As the U.S. government prepared to go to war with Iraq, the Bush administration worked simultaneously on two strategies to justify its position. Making its case to the U.N. Security Council, American representatives stressed the need for a multinational front against terrorism and called for a new, more vigorous resolution against Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” In addressing the American people, however, administration spokesmen denied that any approval—whether from the United Nations, or from our allies in the European Union, or even from U.S.-controlled NATO—was necessary.
Americans would like to believe that their government is free to decide questions of war and peace, but our membership in the United Nations by itself constitutes a limitation on national sovereignty, and the dozens of treaties, conventions, and agreements signed by our government over the past 50 years represent a de facto world government that sets up environmental standards, imposes moral, social, and educational standards, regulates trade, and punishes U.S. companies and the government itself for noncompliance. The New World Order so feared by Middle American conservatives is not a bogeyman waiting for us around the next bend in the road; it is a current reality.
A world state was the great dream of the 20th century, and since the end of World War I, humanitarian leftists have pursued...