The natural and inevitable rule-set calibration

OP-ED: "Bush's Unintended Internationalism," by Jim Hoagland, Washington Post (national weekly edition), 17-23 July 2006, p. 5

9/11 triggers a rule-set reset in US national security, which, by extension, resets the global security rule set.

The global reaction to that new set of rules comes in a variety of manners, usually lumped under the rubric of diplomacy, since nobody out there seeks to balance the U.S. directly on security matters.

But there's another, more discrete reaction, one not unlike the usual domestic response to such dramatic shifts (seen most clearly in U.S. Supreme Court rulings like the recent one on tribunals). In effect, it's the rest of the Core generating its own version of an A-to-Z rule set on contextualizing the use of American military power:

In spite of itself, the Bush administration is reshaping and revitalizing international law as a governing concept and a force in world politics. This White House gives new meaning to the notion of unintended and devoutly unwanted consequences.

Its highhanded policies in the war on global terrorist networks and the occupation of Iraq have provoked sharp reaction at home and abroad. Over time, this reaction has turned into a search by others for legal and political frameworks to contain President Bush's campaign to concentrate national security power in his hands and shield it from even cursory scrutiny and consultation.

So Euro governments and civil liberty groups both here and abroad are forcing new debates on international law. We think we can play "Dirty Harry" in this Long War, but the "Serpicos" (another of my "Heroes Yet Discovered" in BFA) are amassing on the strategic horizon. We will either become more transparent, and inevitably more linked to the International Criminal Court, or we'll be hounded by the press and UN and civil rights groups into decreased rates of activity. We either sync up our rule set with an emerging global one or our own people will balk at their individual exposure, one that is easily redefined from administration to administration.

Good example of where we fail is provided by Hoagland here: the Bush Administration's refusal to work out some SOFA or Status of Forces Agreement with the new Iraqi government. This is a basic attribute of state sovereignty that forces our troops toward some nominal Iraqi control, as Hoagland points out.

All these efforts are the collective equivalent of my A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states. Hoagland captures this well when he writes:

A new framework for international law is being developed in reaction to Bush's global policies--without other significant American input. That is the message from America's allies, from Congress and now from the Supreme Court that the president should finally heed.As I often write, it is one thing to propose and demonstrate a new rule, something Bush does well, and another thing to achieve its acceptance beyond your immediate circle. A first Bush administration was great at the former, but a second Bush administration was doomed on the latter.