There Is No "International Community!"

British Prime Minister, the Right Honorable Gordon Brown, is either totally gripless or gripped by a delusion of monumental proportions. Mr Brown is quoted as saying that the debacle in Copenhagen occurred because "some countries" held the proposed treaty "for ransom." He went on to call for either the reformation of the UN or the formation of a new body so that the "international community" could properly deal with "challenges" confronting the "international community."

Here is the fundamental flaw with Mr Brown's tocsin: There is no such thing as the "international community." Period.

There are a lot of independent sovereign states. Indeed, sovereign states have proliferated at a rate compared to which neither rabbits nor cockroaches can be described as rapid breeders. Of course, every sovereign independent state has to be a member of all possible international bodies including but not limited to the UN. This is one of the reasons the UN--and other subsidiary bodies--have become the havens for inefficiency, corruption, and a shakedown-the-West-at-the drop-of-a-hat attitude.

Mr Brown, and a host of others infesting the self-appointed elites of both Europe and the US, including in all probability the current occupant of the Oval, is of the fashionable post-modernist view that the age of the sovereign independent nation-state is over. Mr. Brown (and Mr Obama) shares the necessary twin of that thought: And, the world is better off for the death of the nation-state.

This understanding of international relations is both unrooted in reality and dangerously counterproductive in practice. Mr Brown's comment about climate change being held for ransom and his prescription calling for the creation of yet another international body show this--on steroids.

The real deal as Mr Brown (and Mr Obama) must know down deep somewhere in the back recesses of the mind is that nation-states are alive, flourishing, and showing all their usual characteristics of operating from subjectively defined self-interest. When China torpedoed the rush to a treaty, any treaty at Copenhagen, it did so out of rationally defined national interest. The same was true of the hijack-the-rich oriented states of the G77.

Even the US operated from the basis of national interest when its president demanded that any agreement include verification mechanisms so as to be more than a paper sham. The resulting outrage from China spoke volumes about the power and persistence of nationalism.

This is the reality. It will remain the reality. Whether the subject is esoteric and absurd such as anthropogenic climate change or down, dirty, and in the mud of reality such as the thwarting of Iranian nuclear ambitions, the motivator of states will remain the same. It will be what it always has been in the past, a careful calculation of what course of action best serves the national and strategic interests of the state--or, worse but more common, what will serve the political interests of the present government.

If Gordon Brown were to be afflicted with a severe case of honest self-assessment, he would have to admit that his obsession with global warming is a calculated effort to divert attention within the British electorate with the very real problems at home, problems which call into serious question the future election prospects of the Labor Party. The national interest, the strategic interests of the UK, were not in play at Copenhagen despite the plentiful catastrophe predicting oratory of Mr Brown. All that was at stake was the ability of the Brown Ministry to bamboozle the public well enough to limit the election damage yet to come.

Mr Obama's performance at Copenhagen was similarly inclined less to furthering the interests of the US and more to bolstering his political interests at home during a time of sinking polls and doubt over the great healthcare transformation effort in the Senate. The President had to have some semblance of success, no matter how insubstantial in substance without at the same time being seen to have blatantly sold American jobs and the national economy down the river in order that the plaudits of the European elite might ring louder in his ears.

Now, back in the real world, both Mr Obama and Mr Brown must deal with the power of national interest as the clock runs out on the end of the year deadline for Iranian compliance with the demands of the "international community" or at least the P5+1. National interest alone will dictate the positions taken regarding sanctions on the part of Russia and China. National and strategic interests will determine just how well the German, French, or British government actually enforce sanctions both past and future.

And, national interest of the most existential sort will determine how long Israel waits before taking solo action to abate the Iranian threat.

The Tehran regime will also have to weigh national interest, including that of an existential variety in determining their posture, including any changes from their so far successful approach of talk and delay, talk and bluster, talk and exploit the differences in national and strategic interest between the members of the P5+1. The Iranians will cloud their picture with the eschatological views of Shia Islam and the personal interpretations of that held by President Ahmadinejad. It will be further clouded by the potential impact of the funeral and memorial rites attendant upon the death of Ayatollah Montezeri.

In any and all these countries the crucial choices will be made by individual governments and not by the mythical "international community." In all these countries the governments, the decision makers, will base their decisions upon the needs, fears, and plans of their own nation's interests and strategic requirements.

So, Mr Brown and the rest of the crowd had best get a grip on the reality of nationalism and abandon the convenient delusion of an "international community." Their future (and ours) depends upon it.