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Ambassador John Bolton Addresses GGW Inaugural Event
Category: Global Regulation
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
On Monday, April 14th, Ambassador John R. Bolton delivered the keynote address at the Global Governance Watch inaugural event, entitled, “Dictating Norms: Who Decides What Is Right for the World?.” In his presentation, the Ambassador described the transformation of customary international law from something that, through a process of many years, most countries come to accept as “right,” to a process of “norming” that has in recent years “become the captive of the international law professoriate…who spend their lives developing new customary international law that doesn’t derive from decades or centuries of state practice, but comes from their own political agenda.” Very common in the United Nations system and other international organizations, this new system of developing customary international law often results in outcomes that are “contrary to any given American foreign policy” with the goal of hindering the United States.
Using the UN system to facilitate international norming poses a threat to democratic systems. According to Bolton, employing the UN to decide contentious issues such as abortion, the death penalty or gun control - issues that are still being debated in democratic societies (including the United States) – communicates that UN resolutions “somehow have more legitimacy internationally” than the conclusions to which democratic societies have come through democratic processes. This very quickly becomes a threat to national sovereignty. “For us, in this country [the United States], we are sovereign; we govern ourselves; we determine what our government will do. So when you talk about breaking sovereignty down or sharing sovereignty with somebody else, or the limits of sovereignty, you’re saying to us that we don’t know how to govern ourselves effectively and that a little less self-government would be good for us.”
Ambassador Bolton noted that the Global Governance Watch project will be an effective tool in combating the growing trend of international norming, stating that he felt that “this joint AEI/Federalist Society project will go a long way toward encouraging [the] debate” about global governance and shared sovereignty.
To access a transcript of Ambassador Bolton's speech, please click here.
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