I recently watched an interview with Dr Henry Kissinger and he answered a question about the International Community with “I don’t understand the term.” WITHOUT GETTING POLITICAL,could anyone help me and Henry.
As I understand the term, it does not refer to any tangible body or organization, but is used as a way to refer to the social/political/economic interactions between countries of the world.
On any given issue at any given time, the International Community consists of:
The USA + any countries that agree with the USA.
Though there are some countries that are never part of the International Community, even if they do happen to agree with the US position (eg Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Saddam’s Iraq)… and there are some countries which are almost never counted (eg Syria, which was part of the International Community in the 1st Gulf War when it supported the coalition against Iraq but is now apparently a Rogue State).
To complicate things slightly, on issues where the USA is especially isolated (eg the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol against global warming), there can be two conflicting International Communities - the usual one with the USA in it (and a few extra friendly countries), and a strange new one with all the other countries in it.
No wonder poor Dr Kissinger is confused.
I really think that it’s difficult to answer a question like this without getting political, because the term “international community” is so often used to bolster particular political positions and assert that one’s position has overwhelming global support.
Depending on the situation, and who is speaking, the “international community” can mean the United Nations, or a majority of the UN, or simply the perceived collective will of a bunch of countries. Sometimes the term refers to governmental positions, while at other times it seems to be more democratically inclusive, asserting that “the people” of various nations support a particular position.
It would be interesting to know the context in which Kissinger said that he didn’t understand the term. What was the question that he was asked?
Kissinger was spot on. Contrary to what Non, above, states, the “international community” is whatever group someome conjurs up (on either side of of the political spectrum) to support their particular political views. I didn’t see the interview, but I’ll bet it was in reaction to a false premise:
Dr Kissinger, how can the US invade Iraq when the International Community is so firmly against it?
But, as others have said, your question doesn’t have a factual answer.
The phrase ‘the International Community’ is, emphatically, an American coinage - which came into particular use after the fall of the Soviet Union at the time of the first Gulf War, along with Bush Sr’s ‘New World Order’ - and has, up until recently, been used almost exclusively in its original sense to represent the USA plus the set of countries agreeing with the USA.
Partly because of increasing American unilateralism, attempts have been made in the last few years to use the phrase in the second sense I described above, exclusive of the USA. The UN, in particular, has (understandably enough) made an effort to co-opt the phrase.
I would be willing to bet that if Kissinger were asked a question along the lines of ‘how do you think the International Community is doing in the war on terror after 9/11’?, he would not be so confused, since the phrase is here used in a sense (inclusive of the USA) with which he would be comfortable.
According to the traditionalist, or realist, school of thought in international relations, the relationship between nations tends to approximate a Hobbesian state of nature. Violent anarchy, with a minimum of constraint on the actions of nations or consensus between them. So in that sense, Kissinger could quite legitimately say there’s no such thing as an international community - but that would be kinda weird, because he and Nixon put together Detente, which was designed to get the Soviets more invested in the international community (with trade deals and so forth) so that they’d have more to lose in the event of war or other nastiness.
“mhendo” Sorry,I can’t remember even what channel. It was in the midst of that deluge of “experts”. The only reason it stuck in my mind was how strange it sounded coming from someone so knowledgable in diplomacy.
You’ve got it. In my experience, the term “the international community” is used by American politicians for foreign policy in much the same way that they use the term “the American people” for domestic policy.