1.1 to 1.5

Jed Rubenfeld: The Two World Orders (Autumn 2003) What's the source of America's growing unilateralism? The easy answer is self-interest: We act unilaterally to the extent that we see unilateralism as serving our interests. But the answer prompts a more searching question: Why do so many Americans view unilateralism this way, given the hostility it provokes, the costs it imposes, and the considerable risks it entails? Americans sometimes seem unilateralist almost by instinct, as if it were a matter of principle. Might it be? It will not do to trace contemporary U. S. unilateralism to the 18th-century doctrine of isolationism, for unilateralism is a very different phenomenon. An isolationist country withdraws from the world, even when others call on it to become involved; a unilateralist country feels free to project itself— its power, its economy, its culture—throughout the world, even when others call on it to stop. Although there may still be a thread of isolationism in the United States today, unilateralism, the far more dominant trend, cannot usefully be derived from it. ***It's undoubtedly true that, after the war, Americans followed the path Roosevelt had charted and led Europe and the world toward an unprecedented internationalism. We were the driving force behind the United Nations, the primary drafters of the initial international human-rights conventions, the champions of developing an enforceable system of international law. Indeed, America pressed on Europe the very idea of European union (with France the primary locus of resistance). At the same time, America promoted a new constitutionalism throughout Europe and the world, a constitutionalism in which fundamental rights, as well as protections for minorities, were laid down as part of the world's basic law, beyond the reach of ordinary political processes. How then did the United States move from its postwar position of leadership in the new international order to its present position of outlier?