NARRATOR: "Deadbeat." "Obstructionist." "Out-of-touch." "Isolationist." What nation has been slapped with these labels recently? Why, the United States of America.

["America's Defense Monitor" program introduction.]

NARRATOR: Water. Two vast oceans border America, natural barriers against any potential aggressors, East or West. Protecting us, insulating us, yet at the same time isolating us from the rest of the world.

America's first colonists chose to go it alone against the wilderness rather than endure persecution and intolerance in Europe.

EDWARD LUCK: I think there's always been a pioneer spirit.

NARRATOR: Ed Luck is a leading commentator on foreign policy and the author of "Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization."

LUCK: They wanted to start a new wold. They wanted to a little bit apart. And they wanted to pick and choose on their own volition when they would become involved, when they would not become involved.

NARRATOR: George Washington summed up the isolationist spirit in 1796: "'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

And Thomas Jefferson called for: "Honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

A distrust of centralized authority was a key component of the nation's founding, with the rights of each state guaranteed in the very document that united them. Our heroes have tended to be rugged individualists who often steered clear of society's constraining clutches. In the 1956 film, "The Searchers," John Wayne watches as others enter the civilizing confines of the cabin, at last turning away to head out into the Texas desert, alone.

In World War One, America's isolationist tendency kept the troops at home until 1917, after Europe had spent three years tearing itself apart. Disillusioned and chastened by the horrors of the Great War, many felt that the entire structure of international politics needed to be transformed from its war-breeding balance of power to a "community of power." President Woodrow Wilson put forth an idealistic vision of a League of Nations that would provide for their collective security.

(Wilson) "Should this promise not be kept, I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another war."

NARRATOR: But Wilson's League was doomed by his refusal to compromise with the Senate.

Ambassador RICHARD HOLBROOKE (in a speech):

"Wilson's refusal to accept the provisions regarding American sovereignty, which were put forward by the moderate conservative senators, and his refusal to work with the Senate in any way made the defeat of the League almost inevitable in the Senate."

NARRATOR: Wilson's fateful prediction came true 20 years later, as the world was again convulsed by global conflict. Again, the US sought to avoid involvement "over there," blessedly protected by thousands of miles of water.

December 7, 1941. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor shattered the illusion of the oceans as America's protective barriers. Even before the war was over, President Roosevelt sought to join the United States to an international postwar structure of peace.

LUCK: Some people said, "My God, if we had a League of Nations, maybe we could have prevented this war." So, there's an upsurge of public and political support for creating a new and stronger international institution.

NARRATOR: In 1945, due in large part to American leadership, the United Nations was born.

AMB. HOLBROOKE (speech):

"Despite, or perhaps more accurately, because of Woodrow Wilson's tragedy, the US and the United Kingdom, confronting the end of World War Two, worked together to create the UN. The wisdom, the insight, the political skills of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were critical here and they were deeply influenced by what they'd seen."

NARRATOR: In the postwar period, America stepped up its international involvement to an unprecedented degree: The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. The creation of the NATO military alliance. Bitter and indecisive conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. All of these actions took place against the backdrop of the Cold War as we competed with the Soviet Union for global influence.

If Pearl Harbor had shattered the illusion of the oceans as protective barriers, the Cold War, with its constant threat of atomic war, erased it. The long reach of nuclear arsenals forced every American to live with the daily possibility of Armageddon. If nothing else, this sobering reality forced us to pay attention.

The United States and Russia still possess more than 6000 long-range nuclear weapons each, poised on hair-trigger alert. But with the perception that the threat of nuclear war has passed, combined with the collapse of communism a decade ago, much of America has turned its gaze inward once again.

LUCK: I think what is paradoxical is that now that communism is basically dead, or when we should be triumphant in many ways, many Americans seem to be pulling away from the world.

NARRATOR: Some Americans distrust of centralized authority, combined with this inward turn, triggered a wave of anti-United Nations sentiment.

NARRATOR: Fringe movements suspicious of all federal authority saw the United Nations as part of an Orwellian conspiracy to create a global "Big Brother."

MILITIA of MONTANA Spokesperson:

"If it was planned and organized and put together by people 30, 40 years ago, right after they created the United Nations, to do what they're doing to you today and to your grandchildren next year, it's not a conspiracy freak, that is a conspiracy, folks. Open up your eyes and let's find out what's happening. And it's time to call these people on the carpet that are continuing the movement into one world government."

NARRATOR: Abroad, the end of the Cold War unleashed many long-simmering conflicts, leading to a dramatic upsurge in UN peacekeeping.

AMB. HOLBROOKE (speech):

"In 1988, less than 10,000 UN peacekeepers were deployed in a few places, primarily to patrol ceasefire lines. By 1994, the United Nations had 80,000 peacekeepers in 17 missions around the world."

NARRATOR: Over the same period, a series of tragedies served to poison US-UN relations. Somalia, 1993: 18 US Rangers die during a mission that had started as famine relief, but had expanded to the vague notion of "nation building" and the hunt for a local warlord. President Clinton quickly ends the mission and pins the failure on the UN.

STEVEN DIMOFF: At the time the American servicemen were killed, they were under United States' command.

NARRATOR: Steve Dimoff is a specialist on the US-UN relationship.

DIMOFF: They were not under UN command. But it prompted the administration to undertake a total review of American participation in UN peacekeeping.

NARRATOR: Rwanda, 1994: Observers plead for a UN peacekeeping force to stem the rising tide of ethnic violence. Still smarting from Somalia, the US objects. In a genocide of unprecedented speed, an estimated 800,000 people are slaughtered in 100 days.

Bosnia, 1992 to '95: UN peacekeepers suffer repeated humiliations, and after failing to protect so-called "safe areas," are replaced by a NATO-led force.

AMB. HOLBROOKE (speech):

blow back from these three tragedies was crystallized by two other events in the United States: the 1994 midterm congressional elections and the battle over the US debt to the United Nations. A new post -Cold War generation of politicians came to this city, many of whom were skeptical, some utterly hostile to the United Nations and perhaps to international affairs and foreign policy in and of themselves."

NARRATOR: Congress began withholding US dues to the United Nations to protest perceived UN failures. By 1999, the United States owed one billion dollars in back dues. The US-UN rift threatened to bring down the institution of collective security that America had been instrumental in creating.

DIMOFF: The US delinquency has put a damper on the ability of the UN to mobilize in the peacekeeping area. It's very difficult to try to convince countries to try to participate in new peacekeeping operations when they haven't been reimbursed for the ones in which they participated in the past. And to that extent, the US is responsible I think for a major crisis in confidence in UN peacekeeping.

NARRATOR: In 1999, the Senate agreed to repay the dues as long as the UN consents to certain reforms, including reducing the American share of future costs. It remains to be seen whether the 188 other countries in the UN will accept the offer. But in an extraordinary scene, Senator Jesse Helms, the Senate's most vocal critic of the UN, spoke at the Security Council in January 2000.

Senator JESSE HELMS (R-NC) (Speech at UN):

...the United Nations respects the sovereign rights of the American people and serves them as an effective instrument, it will earn and deserve their respect and support. But a United Nations that seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people without their consent begs for confrontation and -- I want to be candid with you -- eventual US withdrawal."

NARRATOR: UN ambassadors from other countries returned fire.

Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the UN GREENSTOCK:

"The United Nations is not a separate organ to which we turn like a fire service, it is the member states. And the United States, as the single superpower, owns 25 percent of the power and the resources of the United Nations. What it does well, the US gets credit for. What is does badly, the US must bear some responsibility for."

Ambassador of Canada to the UN FOWLER:

"Financial constraints, significantly due to US arrears, have seriously impaired our cooperative efforts to protect and promote international peace and security."

NARRATOR: Some pointed out the UN's achievements when it was given enough resources to succeed.

Ambassador of The Netherlands to the UN VAN WALSUM:

"In many more countries, democratic government is the norm and human rights are respected than was the case, say, 25 years ago. And to a very large extent, we owe this positive development to this 'ineffective and talkative deadbeat' organization."

Ambassador of Bangladesh to the UN CHOUDHURY:

"The UN, in its work in Bangladesh, and also in many other developing countries, have made a real difference in the lives of millions of people, and we believe that that is a very important aspect of the work of the United Nations." And this, in turn, has a positive impact on the global peace and stability situation."

Former Congressman LEE HAMILTON: I think the United States does need the United Nations and I don't think it's helpful to threaten a withdrawal from the United Nations.

NARRATOR: During his 34 years in Congress, Lee Hamilton was a leading voice on foreign policy issues.

HAMILTON: But those of us who support the United Nations must be very clear that we are not suggesting that the United Nations define American interests. We define American interests in this country through our constitutional processes, but we can certainly use the United Nations to help advance our interests in many areas around the world.

NARRATOR: How to improve the United Nations and the US relationship to it will be the subject of ongoing debate.

BERNARD SHAW, CNN News Anchor: "Live breaking news wherever it occurs."

NARRATOR: In the meantime, with the rapid growth of CNN and global information technology, live television images of unfolding crises bring increasing demands for rapid responses. Ironically, without a stronger UN, the US might find itself tugged into more hot spots than ever.

HAMILTON: In a sense, we're the only 911 number in the world today because we have the capabilities to intervene. If there is not some kind of a regional or international body to refer these disputes to, then the United States is going to have to be the country that's going to have answer the call.

NARRATOR: Of course, when it comes to both commerce and culture, the United States has long been engaged with the world. Today, globalization has forged interconnections between the American and international economies like never before. And for better or worse, American pop culture has colonized much of the war.

But when it comes to security matters, many countries are troubled by the United States' growing tendency to "go it alone." Increasingly, the US has opted out of international treaties designed to promote global peace.

National Security Advisor SAMUEL BERGER (speech):

"The new isolationists are convinced that treaties -- pretty much all treaties -- are a threat to our sovereignty and our continued superiority."

NARRATOR: Nuclear testing is the engine that drives the quest for the bomb. A successful test proves the device worked. Test explosions by India and Pakistan in 1998 demonstrated the continuing allure of nuclear weapons. Dozens of countries have the potential to follow their path. A ban on testing would "lock in" American nuclear dominance, but the US Senate voted down such a treaty in 1999.

ROBERT KAGAN: There were many, many Republican senators who voted against that treaty who are not in any way isolationists.

NARRATOR: Robert Kagan directs the project on US Leadership at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

KAGAN: Those who voted against the Test Ban Treaty in the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans who did so, their motivation was concern for the wellbeing of the US nuclear arsenal. Their concern was that the treaty would not, in fact, bind other nations, and particularly rogue nations, that they would not abide by the treaty.

NARRATOR: But partisan politics also played a big role in the treaty's rejection.

HAMILTON: Many in the Senate just did not want to give President Clinton a victory.

NARRATOR: The defeat of the Test Ban Treaty underscored the necessity of presidential leadership in articulating US interests.

HAMILTON: The fact that the Clinton administration had not laid the groundwork for approval of the treaty over a period of months, I think played an important role, too. You don't get two-thirds vote in the Senate easily on a treaty. It takes an awful lot of work and it has to be one-on-one, over a period of months, and I think that hard door-to-door kind of work just was not done.

NARRATOR: Landmines are unique weapons: They are triggered by their victims. Millions of leftover landmines lie dormant in the wake of war, waiting patiently to blow off the leg of a farmer or of an inquisitive child.

Following a groundswell of worldwide support, a treaty banning these indiscriminate killers went into force in 1999, signed by 137 nations to date. The United States is not among them.

HAMILTON: The military weighed-in very heavily on that, the US military, and they strongly opposed it, largely because of the landmines being used on the Korean Peninsula.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, landmines continue to kill or maim someone every 22 minutes, mostly innocent civilians. All of our NATO allies, with the exception of Turkey, have signed the ban. Increasingly, we are known by the company we keep in our refusal to sign international treaties. In this case, that company includes Russia, China, Cuba, Libya and Iraq.

"Never Again" became the communal vow after the horrors of the Holocaust and its six million victims were revealed at the end of World War Two. The Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals sought to put future despots on notice that genocide would not be tolerated. But attempts in the UN to establish a permanent court to punish crimes against humanity was stifled for years by the Cold War rivalry. As power-mad politicians directed genocides and mass killings from Cambodia to Bosnia to Rwanda, the vow of "Never Again" had become a hollow whisper.

Finally, in 1998, the overwhelming majority of the world's democracies voted to create a permanent international criminal court. Once again, the United States military opposed the agreement.

KAGAN: The United States has a unique role in maintaining international stability, partly, and in fact heavily, by its military strength. And so, fears about whether American soldiers could be indicted for war crimes in the international criminal court, fears that a landmine convention might limit American capabilities to defend against an attack, say, on the Korean peninsula, I think these played the critical part in the defeat of those agreements or the refusal of the United States to engage in them.

NARRATOR: The United States has refused to go along with other widely supported international agreements, as well. The US led the way in drafting the Law of the Sea Treaty, a landmark effort to establish international guidelines for future use of the oceans. The US military has called the Law of the Sea Treaty essential to the protection of our economic and security interests because of its guarantee of navigational freedom. But Senator Helms, the gatekeeper on the Foreign Relations Committee through which such matters get debated, has refused to hold hearings. Meanwhile, the wide-ranging treaty went into effect in 1998 with more than 130 countries on-board.

LUCK: So, what I think we're seeing is almost a panic attack among conservatives in this country, who say, you know, "Stop the world, I want to get off."

NARRATOR: When it comes to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States is even more isolated. Aimed at establishing basic standards for the humane treatment of children, this agreement has been signed and ratified by every country on earth except two, Somalia and -- well, you guessed it.

LUCK: And Somalia, of course, has no working government. So, the only real government in the world that's blocking it is the United States, despite the fact that the child rights movement is very strong in this country and there's nothing in that convention that should be harmful at all to American values or to American sovereignty. But somehow, a small minority in the US Senate sees this as some kind of assault on the American family unit, and it's nothing of that sort.

NARRATOR: What exactly are American national interests today? The fact that they have not been clearly defined may help explain the difficulty in getting Americans to join these agreements.

KAGAN: It's not enough to say, "This is a glorious moment for the United States in this world to play this international role." You really have to work at selling the American people, you really have to work at bringing Congress in, and you really have to phrase it in such a way that is acceptable to the American temperament.

National Security Advisor SAMUEL BERGER (speech):

"Now the final plan for this new isolation is this: Billions for defense, but hardly a penny for prevention."

NARRATOR: One of the most effective ways of promoting peace overseas has been through an engaged diplomacy -- development assistance, training, and person-to-person contacts at missions around the world. Yet in recent years, Congress has whittled away at the resources devoted to international affairs, now just one percent of the federal budget.

NSC's SAMUEL BERGER (speech):

"If we under fund our diplomacy, we're going to end up over-using our military, which happens to be precisely the outcome the critics say they want to avoid. Those who fear that our military may become overextended should make it their first order of business to restore decent levels of funding to the programs that keep our soldiers out of war."

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, spending on the Pentagon is going up, despite America's unchallenged global dominance. There is now a headlong rush to build a nationwide system to shoot down missiles, once known as "Star Wars," despite questions about its cost and effectiveness.

HAMILTON: We simply don't have good cost estimates. It is going to be hugely expensive. We're already spent about $100 billion on this.

NARRATOR: Will it work? Most tests so far, rigged in the system's favor, have failed.

HAMILTON: It has not come close to being adequately tested as of now.

NARRATOR: While many view the push for a missile shield as further proof of a "Fortress America" mentality, Bob Kagan sees it as the opposite.

KAGAN: Our entire strategy rests on the ability to project force overseas, rests on our ability to deter and punish aggressors in various regions of the world. Those aggressors, those regimes in coming years are going to be armed with weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. So, therefore, I think that a missile defense is actually central to a US global role and if we do not have a missile defense, we will, in fact, head in a more isolationist direction.

NARRATOR: But other countries, fearing an America stocked with nuclear missiles seeking invulnerability from theirs, might respond by building more, triggering a new arms race.

HAMILTON: How is China going to react? How is Russia going to react? How are the European allies going to react? So, my view on the national defense system is that we've got a lot of work to do before moving ahead to that.

NARRATOR: Americans have always felt their country is exceptional. Today, as the sole superpower and economically dominant, those feelings are stronger than ever. Yet much of America's strength is based on its participation in the world, not its isolation from it.

LUCK: We have power around the world, in part, because we have allies around the world -- ideas, people, goods, capital flow around the world at an amazing rate, and you just can't control that from any single capital. So, different countries have to work together. It's just the nature of the world.

And for those who are uncomfortable with this, they shout, and they scream, and they block legislation, and they kill treaties, but the handwriting is on the wall. This is a time of change and the change is not towards isolationism; the tide is towards internationalism.

Produced by the Center for Defense Information
Scriptwriter: Glenn Baker
Segment Producer: Glenn Baker
Show Number: 1329