Internationalism? No Thanks: Now that

29 May, 2002 by John Hawkins

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Internationalism? No Thanks: Now that I’ve pummeled isolationism, I want to give it’s evil twin internationalism a thrashing as well.

I consider Kofi Annan to be a useful idiot in charge of a hapless bureaucracy. As far as I’m concerned, the UN exists to handle peace keeping missions we don’t want to do and to be used as political cover in some circumstances. Most Americans regard the UN as far too corrupt, immoral, incompetent, to be trusted to handle important decisions.

Many Europeans don’t see things that way however. That isn’t surprising to me since the last century for Europe was an almost unbroken string of disasters, screw-ups, and atrocious ideas. WW1, WW2, The Cold War, and even Vietnam all had their roots in Europe. Fascism, Communism, Socialism, & Nazism all came out of Europe and this latest push towards an EU “superstate” is a similarly mediocre idea.

So when I hear Europeans rant about how bad “unilateralism” is, I’m not impressed. Most of Europe’s ideas about how things should be run in the world are naive, utopian, and generally unworkable. Nations can’t sit down and talk out every difference over a “spot of tea” like “civilized chaps.” A large portion of the world community isn’t civilized, rational, or interested in having discussions unless you have a gun pointed at their heads. When you try to “make nice” with savages like Yasser Arafat or thugs like Saddam Hussein they view it as weakness and it generally encourages them to take advantage of you. A large portion of the world is like that and no international organization or world court is going to change it.

Most importantly, nations that are capable of putting a missile through your window will always be more respected than nations that can “sick the UN on you” and that’s not going to change in our lifetimes…