No. 1007 Delivered July 20, 2006 April 10, 2007 Redefining Sovereignty Orrin C. Judd, Paul Driessen, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jeremy Rabkin, and Becky Norton Dunlop BECKY NORTON DUNLOP, Vice President, External Relations, The Heritage Foundation: I want to begin by thanking Marisa Kraus, whose pub- Talking Points lishing company, Smith and Kraus Global, published • National sovereignty, free enterprise, indi- 1 Redefining Sovereignty and who worked with me to vidual rights, sound science, and economic bring this program to fruition. prosperity are under increasing assault. Redefining Sovereignty is a very useful tool for those • Well-off environmental elites try to impose who are interested in or concerned about the subject their views, concerns, policies, and agendas of national sovereignty. It presents views from per- on the rest of humanity. For too long, this spectives as varied as those of Kofi Annan and Jesse “eco-imperialism” has kept our least fortu- Helms. Before I turn the microphone over to our mod- nate citizens from taking their rightful erator and our guests, I’d like to share with you a por- places among the Earth’s healthy and pros- perous people. tion of Senator Helms’s speech to the United Nations in January of 2000. I’m taking this from his memoir, • Britain is showing signs of drifting away from Here’s Where I Stand.2 the “Anglosphere” countries that share a common heritage and toward the European The American people want the U.N. to serve Union. That threatens the continuation of the the purpose for which it was designed: they traditional Atlantic Alliance. want it to help sovereign states coordinate • Sovereignty is fundamentally about defend- collective action by “coalitions of the willing” ing our view of what the natural, reasonable, (where the political will for such action moral standards are. It is not something exists); they want it to provide a forum where which you can outsource to lawyers in diplomats can meet and keep open channels Geneva or New York or anywhere else. of communications in times of crisis; they want it to provide to the peoples of the world important services, such as peacekeeping, weapons inspections and humanitarian relief. This is important work. It is the core of what This paper, in its entirety, can be found at: the U.N. can offer to the United States…. www.heritage.org/research/worldwidefreedom/hl1007.cfm [People of the United States] see the U.N. Produced by the External Relations Department aspiring to establish itself as the central Published by The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE authority of a new international order of Washington, DC 20002–4999 (202) 546-4400 • heritage.org Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflect- ing the views of The Heritage Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress. No. 1007 Delivered July 20, 2006 global laws and global governance. This is And when the oppressed peoples of the an international order the American people world cry out for help, the free peoples of will not countenance, I guarantee you. the world have a fundamental right to The U.N. must respect national sovereignty. respond. The U.N. serves nation-states, not the other As we watch the U.N. struggle with this way around. This principle is central to the question at the turn of the millennium, legitimacy and ultimate survival of the many Americans are left exceedingly United Nations, and it is a principle that puzzled. Intervening in cases of widespread must be protected.12 oppression and massive human rights The Secretary General recently delivered an abuses is not a new concept for the United address on sovereignty to the General States. The American people have a long Assembly, in which he declared that “the history of coming to the aid of those last right of states cannot and must not be struggling for freedom. In the United the right to enslave, persecute or torture States, during the 1980s, we called this their own citizens.” The peoples of the world, policy the “Reagan Doctrine.” he said have “rights beyond borders.” There’s much more that could be included here, I wholeheartedly agree. but in the interests of time I’ll conclude by saying, “God bless Jesse Helms.” And now I will turn the What the Secretary General calls “rights program over to Mr. Judd. beyond borders,” we in America call “in- alienable rights.” We are endowed with those “inalienable right,” as Thomas Jeffer- ORRIN C. JUDD, editor, Redefining Sovereignty: son proclaimed in our Declaration of Inde- Today, we’re going to hear from three of the people pendence, not by kings or despots, but by who contributed to the book: Paul Driessen, who is our Creator. a senior advisor to several public policy think tanks, The sovereignty of nations must be respected. including the Congress of Racial Equality and the But nations derive their sovereignty—their Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Paul also is the author of a book, Eco-Imperialism: Green legitimacy—from the consent of the governed. 3 Thus, it follows, that nations can lose their Power, Black Death, which describes how the envi- legitimacy when they rule without the ronmental fetishes of Western liberals have often consent of the governed; they deservedly devastated the poor of developing nations. We discard their sovereignty by brutally included a chapter from the book in our own, and oppressing their people. today he will describe the concept of eco-imperial- ism for us. Slobodan Milosevic cannot claim sovereignty over Kosovo when he has He will be followed by Ramesh Ponnuru, who is murdered Kosovars and piled their bodies a senior editor at National Review. He is the author of into mass graves. Neither can Fidel Castro an excellent new book, The Party of Death: The Dem- ocrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for claim that it is his sovereign right to oppress 4 his people. Nor can Saddam Hussein Human Life. In Redefining Sovereignty we included defend his oppression of the Iraqi people by the essay, “The Empire of Freedom: Where the Unit- hiding behind phony claims of sovereignty. ed States Belongs, the Anglosphere,” which expands 1. Orrin C. Judd, ed., Redefining Sovereignty: Will liberal democracies continue to determine their own laws and public policies or yield these rights to transnational entities in search of universal order and justice? (Hanover, N.H.: Smith and Crouse, Inc., 2005). Essays by each of the participants in this panel, as well as by Senator Jesse Helms, can be found in the book Redefining Sovereignty. 2. Jesse Helms, Here’s Where I Stand: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2005). 3. Paul Driessen, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (Bellvue, Wash.: Merril Press, 2003). page 2 No. 1007 Delivered July 20, 2006 upon James Bennett’s idea that the nations of the back its eagles and herons, and reduce automobile English-speaking world—in particular, but not emissions. If it weren’t for the Greens, we wouldn’t exclusively—have the basis for a natural alliance have made the improvements we have in environ- because we share a distinct set of cultural values, mental quality and human well-being. institutions, overlapping histories, and social ties. But the movement became wealthy, politically This could afford an alternative to the Atlantic Alli- powerful, and increasingly radical. It lost its moral ance with the nations of Continental Europe, that compass. As Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore seems finally to have come a cropper after 9/11, notes, it was hijacked by people who are politically when they didn’t show much interest in helping us. motivated, economically and scientifically illiterate, Mr. Ponnuru will offer some thoughts on where our and ideologically opposed to business, science, and alliances stand today. technology. It particularly despises fossil fuels, bio- Then we will hear from Jeremy Rabkin, who is a technology and chemicals, especially insecticides. professor of Government at Cornell University, Where it perceives a conflict between people and author of two recent books on sovereignty issues in the environment, people typically come second. his own right, Law Without Nations? Why Constitu- 5 The movement also became adept at generating a tional Government Requires Sovereign States and The new crisis every week. As the Audubon Society’s Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome 6 Dan Beard has put it, “What you get in your mailbox American Independence. He is currently working on is a never-ending stream of shrill material, designed a book about the Law of the Sea Treaty, which repre- to evoke emotions, so that you’ll sit down and write sents yet another threat to American sovereignty. We a check.” included two of his pieces in the book, one on the Kyoto Treaty and one on the Geneva Convention. In “I’m somewhat offended by it, intellectually,” Sier- light of recent developments in the Supreme Court ra Club conservation director Bruce Hamilton has in the Hamdi, case he’ll focus on just the latter today. said. “But it works. It’s what builds the Sierra Club.” Well, it certainly does that. But what’s good for general Greenpeace is not necessarily good for the PAUL DRIESSEN: Let me add yet another USA, you and me, the world’s poor, or even the angle to this important review of how national environment. sovereignty, free enterprise, individual rights, sound science, and economic prosperity are Don’t get me wrong. The movement—and our under assault. I got involved in the environmental laws and regulations—still do a lot of good.