The International Community?

Two articles have something very good to say on this subject. One is in Slate, which does a nice job on the inherent reasons broad coallitions are not capable of routine responce as needed. Anyone who has read up on the Napoleonic Wars can recognize that even when there are only four important players, getting them all together at once is just too much to ask most of the time. Of the seven coallitions formed, only the 6th, and 7th included all of the major powers, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. (The first coallition probabaly didn't need the strength of Russia, but the early withdrawl of Prussia doomed it.) Some more needs to be done on why we seem to be so in thrall of the idea of a consensus among the international powers. Victor Davis Hanson is probabaly the go to source for that.

Second is a six week old piece by Robert Kagan on the Kerry line, we should "only go to war because we have to." Kagan demonstrates that this reveals a more profound unilateralism than the Bush administration. Bush and his team is an internationalist one willing to work with those able to work with us at a given time. Kerry is arguing for an isolationist withdrawl from the international community. He knows full well, as Lee Smith pointed out in the piece mentioned above, that expecting the international community to ever form consensus is so rare that it nearly amonts to a guarantee of inaction. So Kerry's multilateralism is really just a mask for Jeffersonian isolationism.