U.N. peacekeeping missions are a red herring in this debate. The U.N. typically only puts multi-national forces in place after the heavy lifting has been done.
The U.S. has indeed done a grossly disproportionate share of the “dirty work” in troubled spots around the world inclusing Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and even Iraq. Sometimes these actions, like Iraq, are strongly in the U.S. national interest. Other times, like Somalia, they are not.
There is much discussion of how America looks to Europeans but we should also keep in mind how Europe often looks to America. The United States is essentially pragmatic. It wants to accomplish a given goal as quickly and efficiently as possible with the minimum expenditure of lives and treasure, especially American lives and American treasure. Process, ego stroking, propitiation and political gestures take a distant back seat. America often believes that some course of action is objectively correct and that, as a result, some choice is “right” and others “wrong.”
Europe, for various reasons, is far more process-oriented. They are far more willing to sacrifice pragmatism for consensus than is America. Europe is far more willing than America to make grand political gestures that may be only marginally in aid of some concrete objective.
Neither of these approaches are inherently correct and both can be taken to absurd extremes. Certainly, each often looks absurd from the other perspective.
Kyoto is a case in point. There are excellent arguments to be made that Kyoto was fundamentally flawed and should be scrapped. However, the way the U.S. went about it was simply appalling to European sensibilities. America found this puzzling. “But it’s a bad idea, isn’t it? Look at the numbers! It doesn’t make economic sense! What are you complaining about?”
The Euro is another. This was originally pushed as having a huge economic benefit. It eventually became quite clear however, that the real “benefit” was symbolic. The symbolic benefit was considered important enough to undermine the economic basis for monetary union. IIRC, based on the original economic criteria, the only country able to join the Euro would have been Luxembourg. However, criteria were shamelessly fudged to ensure that as many countries as possible were able to join at the same time. Many Americans viewed this process with bemusement. “You want monetary union as a symbol of unity and so you can compete with the dollar? What’s the point of doing that? What is this symbol going to cost? What’s the cost-benefit analysis?”
These different perspectives create friction even where America and Europe, as almost always, share common goals. The Europeans are offended at what they perceive as American boorishness while the Americans roll their eyes at what the percieve as European fuzzy-mindedness.
With respect to the ICC, America is deeply suspicious of a grand political gesture that will be far more likely to affect it than any European country. They are unwilling to pay its potential cost. This isn’t a matter of taking your ball and going home, it’s a matter of deciding not to come to the party. Maybe Milosevic is technically correct. Maybe bombing Serbia was a “war crime.” The U.S. doesn’t want to take the risk of being second-guessed, especially when it is acting where it has no strong national interest at stake. Declining to participate in further peace keeping (or peace making) missions essentially forces the rest of the world to internalize that cost.
I have to say there is also a very slight undercurrent of anti-Americanism in the ICC. Some European countries, particularly France, are very keen to take the U.S. down a peg or two and create a “multi-polar world.” Creating international institutions that have sovereignty over the U.S. is a key element of that strategy. The U.S. suspects that, despite protestations to the contrary, some countries in the world would be delighted at the prospect of having the U.S. being publically embarrassed by being hauled before the ICC. The U.S. is, of course, quite aware of this and, not particularly wanting to be taken down a peg or two, is not keen to give the ICC the opportunity.
