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tics typical of that presidency. It is not intended to suggest that the
legal arguments are unprofessional in the sense of being opportunistic
or instrumentalist. They are most probably as sincerely held as the
views of the administration. Rather, the argument is, in a way, more
crippling. It is that international lawyers are so embedded in the dom-
inant American culture that they provide an unreflective and therefore
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154 Philosophy of International Law
faithfully representative reproduction of the dominant culture in inter-
national law terms.
It is a very slippery matter to argue that the US is hostile to a concept
of international law as such, or to a concept of collective security. As
has been seen from the interpretations of Jewett, Lawrence, and
Gaddis, the strongest Bush presidency supporters could argue that
American and world security go together, and that the primary aim of
American policy is to tighten and make more effective multilateral
institutional frameworks for ensuring collective security.
In his very measured (i.e. unzealous) critique of the role of his
country and of many of its international law writers and legal advi-
sors, The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs,
John Murphy argues that one may safely conclude that the current US
administration is no fan of the collective security approach enshrined
in the UN Charter. He contrasts Oscar Schachter s definition of an
indivisible peace, which all states have an interest in maintaining, with
John Bolton s apparent view that the US should essentially confine
interest in the threat or use of force to circumstances arguably justifi-
able as an exercise of individual or collective self-defense. For instance,
this would cover an attack against the US itself, a close ally, or a
massive threat to the US through the use of terrorism, e.g. Iraq.17
However, it is precisely the willingness of the US to take an appar-
ently much more altruistic, but nonetheless disturbing, view of its
mission, that both Gaddis and Jewett and Lawrence have noticed.
Gaddis relates that the justification for pre-emptive strike in Cuba in
1898 culminated in Roosevelt s international police power role for
the US in 1904: Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results
in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may . . . ultim-
ately require intervention by some civilized nation . . . (SSAE, 21). It
is rather this zealous approach which appears in the ascendancy and
which puts pressure on the rest of the international community to
facilitate a multilateral approach, under menace of unilateralist
behavior by America if the rest of the world fails in its duties.
Jewett and Lawrence see in this type of reasoning an unconscious
equation of American and universal interest, rooted in a zealous self-
righteousness, which, by definition, is unreflective. The logic of the
anti-communist crusade was a mirage of the US as a selfless Christian
nation (in the eyes of John Foster Dulles) struggling against a con-
spiracy of evil (CACAE, esp. 90). In a section titled Arrogant missteps
of global idealism, the authors point to the tendency, reappearing in
the Kennedy Administration s religiosity, to treat God as man s
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American Legal Cultures of Collective Security 155
omnipotent servant, with faith as a sure-fire device to get what we
want (CACAE, 96). This led to the Kennedy myth of calibrated
brinkmanship, the belief that if you stand tough you win (CACAE,
100). Jewett and Lawrence trace Britain s place in this crusade back
to Churchill. He had warned that to check the expansion of the com-
munist bloc the English-speaking peoples a sort of latter-day master
race must sooner or later form a union (CACAE, 80).
The difficulty with this brand of collective security again comes
with the US s response to the failure of resolve of others to confront
immanent threats. Take again Murphy s measured critique of his
country and some colleagues concerning Kosovo. Murphy goes
against the general current of scholarship and opinion that interven-
tion by NATO was justifiable, morally if not legally, as a form of
humanitarian intervention in the face of an impending humanitarian
disaster. In an extensive treatment, he points to the fact that NATO
imposed as a last-minute condition for the Rambouillet negotiations
when it looked as if they were succeeding a NATO force with free
access to Serbia, and independence for Kosovo after three years.
NATO violated the Charter when it did not return to the Security
Council after talks broke down.18 As for the humanitarian argument,
a ground military intervention might have been appropriate, but the
exclusive reliance on bombing both exacerbated the situation hugely
in Kosovo and led to a great loss of civilian life in Serbia.19
Yet it is possible to take a different perceptive on these events in the
eyes of the zealots of the new Bush approach to a collective security
of the willing. Such a precedent as the Kosovo NATO intervention
points both to the way the Security Council should go in the future
and how the Coalition of the Willing should go, if the Security Council
fails in its resolve. In the July 2003 issue of the American Journal of
International Law, among a wide range of contributing authors, there
are a number who, in my judgment, show an unambiguous black-and-
white perception of the nature of evil (terrorist threats and rogue
states) which turn issues into resolve and willingness to use force in
the face of indisputable danger. Everywhere precedents exist of coali-
tions of the willing. Kosovo is one such precedent.
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