February 24, 2017
THE SEPARABILITY OF SOVEREIGNTY AND TRADE (self-reference alert):
A Renewed Republican Party (Joshua Mitchell, sPRING 2017, American aFFAIRS jOURNAL)
Globalism, as we know, has benefitted a narrow swath of America, as the electoral map of 2016 indicates. Counties that voted for Clinton are the jurisdictional overlayment of the cities and regional zones in which a preponderance of citizens are involved in the global "management" (the buzzword of the globalist epoch) of materials or, more importantly, information. These voters were generally inattentive to their fellow citizens who were not in on the globalist game plan. For them, political justice involved material growth made possible by global management and the identity debt-points that global elites dispensed to this or that oppressed "identity" group as a consequence of past infractions or of the irredeemable fault of others--typically (the imaginary category of) White People. These two together were the theoretical centerpieces of 2016 Clinton campaign.That globalism and identity politics went together in the minds of so many Democrats is no mere quirk or accident. What binds globalism and identity politics together is the judgment that national sovereignty is not the final word on how to order collective life. This judgment against national sovereignty--let us state the matter boldly--was the animating principle of the post-1989 world order, an order that is now collapsing before our eyes. Citizens who came of age after 1989 scarcely know how daring this project has been and, thanks to the American university, can scarcely conceive of any alternative to it. The post-1989 world order, however, is not fixed and immutable. It is, moreover, a rather bold historical experiment. A brief digression into the history of Western political thought confirms that this is so. Republicans must understand the long-standing viable alternative that predates the post-1989 experiment; and they must understand it in their very bones. For unless they grasp the real reason for the recent collapse, they will be tempted to see the repudiation of the political classes of both parties as a mere populist uprising, which will, they hope, dissipate as citizens either accept their fate in a globalized world or cease to be irrational. The larger issue, now that the post-1989 world is collapsing, is not populism, but rather national sovereignty. Let us see why.The Peace of Westphalia, which formally inaugurated the modern European system of nation-states, came into effect in 1648. Shortly thereafter, in 1651, Hobbes wrote one of the great works in the history of political philosophy, Leviathan. In a now-common reading of that work, and correct so far as it goes, Hobbes's Leviathan provides us with the individuated self, oriented by self-interest and the fear of death. These ideas are in Leviathan, but they only scratch the surface of that great work. Hobbes's deeper concern in Leviathan was the English Civil War, which in no small part was a religious war involving the claims of Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. The doctrinal difference between the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians need not concern us; what matters is where each of these Christian sects located sovereignty. Hobbes thought that Roman Catholics were guilty of what we might call "false universalism," because they vested sovereignty at the supra-state level, in Rome. Hobbes thought that the Presbyterians were guilty of what we might call "radical particularism," because they vested sovereignty at the sub-state level, in private conscience. The English Civil War occurred, on Hobbes's reading, because of these religious wagers that peace and justice were possible without national sovereignty. In his estimation, these supra- and sub-state alternatives are perennial temptations of the human heart. Their defenders may promise much, but neither "commodious living" nor justice are possible through them. Only by vesting sovereignty in the state can there be improvement for citizens and workable understandings of justice.The post-1989 experiment with globalism and identity politics demonstrates that Hobbes was correct, so long ago, that supra- and sub-state sovereignty are perennial temptations of the human heart. The post-1989 version of that temptation saw global elites use the apparatus of the state to bolster so-called free trade, international law, global norms, and international accords about "climate change," the advances towards which purported to demonstrate the impotence of the state itself. In such a world managed from above, the only task left for the Little People was to feel good--or feel permanent shame--about their identities, and perhaps to get involved in a little "political activism" now and again, to show their commitment (on Facebook, of course) to "social justice." The Little People in such a world were not citizens, they were idle "folks," incapable of working together, because what really mattered was not rational deliberation with their neighbors, but what they owed, or were owed, by virtue of their identities. Determining the calculus of their debt, in turn, were Very White Progressives in the Democratic Party who cared not a jot about the real outstanding debt of $19 trillion owed by the U.S. treasury. These Very White Progressives sought to adjudicate justice from above, by legal carve-outs or, if necessary, by executive actions pertaining, for example, to transsexual bathrooms, so that all "identities" could have their due. Fortunately, 2016 was year the American electorate decided this ghastly fate was not to be theirs.
Our book proceeded from the tension between national sovereignty and transnationalism and from the fear, on the right, that the latter was an inexorable force that would consume the latter. But, as I worked on it, it occurred to me that something much more interesting was happening than just a struggle between these two ideas. America, mostly, but the Anglosphere generally, have redefined sovereignty over the past several centuries so that it is no longer a function of bordered nations but of consenting populations. The entire American experiment can be seen as a repudiation of the idea that there exist sovereigns who are entitled to act as they choose within the confines of their nations. We have replaced it with the idea of popular sovereignty, which can hardly be stated more directly and succinctly than as follows:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
One of the main results of our adoption of this Founding ideal is that we do not recognize as legitimate regimes that do not adhere to same, or, we may recognize them temporarily, for our convenience, but always hold in reserve our right to change them. At the time of the book this had been demonstrated--though some had trouble seeing it--in our decision to change the Iraqi regime. While many eventually focussed on the WMD question, it had never mattered to George W. Bush, nor to Americans generally, for whom the fact of Saddam's totalitarianism was sufficient reason for the war. In the 9/12/02 UN General Assembly speech that outline the case for the war, W put it thus:
The United States helped found the United Nations. We want the United Nations to be effective, and respectful, and successful. We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime. Our partnership of nations can meet the test before us, by making clear what we now expect of the Iraqi regime.If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material.If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions.If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with the international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis -- a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty, and internationally supervised elections.
Note, first, that WMD are not the rationale, only one element (and even there, it was Saddam's failure to comply with Resolutions he'd agreed to that was the causus, not the fact of WMD itself); second, that what is required is a fundamental change in the nature of how the Iraqis are governed.
One might be tempted to see this and the concurrent democratization of the Arab world that W pursued as some kind of peculiarity of his, except that it was completely in keeping with Anglospheric history, from Magna Carta to the Balkans. It is in fact part and parcel of what came to be known as the End of History, the recognition that there was essentially only one way of organizing nations/states for the maximum benefit of their people and that what was required was a politics organized along democratic lines; an economics that is capitalist; and a religion that is protestant (tolerant of multiple faiths).
Given this redefinition of sovereignty and the ever increasingly universal adoption of its components, it seemed odd to me then that folks--mainly my fellows on the right--were so paranoid about transnationalism, which we might call, for simplicity sake, the idea that the sovereignty of individual states should be subservient to an overarching sovereign whose rule would not be subject to consent.
Sure, the UN exists, but it has, throughout its history, either danced to our tune or we have ignored it (as W did when they ultimately refused to enforce their own Resolutions in Iraq). And the EU exists, but it was obvious even then that any attempt to make it any more than a free trade zone was going to act as a centrifugal force rather than a centripetal one. And all one had to do was look at the "nations" of Europe to see that the main dynamic--in Yugoslavia; in Spain, in Great Britain; in Belgium; in Italy; etc.--was a drive towards dissolution of the artificial regimes that had been created by conquest and treaty and towards constituent historical states : Serbia; Scotland; Catalonia; etc. Far from being threatened by a rampant transnationalism; the political reality was, and is, that citizenries have so internalized the right to consensual governance that they require that state decision-making be made as close to home as possible and with maximum input from those who identify themselves as the nation to be governed. [In Europe, such nations are often closely tied up with race/ethnicity/religion; but in America's not dissimilar demands for dissolution they are more regional and multi-ethnic/multi-confessional; California for example.]
So, I concluded that the threat of transnationalism was terribly overblown and that it was far more likely the EU would dissolve than be endowed with dictatorial powers.
I did though identify one area where the opposite was likely to occur and that was global trade. This is the one area that requires some surrender of state sovereignty by populations that wish to enjoy the benefits of increased market forces. The reason for this seems obvious enough: would you buy a car from a dealer who was not bound by the same rules (laws) as you are? Suppose you agreed to finance the purchase at 4% interest but he was entitled to raise the rate to any level he desired once you'd agreed? Under such circumstances, it goes without saying, that trade would be impossible because no market actually exists. Paradoxically, free markets are a function of rules created by a sovereign power.
Global trade then requires that each sovereign nation relinquish some exclusive power over itself to a wider governing body so that it and all of its trading partners will be bound by a uniform code. Thus, we arrive at the delicious irony that the main transnational "threat" comes not from the left, which retains some residual hostility to capitalism, but from the right, which is generally pro-commerce. [Of course both the Left and the Right hate capitalism, so they are unreconcilable to any institution which advances global trade.]
Mr. Mitchell does reach one issue of sovereignty that does explain why even those of us who hold Donald and his Bannionite cohorts in contempt derive some satisfaction from seeing how the Left has reacted to his victory. That is the anti-democratic imposition of social policies that are not accepted by large swaths and even majorities of the American people, and/or, not accepted by entire regions of America. When such things occur they become firestorms precisely because it is our own government avoiding the requirement of consent of the governed.
A nice illustration is the attempt to foist transgender (really non-gendered) bathrooms on the American people, most of whom are opposed. When Washington acts in such a manner--one hostile to the prevailing culture--it can not help but tend to delegitimize the regime generally. And it can not hope to settle the matter just through the exercise of brute force, as witness the undying struggle over abortion. Such issues are best left to the smallest feasible polity to determine for themselves--generally the individual states--where they may not be any less fraught with controversy but where the citizenry will feel that the resulting rules were arrived at locally.
Of course, let us not kid ourselves; while we of the right want these kinds of rules repealed at the national level; we have no qualms about imposing our own partisan views universally, no matter how divisive and extra-constitutional, as witness gun laws. Such are the enduring temptations of sovereign power.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 24, 2017 10:21 AM