Deconstructing America's Savior - Part 3

Libertarians and constitutionalist conservatives typically support Ron Paul. Since I consider myself to be moderately libertarian in my political views and I lean towards originalist interpretations of the Constitution, I feel compelled to explain why I do not and will not support Ron Paul as a candidate for the Presidency. This is the third in a series of several posts in which I pick apart his policy platform and explain my objections.

Previous posts in the series:

1. An introduction to Ron Paul's policy platform.
2. Ron Paul on Debt and Taxes.

This time, let's pick apart his policy statement regarding American Independence and Sovereignty:

So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites.

The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor’s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. Alternative treatments could be banned.

Conflating the International Criminal Court, the trade organizations (GATT and WTO) and the trade agreements (NAFTA and CAFTA) into a single argument is kind of weird. Let's address these claims one at a time.

The International Criminal Court -- Here's Wikipedia's description of the ICC:

The court came into being on July 1, 2002 — the date its founding treaty, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, entered into force — and it can only prosecute crimes committed on or after that date.

As of October 2007, 105 states are members of the Court. A further 41 countries have signed but not ratified the Rome Statute. However, a number of states, including China, India and the United States, are critical of the Court and have not joined.

In other words, the ICC is an international organization created by a treaty which America has not signed. If the ICC wishes to indict U.S. citizens for war crimes, there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them. If the member states of the ICC wish to enforce ICC convictions of U.S. citizens, they'll have to go through the U.S. military to do so. Somehow, I'm not terribly concerned about this prospect.

GATT and the WTO -- Neither the former GATT nor its successor WTO has ever had any enforcement mechanism above and beyond the ability of its member nations to impose trade sanctions (i.e., retaliatory tariffs). This is a capability that individual nations have always possessed. See below for more information about this point.

NAFTA and CAFTA -- The NAFTA and CAFTA agreements are treaties that our elected officials ratified. These are treaties, not international organizations with powers of enforcement. These agreements reduce the quotas, tariffs and subsidies that impose silent but very real economic costs on all Americans. In seeking to overturn these agreements Ron Paul is revealing himself to be more concerned about abstract notions of sovereignty than he is about achieving the best economic system that is politically feasible.

The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws, yet we still face trade wars. Today, France is threatening to have U.S. goods taxed throughout Europe. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs.

The Cato Institue has an excellent paper which puts these claims about the WTO in proper perspective. Here's a quick excerpt:

Critics across the political spectrum allege that the World Trade Organization undermines the ability of the United States to determine its own trade, tax, environmental, and foreign policy. But an examination of how the WTO really works reveals that no such threat exists to U.S. sovereignty. The WTO is a contract organization that arbitrates disputes among its members on the basis of rules that all have agreed to follow. Like every other member, the United States has the power to veto any agreement of which it disapproves.

The WTO wields no power of enforcement. It has no authority or power to levy fines, impose sanctions, change tariff rates, or modify domestic laws in any way to bring about compliance. If a member refuses to comply with rules it previously agreed to follow, all the WTO can do is approve a request by the complaining member to impose sanctions—a “power” that member governments have always been able to wield against each other.

In other words, the members of the WTO have agreed, by treaty, to abide by defined rules of "fair trade". When a nation violates those rules, the WTO is powerless to punish the offending nation. All the WTO can do is grant an air of legitimacy to the retaliatory action which the victim nations would have imposed anyway. Congress can't be forced to change our laws by the WTO, but Congress generally does choose to voluntarily reform laws which violate the WTO rules to avoid trade sanctions. This is a good thing, unless you like the economic dislocation caused by trade wars. If Ron Paul thinks that starting trade wars is a good idea, he doesn't need my vote.

NAFTA’s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme.

And a free America, with limited, constitutional government, would be gone forever.

This is blatantly false. Ron Paul either hasn't done his research or he is misrepresenting the truth when he claims that there is a plot in the works to "create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico". Take a look at this post for a sane discussion of the truth about the so-called North American Union. On this issue, I find it very difficult to avoid reaching the conclusion that Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Let’s not forget the UN. It wants to impose a direct tax on us. I successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to tax us, we will need leadership from the White House.

Sure, the UN would love to have an independent source of income. But Paul is overstating both the scope of the threat and his role in defeating that threat. It's true that various ideas have been floated for granting the UN an authority to collect taxes, but no attempt has ever been made to actually implement these ideas. As for his role in defeating this threat: Ron Paul's own press release states that he inserted some language into a bill that "prohibits the Treasury from paying UN dues if the organization attempts to implement or impose any kind of tax on US citizens." The UN wasn't actively attempting to impose a tax, but Ron Paul defeated that non-existent attempt at taxation by proposing legislation that would retaliate for any such attempt, just in case such an attempt were to be made. Well done, I guess.

We must withdraw from any organizations and trade deals that infringe upon the freedom and independence of the United States of America.

Regarding the wisdom of withdrawing from trade organizations and treaties, see my above comments for some of my objections. With regard to the UN, I think the costs of withdrawing from the UN outweigh the benefits.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the UN. Its member states include a long list of corrupt, tyrannical regimes that possess no moral legitimacy. It sickens me to see Americans arguing that we are morally required to submit our national will to the dictates of such rabble as Russia, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Burma and the Sudan.

But withdrawal from the UN doesn't really gain us anything--we have a veto on the Security Council and we haven't been shy about using it. The UN dues we pay are essentially a rounding error in our national budget, yet we have seen that withholding those dues is an effective lever for preventing the UN from acting in complete contradiction to our national interests. By effectively using our veto and the power of the purse, we have protected our sovereignty from harm.

Additionally, the UN isn't entirely useless. The UN is a weak institution, but even in its weakness it can be used to provide us some legitimacy when we must act in the world to protect our national interests. To withdraw from the UN entirely would be to forsake the use of this tool against our enemies and spite our allies in the process.

Ron Paul seems to be obsessed with the idea of national sovereignty. His single minded dedication to this principle has him advocating the abandonment of international institutions like the UN that help us protect our national interests. Worse is his belief that we should abandon free trade deals that generate enormous economic dividends for America.

What really leaves me flabbergasted is his paranoia regarding the North American Union--there's simply no evidence to suggest that any such Union is being contemplated by any, much less by all, of the North American governments. Ron Paul apparently feels that this threat is real enough to warrant discussing it as a central component of his policy platform. I think it's an imaginary threat that is best dealt with by authors of speculative fiction. One of us is utterly wrong.

Next up: Ron Paul's policies with regard to War and Foreign Policy.