Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
We're so Exceptional - Michael Ignatieff: New York Review of Books
Review of
All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals
by David Scheffer
Princeton University Press, 533 pp., $35.00
Exceptionalist rhetoric is more than a language game for politicians trying to win support from an anxious electorate traversing the dark wood of possible imperial decline. Exceptionalism also influences the practice of American policy, nowhere more so than in US approaches to international law and justice.
Law, after all, constrains power, and the United States, like any great power, is likely to support a law-bound international order only if it ties up the power of its competitors more than it constrains its own. Other great powers have subscribed to this realist calculus in advancing international law. America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the countrys redemptive role in creating international order. Since Franklin Roosevelts leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the US has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them, while seeking by hook or by crook to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.1 From Nuremberg onward, no country has invested more in the development of international jurisdiction for atrocity crimes and no country has worked harder to make sure that the law it seeks for others does not apply to itself.
Law, after all, constrains power, and the United States, like any great power, is likely to support a law-bound international order only if it ties up the power of its competitors more than it constrains its own. Other great powers have subscribed to this realist calculus in advancing international law. America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the countrys redemptive role in creating international order. Since Franklin Roosevelts leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the US has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them, while seeking by hook or by crook to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.1 From Nuremberg onward, no country has invested more in the development of international jurisdiction for atrocity crimes and no country has worked harder to make sure that the law it seeks for others does not apply to itself.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
3 replies, 1452 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (8)
ReplyReply to this post
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
We're so Exceptional - Michael Ignatieff: New York Review of Books (Original Post)
ashling
Mar 2012
OP
grasswire
(50,130 posts)1. haven't read this yet -- reccing it anyway.
I always want to read what Michael Ignatieff has to say. Always.
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)2. no country has worked harder to make sure that the law it seeks for others does not apply to itself.
Spot on.
Mosaic
(1,451 posts)3. An excuse to kill and colonize, torture, and so much more
I hate that damn meme. It is up to all of us caring people to kill this meme that has killed so many on our one Earth.