A New World Order

2:00 P.M. EDT

Real Audio of Briefing

MR. BOOKBINDER: I'd like to welcome everyone this afternoon to the Foreign Press Center. And we feel especially privileged this afternoon to have Anne-Marie Slaughter, the author of the just-published A New World Order. This book was published less than a week ago by Princeton University Press. And we are thrilled to have Dr. Slaughter here. The book provides a compelling and authoritative description of a world in which government officials, police investigators, financial regulators, judges and legislators, exchange information and coordinate activity across national borders to tackle crime, terrorism, and the routine daily grind of international interactions. And these networks make these happen. And they frequently make good things happen. But as this book shows, they are underappreciated, and worse, underutilized to address the challenges facing the world today.

Now, Anne-Marie Slaughter is the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is the also the President of the American Society of International Law. And she's been a frequent commentator in the media on such topics as international tribunals, television, and international law, including issues related to the aftermath of September 11th.

So I think we're going to have a very fruitful discussion this afternoon. Without further ado, let me welcome Anne-Marie Slaughter. Thank you.

DR. SLAUGHTER: Thank you. Well, thank you all for coming out in the rain. I was hoping for a lovely spring day in Washington, but no such luck. But I'm particularly grateful to see you all here.

I was on vacation in the Caribbean in March and my father was with me and he was reading my book on the beach. And I kept saying, "Dad, this is not really a book for beach reading." But as a good father, he was demonstrating his interest in his daughter's writing. And he was sitting next to someone, and they said, "Gee, A New World Order. What's that about?" And he said, "Oh, it's about international networks of agencies." And the person said, without missing a beat, "Oh, a work of fiction." (Laughter.)

Not a work of fiction. From where you sit, when an academic announces that she's written a book entitled A New World Order, you might worry that it's worse than a work of fiction, which is a work purely of theory. It's also not a work of theory. What I'd like to do, in a very brief span, is give you the three basic arguments of the book, or three basic points about the book, and then let you ask me questions on any dimensions that are raised by my talk or by your own looking at the book.

The basic argument of the book is very simple. It says that in the last 10 to 15 years, corporations have moved from hierarchies to networks. If you read the management literature, it's all about managing through networks rather than through hierarchies. I think about things like the Star Alliance, all the ways in which corporations, both within a corporation and among corporations, have networked. Non-governmental organizations have networked, and the power of the anti-globalization movement or of the human rights movement or the labor rights movement or the environmental movement are all a function of really well-established networks between the Environmental Defense Fund in this country and their equivalents in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.

So on the corporate side and the non-profit side, you've seen networks as a response to globalization. You've also seen it, less happily, on the criminal side. So we read about al-Qaida as a global terrorist network. This is just one of a number of crimes that are now being committed by global networks. If you think about arms trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, trafficking in women and children, or, more generally, in migrants, even piracy and intellectual property. These are all crimes being committed by global, criminal networks, or at least the threat that they pose is a function of the fact that they can now operate on a global scale.

So we've seen networks in the public sector -- I mean, in the corporate sector, the non-profit sector, the criminal sector. My argument is, it has also taken place in the government sector, in the public sector, that governments, responding in many ways to the fact that corporations are operating through global networks, criminals are operating through global networks, those that they pursue or regulate are operating through networks. Government agencies have networked, as well.

When I started working on this book in the mid 1990s, everyone was talking about how the state was disappearing, that we were returning to the Middle Ages in some way, that private actors were as important as public actors, and my claim then was, no, the state is not disappearing, it's disaggregating, meaning it is simply operating through all its different branches, through regulatory agencies, through judges, through legislators, and they are all networking with one another. And as I said, in many ways, governments are networking for many of the same reasons that corporations and non-profit organizations and even criminals are networking.

None of that should be very surprising to any of you who cover the financial sector. You can't talk about global financial regulation without talking about things like the Basel Commitment of Central Bankers or the International Organization of Securities Commissioners; or, at this point, the Financial Stability Forum, which links together central bankers and insurance commissioners and securities regulators; or talking about the G-20. The G-20 was -- is a network of finance ministers of 20 major economies, the G-8 plus many countries you might expect: South Africa, India, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea. These are countries that if you're trying to regulate a global economy, you have to have as part of your network.

What is less noticed is that after the East Asian financial crisis, there were all these calls for a new global financial architecture, and Jeff Garten, the Dean of the Yale Business School said we need a global central bank, and lots of other people have said that it's time to revise the Breton-Woods Institutions. Well, what did we get? We got a network of finance ministers. That is the lynchpin of whatever new global financial architecture we have.

That's fairly well known in the financial sector. It's less well known in competition. We now have the Global Competition Network for Anti-Trust Regulators, the environmental arena, justice ministries around the world. At the same time that you talk about France and the U.S. fighting over whether to go to war in Iraq, what's less noticed is that the French and the German and the American justice ministers are working extremely closely together in ways that are not affected by these larger diplomatic currents, and beyond regulators -- judges.

Judges have been networking with one another at the Supreme Court level in really quite extraordinary ways: Face to face, citing each other's opinions, so much so that there is a bill in the U.S. Congress right now to try to block our own Supreme Court from citing foreign opinions. This was a non-issue 15 years ago, but largely as a result of judicial networks, we now have many judges who argue -- including our Supreme Court judges -- who argue that U.S. judges can't afford to be parochial; they must participate in global judicial networks, in reading and understanding what other courts are doing. And finally, in the legislative area, you're seeing few -- this, legislators lag behind in these networks but they, too, are coming together in specific issue areas.

At the most recent WTO round, the Secretary General of the WTO addressed a group of parliamentarians, arguing that they are a critical missing piece of the global trade regulation puzzle, that you can't do this just with trade ministers, you have to have legislators as well.

So the basic argument is simply that if you have the eyes to see them, you will see networks of national government officials wherever you look doing important work in every area, again, across different government institutions.

Second point, and this is a more theoretical point, but it's actually quite a critical one. You might say, "Well, why did you have to write a book to point this out? I mean, these things are out there. Individuals in different areas know they're out there. If I went and talked to various government officials in Washington, they'd say, 'Yes, yes, we network with our foreign counterparts.'"

Why do we have to really focus on these things? Why do I have to bring these to people's attention?

And my argument is that we still see international relations as a game of states interacting with states. We have a mental map of the international system: As France interacting with China, interacting with Japan, interacting with Brazil. We know that's a myth. Of course it's a myth. I mean, we know that, in fact, it's maybe the heads of state or the foreign ministers or the finance ministers. But the way we think about the international system all of a sudden makes a move from government, with lots of different officials, to this image of what I call "the unitary state."

In international law, only states are subjects of international law. So an organization as important as the Basel Committee is never even studied by international lawyers because it doesn't exist. It's not a treaty-based organization. It's just a group of central bankers.

In diplomacy, in the media, when you write, read about what is happening in the world, you tend to still talk about states interacting with states. And I am arguing that we need to change the way we look at states and start focusing on all the different branches of government and what are they doing. And when you do that, if you pick up any newspaper, as I said, you'll see evidence of these things all over the place.

Last point. So these things are out there. I claim if you change the way you look at the world, you'll see them all over the place. You will see that they are fast-growing features of global regulation.

In the last part of the book I argue that we need to use them much more effectively to meet global governance challenges. And I start from the proposition that we face a global governance trilemma.

On the one hand -- I don't have three hands, but you'll bear with me -- on the one hand, we need global governance capacity. That's a truism. We face problems on a global scale, from the environment to terrorism to human rights challenges. We need to be able to regulate at a global level. But we don't want global government.

And I don't say -- when I say "we," that's certainly true of United States citizens. I would wager it's true of the citizens of your countries as well. Very few people think the image of a global government is a very attractive one. And even if you might like it, I think it's political infeasible. So you need the capacity, but you don't want the centralized power.

And third, you do need accountable-actors exercising whatever global governance power there is. One of the responses to this problem of needing global governance capacity but not wanting government has been to say, "Fine, we have global policy networks." This has been part of what the UN has pushed, which means anybody can play. You can be a nongovernmental organization or a corporation or a scientist or an international official or a national official. Anyone interested in a set of issues -- again, take global warming -- can be part of a global policy network.

And I argue that's worrisome. I'm all for government officials interacting with nongovernmental organizations and corporations and anyone else, but I'd like to know who is responsible for making the decisions, who can we hold accountable if there are decisions taken that we don't like. And if it's everyone on an equal footing, we have no control over corporations and nonprofit organizations. We need to say, "Here's a government network, and it can then interact with these other networks."

So government networks give us global governance capacity without global government, but they are identifiable government officials. How can we use them? And let me close with two examples that are extremely topical. One is fighting terrorism. I think one of what -- part of what we've heard in the last week in the United States with the 9/11 Commission has been the efforts of an Administration with a largely Cold War, unitary state mentality addressing a very much post-Cold War threat.

So here exactly you have a global criminal network. How do you fight that? Well, you fight that through networks of financial regulators and justice ministers and intelligence operatives and prosecutors and police of all kinds working together as globally as possible.

We, instead, have been focusing on the traditional tools of high diplomacy: military and sort of high politics organizing of coalitions. We have worked through these networks informally, but we've never really said, "This is part of our response to terrorism. We are going to organize finance ministers through the G-20 and others. We are going to organize justice ministers. We are going to work at the level of national government officials across the board."

Point two, and my closing point. Rebuilding Iraq or any post-conflict country, whether it's a transitional democracy or a country shattered by a civil war or through an international use of force. We have to rebuild the government from the ground up. And we talk about it -- and here the "we" is the United States and coalition -- as if this is something to be done either by one country or a couple of countries, or many others, including myself, think through international institutions.

But that's only using a fraction of the capacity we have globally to help any country. Imagine if you were thinking about rebuilding the Iraqi utility system and you let the global network of utilities regulators do that: The judiciary -- in come the judges; the financial system -- in come all the financial regulators; the Iraqi legislators -- in come legislative networks.

We have governance capacity at every level, a global and regional capacity, but we have not harnessed those officials with all their expertise, all their technical assistance, all their ability to both train and support fledgling government officials in other countries through a global networked approach. The UN might convene those networks. This is not an either/or approach. But the work on the ground would be done, not by traditional diplomats, not by one country's efforts, not by international institutions alone, but working with these networks of global government officials.

So with that, I think I'll turn to your questions.
MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, why don't we begin? We can go to Germany first.

QUESTION: Michael Backfisch, Germany's Business Daily Handelsblatt.

You mentioned the strange relationship -- I call it strange relationship -- between John Ashcroft and German Interior Minister Otto Schily, who, at a very early age, defended German terrorists in the '60s from the Red Army faction. I mean, that's really a strange relationship.

Do you have some other examples for networking within the U.S. Administration? And would this networking not mean increased international cooperation, which is not the image of the U.S. Administration outside the U.S. And if that's the case, what does that mean for the situation in Iraq? Would that mean that there is an increased openness to tune in the United Nations?

DR. SLAUGHTER: The second -- the second question is easier. No, I don't think -- I think these networks are ongoing, and the Schily-Ashcroft example is a wonderful one, because as you point out, these are people as far as apart as is possible to get politically and yet they've worked very closely together.

I think if you look at the world through my lenses and just look at, you know, who's working together through networks of national government officials, you'll find that actually, there's lots of cooperation, but it's going on sort of on the left hand while the right hand is experiencing a lot of diplomatic turbulence.

I think this Administration would be probably more willing to use a networked approach, although they haven't. I mean, they've regarded this as sort of the -- what does the President say? Swatting flies. This has not been the hard work of fighting terrorism. I think they'd be more willing to do it. I don't think this Administration -- I don't think multilateralism on that level will translate into more traditional multilateralism, even though I think it should. I think the two go together. But I think this Administration would be fonder of national governments networking than it's going to be of using traditional international organizations.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. Shall we go to India here in the second row?

QUESTION: Parasuram with Press Trust of India.

Do I understand you to say that, for a global order, the form of government of different countries is quite irrelevant; and also, you mentioned the importance of nongovernmental organizations, but many of them are really responsible to nobody. They're non-electorates, self-appointed, and do they, do they excessive power in the perfect circumstance?

DR. SLAUGHTER: Okay, no, I think -- let me make clear, I do not think that the formal government is irrelevant at all. Indeed, I think what is --

QUESTION: Not irrelevant, I mean form of government.

DR. SLAUGHTER: Oh, the form of government. I'm sorry, I heard you say formal. No, the form of government is not --these networks are densest among advanced industrial democracies. If you look at OECD countries, you'll see -- if you could grasp these, you would see these densest, although they're also very dense among APEC countries, so -- and indeed, among commonwealth countries and also in the Nordic system.

So you see them all over the world. But if you were to plot them globally, the form of government has to make some difference. If a government doesn't have courts that have some independent capacity, doesn't have regulators who have some independent capacity, then that government is not going to be able to participate in these networks very effectively.

So not surprisingly, you're going -- they are best suited to facilitating cooperation among governments -- they don't have to be democracies -- that's not the issue, but they at least to have some separation of powers. And their utility in helping build governments is precisely the strength -- strengthen different branches of government.

On your nongovernmental organizations, I agree with you, which is why I prefer a model that says -- you've got a world order that has government networks as an important part of its foundation. Those networks of government officials can interact with nongovernmental organizations, but we shouldn't confuse the two, because there's a big difference. The government officials are not perfectly accountable by any means. Even in a well-functioning democracy, they're not perfectly accountable, but they're more accountable than many non-profit organizations. So I would see them interacting but quite separate.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. Since we went to India, why don't we go to Pakistan in the second row?

QUESTION: Khalid Hasan, Daily Times, Lahore. What makes you think that government networking is safer? I mean, will sort of deliver, will do the necessary? Because frankly, the record of governments and government networks is pretty dismal. Look at Iraq. You know, had the United States in hindsight proceeded through the United Nations, instead of, sort of, you know, just marching in, probably it would have been better. And the Bush Administration has turned its back on multilateralism. And I mean, the sort of -- the sort of things, which were said about the United Nations before America went into Iraq were just unbelievable.

So NGOs have a lot of credibility. They have done a lot of good work and people in my part of the world would tend to trust an NGO rather than a government. So your skepticism about the NGOs is fairly hard to understand, for me.

DR. SLAUGHTER: Okay, thank you. I think that's three points. The last point is -- let me be clear.

I have --NGOs come in many different shapes and sizes and there are those who are wonderful and then there are those who are less wonderful, but I'm -- this is not a book that's against NGOs. It's a book that says, "We need to have a similar capacity among government officials in the sense of global networks." And part of the point of well-functioning global networks would be to improve the performance of government officials in many parts of the world in terms of establishing norms of -- for instance, in the judicial area, independent judging; in the regulatory area, all of these networks have professional norms, so it's not opposed to nongovernmental organizations.

Your first question goes back to your question, which is a very important one. This is a kind of multilateralism that is an important kind of multilateralism. It is not -- and I want to be very clear about this -- it is not a substitute for more traditional multilateralism through the United Nations. In my own view, wearing a different hat, the United States should absolutely have waited for the United Nations. We would be in far better shape if we'd worked through the traditional structures. And I've just published an op-ed in the Financial Times saying that the lesson of Iraq is that the Security Council safeguards were the right ones. And we weren't able to convince other nations, and it turns out for good reason.

But what I'm arguing is, even if the United States were a model multilateral citizen, the UN itself cannot take on the range of tasks and the depth with which those tasks need to be undertaken to give us global governance capacity. You have to be able to expand that capacity. And I don't think expanding it by creating multiple -- a world environmental organization, a world judicial organization -- you can multiply it -- is the right way to go. I think you need the United Nations and existing international organizations working with these networks of national government officials to give us the capacity we need. And ideally, governments should be working through both. This is not an either/or. This is not a, gee, this is the way the United States ought to be operating.

QUESTION: Sorry, are you saying that it is not happening?

DR. SLAUGHTER: I'm saying it is happening in places. It's happening much more than most people recognize. But we're not recognizing it and using it proactively in ways that would really help us really meet global challenges. And one way to think about this would have been for the United States to go to the UN and say, "Look, we need to tackle state-based threats, but we also need to tackle non-state actor threats, and how are we going to do that?" One way to do it is to work with our -- with any willing countries to create networks of the relevant national officials and empower them to work together to tackle what is a very difficult threat.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. We'll go to the lady in the sixth row.

QUESTION: Hi. Ayako Doi with Japan Digest. Very attractive idea, but I'm just having a little difficulty understanding how it may work. And take your last example of Iraqi infrastructure and so on. Suppose you have all those global network of governmental utilities or whatever put in all the infrastructure in Iraq before the Iraqi government comes in. Then if, you know, what would the Iraqi government be like? I mean, it's like a sort of a caretaker government that takes over what's already in place with no say in what shape and form they want the things to be? Yeah, that's my question. And then I'm just sort of thinking of examples of the way that I would like to know how your idea works. For example, global warming: The frustration of not having the Kyoto Protocol -- I mean, having adopted the Kyoto Protocol and not have it ratified and be enforced because of a few countries that wouldn't subscribe to it.

Landmines. Landmine bans. They're the same thing. I mean, in your ideal world, how would those issues -- how would it have worked?

DR. SLAUGHTER: Okay. On Iraq, this wouldn't substitute for an Iraqi government. The point would be you put a government in place however you can, preferably through a multilateral process, creating a transitional administration, as the United Nations has been able to do in a number of places. But the point is, in that transition, and once that fledgling government is established, how do you support it over the longer term? How do provide the technical assistance, the training, the sense of belonging that enables government officials who are doing their best to reestablish a government on a sound footing? How do you support them? And I'm suggesting you support them by making them members of existing government networks. I mean, there are these networks already, but we don't use them very effectively. So that in any transitional government -- it can be in East Timor, it could be in Iraq -- you would say, "Look, you, the utilities regulators, you work with the new Iraqi utilities regulators. You, the judges, you the financial regulators, you the army," which we already do. The military operates through these networks.

And the way to think about this, and there's a concrete example of where this is working well -- it's the EU. Right? This is the way the EU works. The EU works through government networks of national government officials, much more than it operates through a top-down Brussels organization. And what happens when a country becomes a member of the EU? Well, all its officials join these networks and become socialized in terms of how Europe, as a wider entity, operates. But they also get lots of money, lots of training, lots of ongoing assistance. And I'm suggesting you can export that model.

In the other areas you mentioned, actually, with Kyoto, it could have helped. I mean, we now have an international enforcement network of environmental regulators founded by the Dutch and the American environmental agencies.

There was a lot of opposition to Kyoto, not just in the United States. I happen to think the way the United States handled the issue was terrible, but there were a lot of people who did not think the Kyoto Protocol was perfect. And I would suggest to you that if you had been able to convene this network and let them work on the issue passed by national leaders, you might well have been able to come out with some solutions that would have avoided some of the diplomatic problems we've had from the U.S. point of view, but not only from the U.S. point of view.

Something like the landmines, there, too, that could -- that part of the issue there in negotiating was, indeed, to operate, to talk to members in the military who operate themselves through networks. So, and in terms of implementing something like the landmines treaty, those networks are very, very important.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, why don't we come to the front row, the gentleman in the front row.

QUESTION: Hasan Hazar, Turkiye Daily.

What kind of relation is between global networks and the religious establishments? My question about how does religion affect the globalization and global governance?

DR. SLAUGHTER: That's not a question I've thought about in that sense that, obviously, there are global religious networks and, again, it's not surprising in an age of globalization that you see networks all over the place, and I'm arguing that governments are keeping pace.

I wouldn't imagine direct links between religious networks and government networks. Obviously, where the government in question is a theocracy or has a different relationship to religion, and, of course, many do -- there are many governments that have state churches in ways, for instance, the United States do not. Then, obviously, those -- the representatives of those governments in these networks will be coming from a different place.

But there's nothing -- in one very important sense, this argument is a profound objection to the clash of civilizations argument because it says and it demonstrate empirically, look, you can have, you know, an Egyptian judge and a British judge and an Indian judge and a Japanese judge all interacting with one another, all recognizing that they face a number of very similar problems, even when they come out of very different cultural traditions.

So, in many ways, what a government official does, what their tasks are in a particular area, will trump whatever great civilizational divides there may be. Now, in extreme cases -- you know, do I think North Korea is going to participate in these networks? No, they're isolated. But do I think it would be possible for Iran, even now, and certainly if the reformists came to power, to participate in these networks? Absolutely.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Very good. Let's go -- is it Mexico in the third row?

QUESTION: Thank you. Jose Carreno with the Mexican newspaper El Universal.

Only to clarify my perception of your points, so what you're talking about -- so it is like a network between bureaucrats?

DR. SLAUGHTER: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: At different levels, it doesn't matter who is the minister of justice or the minister of agriculture of any country, but it just goes with the position, not so much with the person?

DR. SLAUGHTER: Yes.

QUESTION: However, going a bit beyond that, what is -- what happens when those people leave their positions and what does it could stop them to take advantage of the networks that they have created?

DR. SLAUGHTER: Right. That's a great question because it goes exactly to my point about how we need to use these more. So when we had the G-20 of finance ministers, when Paul Martin, the President and Prime Minister of Canada, was the Finance Minister, he put a great deal of energy into that network and it was quite effective. Since he stepped out of office, it has been less effective. The leadership changed and it's been less effective.

So as it's happened now, these networks have grown. They've grown enormously, even in the ten years I was writing the book. But they are not institutionalized to insulate them against changes in personnel, and for one reason, they're not directly tasked by national leaders. So you can imagine a network of national leaders, say the G-20 meets at the leadership level, and those leaders say, "You know, we have a huge problem with agricultural subsidies and trade, and we would like our agriculture ministers, trade ministers to -- and development ministers to meet, and we want you to come up with at least some ideas for a solution."

If you had that kind of institutional and that kind of recognition at the top, then no matter who your next minister is, that's part of his or her portfolio. And you do have to have that happening at the top; otherwise, at some level, yeah, it's just a question of which bureaucrats are in power at a given moment.

So what you're describing I would say the networks have been vulnerable to, and you can see them kind of going like this, but if we were to use them more officially, I think we could protect against that.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. Is it Bangladesh in the second row? Dercan Herald? Please. Sorry.

QUESTION: L.K. Sharma, Deccan Herald, India.

It's not fair to comment on a book without having read it, but on the limited information --

DR. SLAUGHTER: Academics do it all the time.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: From your limited introduction, I detect some kind of a dilemma in your own attitude towards this global -- new global order. Number one, the entire concept seems to be based on protection of self-interest, and if one goes by some other criteria, going more into the concept of the thing based on the concept of global good, the atmosphere has deteriorated rather than has become opened easier to this kind of model.

It was in the '50s that there were certain kinds of principles, which led to a global network, which was very powerful. It operated at the level of leaders and political principals, rather than at bureaucrats, which gave the impulse to other parts of the government, and many more things were achieved, and participation by leaders was achieved in a truly global network, which was not obsessed with self-interests.

The examples which you quote, the need for it, is derived by very narrow national self-interest. So this is a contrary trend, in spite of all the e-mailing and all the superficial features of networking, which have appeared in the last few years. Actually, the spirit of global networks has deteriorated as compared to the '50s. And if, conceptually, you are not in favor of a global network based, which will require, based on principles, which will require negation of national self-interest, it will be a difficult task.

DR. SLAUGHTER: Well, I would like to refer you to Chapter Six, because my entire final chapter actually addresses precisely the argument of what -- if you're going to have a new world order based on networks, how do we make it a just world order, because at least if you're a public intellectual and an international lawyer like I am, you think that's part of what any vision of world order has to be about.

I would not say that -- I don't think you can ever have an effective world order that will negate self-interest, but I think self-interest and principle are complementary in many cases, and we must also have principles that, in some hard cases, trump interests, although if that's your starting point, I don't think you're going to get very far.

In the end, I argue that what this vision of world order means is that most top government officials have a dual function. They have an internal job and they also have an external job. Now, part of the external job is just the continuation of their internal job, so you're a financial regulator and you're trying to get a corporation to do X, Y, or Z, and your corporation's gone overseas, so you need to network with your foreign counterparts. That's the national interest.

But you also, if you are a part of a global network, you also have -- in your external dimension, you must have some concept and some responsibility or accountability to a larger notion of global public interest, because what you are is a national government official. But it's as if you've been secunded, at least in part, to the equivalent of an international organization. The problem with, so it's as if part of your portfolio were thinking about things through the UN lens.

So we have to think collectively, we, all the nations of the world. What are the larger principles that these networks have to serve? How do individual members have to acknowledge their dual responsibilities? How do we recognize that at the leaders level and reconcile the demands of the national interests and the global public interests?

Part of what I'm arguing is the way we've always thought about that is: Here, national government's down here, and then we'll create some international organizations, and they'll be the ones that think about the global public interests and we'll have international bureaucrats and national bureaucrats. And I'm saying that's not going to work, to the extent we need to continue expanding global government capacity, because we're not going to create a whole global government with global interests. We're not going to get there.

So those same national officials must be able to think nationally and globally and I've made a stab at the kinds of principles that I think we'd have to take into account in terms of respect for other nations, in terms for the kind of cooperation you'd trigger, in terms of what I call deliberative principles of equal moral deliberation. In other words, all affected countries have to be members of these networks. You can't cut them out if the networks' decisions would have an impact on them.

So I think that's a very important part of the picture. But I think if I can convince people to see them, to understand how we could use them, and to start debating about, then, what they ought to look like in such a world order, I'd have succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. But that wouldn't be the end.

QUESTION: Let me mention the global court. It could also become --

DR. SLAUGHTER: It could be done.

QUESTION: -- become an instrument of subversion in weaker nations.

DR. SLAUGHTER: I agree.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, why don't we go to Korea in the front row?

DR. SLAUGHTER: It's great, the world. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Ki Yon Kuk with Segye Times, Korea.

You already said that North Korea is isolated and then you may allude that North Korea may not be influenced the idea new world order. But is there any way for North Korea to join the global network you mentioned?

DR. SLAUGHTER: Well, I mean, again, as I said, a lot of these networks operate very well at the regional level as well, so maybe a place to start would be APEC networks beyond -- before you get to global ones. But one of the important dimensions of these networks would be that, in many ways, they have some independence in terms of deciding who is a member.

So unless there are, you know, if there are sanctions, obviously, against a country, and the leadership has said, "No interaction," that's one thing. But I can imagine that if North Korea had the officials and North Korea were willing, that you might well say, in the APEC Council of Ministers, to include -- let's take something like transport, take something relatively low level -- absolutely. It's a way of engaging a country at the level of some parts of its government that might be working without necessarily the full trappings of diplomatic relations.

Another example would be, for instance, in the commonwealth, where you have this. Take a country like Zimbabwe, where the judiciary has been really trying to stand up for its conception of independent judging, and you've had a real showdown between the chief justice and the head of government. There's an area where a judicial network can really support its fellow judges, even politically, but certainly, materially and in other ways, even if other parts of the government are on a collision course with other governments.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. I guess we'll cover the second row to Pakistan again.

QUESTION: Dr. Slaughter, we -- this may be unrelated to your book, but since we have the benefit of your presence here, I might as well ask you this. The American Civil Liberties Union has -- considers the designation of American citizens as enemy combatants, and the Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been there for two years without trial, without benefit of counsel as unconstitutional. As a lawyer, as a lawperson, what is your own take on this?

DR. SLAUGHTER: I agree. I think it's unconstitutional. In fact, I'm not sure it's not unconstitutional even to so treat non-American citizens. But certainly with respect to American citizens, I think it's unconstitutional and I think it's appalling.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay. Do we have any other questions? I see one from Japan. The lady in red.

QUESTION: Just to clarify my understanding of your point, again. You talked about global government capacity without the power. But how I see the failure of Kyoto and Landmine and so on and so forth, you know, those international issues that lacked accomplishment is that they didn't have power, enforcement power. You talked about the European Union, but in my, you know, small understanding of how it evolved, I think European Union saw the dilemma of not having the enforcement power and increased the enforcement power over the years -- financial area, agriculture, regulation -- you know, various things.

And so, you know, I'm just asking whether, you know, it's a difficult thing to answer to anyone, but can a global government, can a global network work without enforcement power? And so far, the answer seems to be no.

DR. SLAUGHTER: I think that goes to the heart of what I'm arguing and why it's so different from the Kyoto Protocol or Landmines, which is to say that, traditionally, if you separate the two worlds and you say, "In the international system, we're going to have treaties or organizations, and we're going to pass treaties, and then they're going to hand down regulations and those have to be enforced," you don't have enforcement power, because the enforcement power is at the national level. The point of the government
Networks -- it's the same people who make the decisions, who decide to cooperate, who agree on a common approach are the ones with the enforcement power.

So when the Basel Committee decides that it's going to change capital adequacy rules, there's no issue of enforcement power. Those are the central bankers talking. And ditto with the environmental regulators. So if the environmental regulators agree that this is what they want to do in terms of a common policy, they have the enforcement capacity.

Now, the question from a national government network point of view is not enforcement capacity, because they have it. It's one of the reasons I think this could be far more effective than a traditional approach.

But then the question is legitimacy because then you say, "Well, yeah, okay, you have the power but we're not going to let the environment ministers decide global environmental policy, because there are many other interests as well."

So then the question is, if you're going to operate this way, you have to figure out how to coordinate the leaders, the legislators -- that's why they are a very, very important missing group here -- and the regulators in ways -- as I gave an example on something like global agricultural subsidies -- you could well imagine that you task networks of ministers to figure out a possible solution, to bring it back to the leaders, who might then take it back to the WTO. You'd have the people you needed most fundamentally on board, and when those regulations were ultimately passed, they will enforce them.

But the whole point here is that if you just proceed through a traditional treaty-based approach, I don't think you have enough enforcement power. But I also don't think you can get enough enforcement power by creating some kind of global bureaucracy. So I'm offering networks of national officials as an intermediate approach and one that I'm saying is already out there. It's growing fast. Let's recognize it and use it.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Okay, I think we're going to go to Germany for our final question.

QUESTION: A follow-up to enemy combatants in Guantanamo. And in view of the upcoming hearings in the Supreme Court and the contentious issue of judicial -- extrajudicial counsel for enemy combatants, do you think that finally we'll have a conflict between the Supreme Court and the Administration on that?

DEAN SLAUGHTER: I predict that we will. I doubt that the outcome is going to be what the ACLU would want completely, but I -- speaking totally personally as a lawyer, I think it's unlikely that the Supreme Court would have taken these cases now if it hadn't decided that it's clear this is going to be a long-term process and that you cannot rule the judiciary out of the debate indefinitely. You know, for a one-year period, maybe a two-year period, all right. But if this is really going to be the kind of war the Administration says, I think the Supreme Court is going to insist on some judicial review, and I predict that they will insist on access to lawyers.

It is so fundamentally against what we stand for to hold somebody without access to a lawyer -- again, certainly an American citizen, but also someone that you could hold potentially for all time, that I think there will be a conflict.

I hope that's not the triumph of hope over expectations.

MR. BOOKBINDER: I'd like to thank Anne-Marie Slaughter for a fine presentation this afternoon.

DR. SLAUGHTER: Thank you all.

MR. BOOKBINDER: Thank you all for coming out. That ends our formal session for this afternoon. Thank you.

(Applause.)