There is one great obstacle to further progress in this direction. It has to be said, in cool but plain language, that in recent years the international effort to build a global community has been hampered by the repeated failure of the United States to play its part. Despite being the single largest polluter of the world's atmosphere, and on a per capita basis the most profligate of the major nations, the United States has refused to join the 178 states that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol. Along with Libya and China, the United States voted against setting up an International Criminal Court to try people accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. Now that the court seems likely to go ahead, the U.S. government has said that it has no intention of participating. The United States has consistently failed to pay the dues it owes to the United Nations, and in November 2001, even after paying off a portion of its debt in the wake of the September 11 attacks, it still owed that institution $1.07 billion. Though it is one of the world's wealthiest nations, with the world's strongest economy, the United States gives significantly less foreign aid, as a proportion of its Gross National Product, than any other developed nation. When the world's most powerful state wraps itself in what—until September 11, 2001—it took to be the security of its military might, and arrogantly refuses to give up any of its own rights and privileges for the sake of the common good—even when other nations are giving up their rights and privileges—the prospects of finding solutions to global problems are dimmed. One can only hope that when the rest of the world nevertheless proceeds down the right path, as it did in resolving to go ahead with the Kyoto Protocol, and as it is now doing with the International Criminal Court, the United States will eventually be shamed into joining in. If it does not, it risks falling into a situation in which it is universally seen by everyone except its own self-satisfied citizens as the world's "rogue superpower." Even from a strictly self-interested perspective, if the United States wants the cooperation of other nations in matters that are largely its own concern—such as the struggle to eliminate terrorism—it cannot afford to be so regarded.
(Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, The Terry Lectures [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002], 198-9)
Note from KBJ: I don't share Singer's vision of the world. Do you? The responsibility of the elected representatives of the American people is to promote this country's interests, both at home and abroad. This may or may not require the signing of treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol. Singer, who is a utilitarian (i.e., an impartialist), gives no special weight to the interests of the United States. In personal ethics, he denies that there is an agent-centered prerogative (to use Samuel Scheffler's useful term). In political ethics, he denies that there is a nation-centered prerogative (to use my term). I endorse both prerogatives. Thank God Singer has no power.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 