MIXED MESSAGES: American Politics and International Organization, 1919-1999.

• Author: Tepperman, Jonathan D.
• Position: Review

MIXED MESSAGES: American Politics and International Organization, 1919-1999 by Edward C. Luck Brookings, $19.95

IT'S ONE OF THE GREAT IRONIES of the 20th century: The same country that's done more than any other to build international organizations has also done more to undermine them.

The United States has led the charge and done the spadework for multilateral cooperation almost since the beginning of the century. In 1919, no one fought harder than Woodrow Wilson to build a League of Nations (although America never joined). Twenty-six years later, Washington again led the way, scrabbling together a United Nations from the ashes of World War II and footing half the bill. But today the United States is almost $1.8 billion behind in its U.N. dues. Having sidestepped the Security Council on Kosovo and rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Washington is accused of retreating into angry isolationism. Yet at the same time, Americans citizens, as individuals and through non-governmental organizations are doing more today than ever to bulwark the causes of international law and human rights.

Edward C. Luck isn't the first writer to take on America's confounding ambivalence towards international organizations. A few months ago, former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali did the same. In Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga, he bitterly denounced the Clinton Administration for being a fairweather friend, for taking cheap shots at the U.N. when expedient, and for giving the organization impossible jobs (Somalia, Bosnia), only to blame it when it inevitably failed.

Luck's book stands out from this sort of diatribe, however. Despite his obvious sympathies (he's a committed internationalist and a former head of the U.N. Association), what emerges from his book is a deeply insightful discussion of American concerns with multilateralism.

Rather than simply attacking the isolationists, Luck tries to understand them. He asks the rare question: why "have Americans again and again been the first to create international institutions and then the first to forsake them?" His answer dates back to 1919 and the Senate debate over the League of Nations. Fundamental questions about America's role in world affairs, its obligations to other countries or lack thereof, were never answered. Nor were they addressed in 1945, when, in the aftermath of the Allies' triumph and with interventionist feelings running high, President Truman forced the U.N. Charter through...