At the very outset of the Second Treatise, Locke defines political power as

"a right of making laws with penalties of death and, consequently, all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws and in the defense of the commonwealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good."

Such power is legitimate--and hence truly "political", as opposed to "despotical"--only where it rests on the consent of the people and aims at preserving their property and pursuing the public good. But such legitimate power can accomplish its ends only if it has behind it the united force of the community.

Locke stresses the right of the commonwealth to impose the death penalty and to compel its citizens to risk death to defend it in war--and he does not, as Hobbes had done in the Leviathan, offer excuses for those who resist arrest or make allowances for those who refuse to fight because of "natural timorousness." Locke shares Hobbes's intense concern with security, but he is much more martial in spirit. For Locke, legitimate political power is much more restricted than for Hobbes in terms of its ends--it must respect the property of the people and pursue the public good--but so long as it sticks to the pursuit of those ends, it has more unlimited authority over its subjects. While force without right is illegitimate, right without force is ineffectual. It is only a properly constructed commonwealth that can combine force with right and thus save men from the defects of the state of nature.

This means, however, that in relations among separate commonwealths, there is no way that force can reliably be aligned with right. Even if they reach agreements mutually recognizing one another's claims to their respective territories, particular commonwealths remain in the state of nature with respect to one another. Only an agreement to form a single community, and to obey a single, visible common power, can put an end to the state of nature. Thus, for Locke international relations remain a realm where force will sometimes be wielded without right, and "in all states and conditions", he affirms, "the true remedy of force without authority is to oppose force to it."

This is not to say, of course, that force alone should rule the relations among independent states. Locke's insistence that conquest gives no right to rule clearly poses an obstacle to aggressive territorial expansion on the part of states. More generally, Locke's frequent condemnation of taking property by force, as opposed to earning it through labor and industry, points in the direction of an international realm characterized more by commercial than by military interactions. Finally, as we have seen, Locke has no objection to independent states entering into agreements that help regulate their mutual relations.

Varieties of Multilateralism

The American perspective on international politics, I would argue, remains fundamentally Lockean. All human beings are endowed with universal human rights, but these can be effectively guaranteed only within particular commonwealths. At least for those who belong to states governed on the basis of popular consent and respect for individual rights, the highest obligation of citizens is to the constitution and the laws of their country. While a state may enter into agreements with other states, this cannot detract from its prior obligation to its own laws and its own citizens.

Yet by recognizing the essential role of particular commonwealths in the protection of universal human rights, the Lockean view implicitly endorses the existence of a multiplicity of independent states. More than that, it recognizes the legitimacy of other states--provided that they too are based on consent and respect the rights of their citizens. Even with states that do not exercise legitimate rule, it is possible to make various kinds of agreements for practical ends, but such agreements will always remain to some degree suspect. For Americans, the moral authority of multilateralism inevitably appears compromised if a multilateral body includes states that do not respect the rights of their own citizens. Thus, when the government of a country like Sudan is re-elected to the Human Rights Commission while it is apparently encouraging horrific abuses against its own citizens in Darfur, Europeans may shrug it off as an inevitable outcome of UN regional politicking, but for many Americans, it severely undermines whatever credibility the UN possesses. This is one reason why there has been growing support in the United States for the concept of a Community of Democracies--that is, a multilateral body whose membership is restricted to democratic states.

This underlines a more general transatlantic difference in perceptions. Many Europeans identify multilateralism as such with democracy. They sometimes ask how the United States can claim to be a champion of democracy when it refuses to go along with the decisions of multilateral bodies. But for Americans, there is no contradiction here. Existing multilateral institutions do sometimes arrive at decisions that are hostile to democracy, as shown by various dictator-friendly votes at the UN Human Rights Commission, and most Americans regard democracy as a greater good than multilateralism. This is not to say that Americans do not care what the rest of the world thinks of them. They are especially uneasy about being at odds with their democratic allies. But they are not particularly troubled by being isolated within multilateral institutions like the UN when they feel that they are in the right.

Americans tend to view the goal of a foreign policy aimed at promoting democracy and human rights as bringing liberal democratic governments to power in as many nations as possible. In this respect, their outlook tends to resemble that of democratic movements around the world. Over the past two decades, in my work at the National Endowment for Democracy, I have been in contact with a wide range of such groups, as well as with the World Movement for Democracy, which seeks to foster cooperation and links among democratic movements. These pro-democracy groups almost always have a strong belief that human rights and democratic government are universal goods that should be available to all, and they show a high degree of solidarity and support for one another's struggles. Yet they invariably view their own goal as the achievement of democracy in their own country, and the goal of their assistance and solidarity with others as the attainment of democracy in those other countries. Despite the universalism of its principles, the global democratic movement is emphatically national in its focus and in its structure.

It must be acknowledged that this is less true of the global human rights movement--or at least of some of its leaders in the advanced democracies. The latter typically put greater stress on achieving international agreements and standards than on achieving political change within countries. Human rights form the universalist side of liberal democracy, and thus it is not surprising that human rights advocates are inclined to a more universalist outlook. In principle, one may say, as Locke's Second Treatise suggests, that all human beings should enjoy these rights as members of the human community. In practice, however, these rights are respected only in particular states that are accountable to their citizens. International standards are of limited help where they cannot be enforced. The most serious human rights abuses--including genocide--are invariably carried out by, or with the complicity of, a nondemocratic government. In many cases, the only way to stop such abuses is through the use of force. But where will that force come from? Only from the militaries of other states. Ultimately, it is national armies that must vindicate the cause of human rights. National armies certainly have shown that they can work in coalition, often under the aegis of multilateral organizations, but they too remain resolutely national in their structure and focus, precisely for the Lockean reasons we have discussed. Whatever other virtues multilateral organizations may possess, they do not appear able to attract soldiers to fight and die on their behalf.

Global vs. International

Let me conclude by returning to the distinction between the new globalism and the old liberal internationalism. The globalists are right about the fact that we are facing problems whose solutions often must transcend international boundaries. In an increasingly interconnected world, the need for international cooperation is greater than it ever has been. I think most Americans recognize this, and they are not reluctant about such international engagement--indeed, they often take the lead in it. Americans are no longer isolationist. But they will embrace international engagement only within certain limits. While they may accept the description of the globalists, they will not accept their prescription for mechanisms of global governance that bypass or minimize the role of national political orders.

This has something to do, of course, with the strength of Americans' devotion to their country. Yet American patriotism is focused not on blood and soil, but on the Declaration of Independence and on the Constitution. It is adherence to these documents that has given Americans a government that protects their rights and reflects their wishes. They can be persuaded of the need for greater degrees of international cooperation in many areas, but not for approaches to global governance that evade or attempt to supersede their constitutional order. Americans are not averse to multilateralism; in fact, I would say that they are naturally inclined to internationalism, but they are hostile to globalism. So to the extent that liberal internationalism really is giving way to globalism in today's multilateral institutions, the prospects are high that the United States will continue to find itself being accused of unilateralism.

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