1, 2002 2:49 PM