Addressing senior European leaders at the German Marshall Fund on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took a laser cutter to the metastasis of defective multilateralism.
Titled, “Restoring the role of the nation state in international order,” Pompeo threaded his argument with a series of simple questions as to the worthiness of major international institutions. “The U.N. was founded as an organization that welcomed peace-loving nations. I ask,” Pompeo continued, “today, does it continue to serve its mission faithfully?” Pompeo asked similar questions of the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court, and the African Union.
As applied to each institution the answer, of course, is no.
Yet Pompeo’s speech was more than a lecture to skeptical Europeans. It was an offering of what international institutions should be. “International bodies must help facilitate cooperation that bolsters the security and values of the free world, or they must be reformed or eliminated. When treaties are broken, the violators must be confronted, and the treaties must be fixed or discarded. Words should mean something.”
Critically, however, Pompeo’s assertion is not that mutlilateralism is wrong per se, but that it must be rooted in shared national interests and enforced by shared respect for common expectations. Unlike Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Pompeo recognizes that institutions and agreements cannot thrive if they are defined only by words or treated as piggy banks without responsibility. We see this most clearly when Pompeo decried “violaters” of agreements. This was a reference to the Russian breach of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, and to China’s breach of World Trade Organization rules.
But while the abundant evidence indicates culpability in both cases, the European Union remains unwilling to penalize either nation for its misdeeds. This failure allows space to others to set the terms of order. As Pompeo noted:
Pompeo is correct. Where it matters most, the U.S. remains the guardian of international order. American cultural, diplomatic, economic, political, and social power sustains the advancement of shared democratic values and security. These things must be recognized because they are ultimately undeniable.
Indeed, even on issues such as climate change and the Paris accord, the counterpoint of a European international order separate from the U.S. is provably false: both the EU and China continue to spurt out carbon emissions without restraint. Their pledges do not fit reality.
Still, Pompeo’s best moment came when he offered a passionate call for increased NATO member state defense spending. Rightly describing NATO as “an indispensable institution … all NATO allies should work to strengthen what is already the greatest military alliance in all of history.”
Here Pompeo gave proof to America’s continuing leadership of the alliance, while perfectly encapsulating his broader thematic point about allies needing to take their interest-rooted multilateral responsibilities seriously. It’s a relevant concern in that many NATO member states continue to utterly ignore their NATO spending obligations. It is that ignorance, not Trump’s tweets, which most deny the alliance its stronger potential and thus its invitation to Russian aggression.
To be sure, some will say Pompeo’s speech was a rude insult to America’s EU allies, but it was the opposite of that. It was a necessary call to action in defense of an international order afflicted by the metastasis of arrogant weakness.
