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Restoring America's Standing

To repair America's reputation abroad, the Obama administration will have to show more respect for international institutions and law. But if it doesn't reform those institutions, the U.S. may be paralyzed in the face of changing international challenges, writes Public Policy Scholar Mark Heller in the International Herald Tribune.

WASHINGTON—The financial meltdown and the prospect of serious recession in the coming months virtually guarantee that the Obama administration's first priority will be the economy.

In the good old days before globalization the economy fell squarely in the domestic column of the national agenda. But in the brave new world of the 21st century, the distinction between foreign and domestic is rapidly breaking down. President-elect Barack Obama will therefore have to devote time and attention to foreign policy even as he struggles to rescue the economy; foreign affairs will impose on him whether he likes it or not.

To deal with this challenge, Obama will have to make good on his campaign pledge to restore America's standing in the world, which has taken a fearful beating in the last five years.

He has already accomplished a good part of that task just by not being George W. Bush. Whatever future historians may say, Bush has undeniably served as a magnifying glass for all the faults and flaws widely attributed elsewhere to the United States. But the immense reservoir of international goodwill for the president elect will soon begin to dissipate.

The contrast with Bush implies huge expectations that Obama will find hard to satisfy. To rebuild or create the partnerships and alliances that are needed, Obama will have to change how American talk is heard and how American behavior is seen.

Some of those changes will be relatively easy: It won't take much effort to abandon "with us or against us" rhetoric or even to close down the detention facility in Guantánamo. Others will be much harder to carry out, and the biggest challenge of all may well be to change the organizing principles upon which the legitimacy of America's rhetoric and actions is judged.

Whatever he does, Obama will be hard pressed to overcome the resentment caused by the perceived habit of the United States, as the biggest kid on the block, to act with insufficient regard for the role of international institutions and international law.

In late October, a cross-border raid by U.S. forces on foreign fighters in Syria suspected of aiding the insurgency in Iraq was denounced by Syria and a few others as a violation of Syrian sovereignty. For the most part, however, Syria's complaint elicited little sympathy, probably because the Syrian regime had itself, over the previous four decades, directly or indirectly (through the use of proxies) violated the sovereignty of every one of its five neighbors.

For the U.S., however, the real problem is not the hypocrisy of authoritarian governments eager to invoke "international legality" as a shield against being called to account for their abuse of their neighbors or their own people. It is, rather, the ideological attachment of democratic allies and partners to international law, even as the Westphalian system on which that is based becomes increasingly obsolete and divorced from realities on the ground.

Rather than avoiding this problem, the Obama administration should confront it head on by launching a global initiative to recodify international law. Two issues need particular attention.

The first concerns the implications of fictional sovereignty. Many of the current security challenges stem not from direct aggression of functioning states but rather from the actions of nonstate actors operating in areas where national governments are unwilling or unable to exercise a fundamental attribute of sovereignty: the legitimate use of force. The second concerns the responsibility to protect civilians against murderous regimes exercising their sovereign right to act within their borders as they see fit.

In his campaign, Obama acknowledged the need to reform international institutions. But if he is really serious about his pledges to act more effectively against Al Qaeda/Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal areas of Pakistan and the depredations of militias in Darfur, he will either have to change the normative basis of the international legal system or risk the same charges of arrogance and unilateralism that so sullied America's reputation under Bush. The only other option is paralysis.

In fact, the chances of a major shift in international legal norms concerning sovereignty are not great; many governments can't make good on their claim to sovereignty, some are even eager to delegate it, but very few are prepared to compromise it in a formal sense. Still, it would be worth making the effort.

Even if it doesn't produce results, the U.S. would still get credit for trying, and the exercise might at least convince some of America's critics in other liberal democracies that invoking outdated legal formulas is an inadequate response to today's complex security challenges.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and in no way represent the views or opinions of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

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