The United States as a Global Citizen

By Mary A. Dempsey

As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, the milestone moment invites a clear-eyed look at how international law has shaped the nation—and how the nation has shaped international law in return. Over 250 years, U.S. engagement with the world has evolved through shifting political priorities, expanding global responsibilities, and ongoing debates about the role our country should play on the international stage.

GW Law faculty experts in international, foreign relations, and comparative law—bringing sharply different viewpoints—take up those questions. They examine how the principles that once defined U.S. influence have evolved, whether they still carry weight, and what new ideas may guide the country’s posture in the years ahead.

The American Global Legacy
Professors Edward Swaine and Sean Murphy

International law was important to the country’s founding generation in a way that may be difficult for us to understand now,” said Edward Swaine, the Charles Kennedy Poe Research Professor at GW Law and a former counselor on international law at the U.S. Department of State. Even before the Declaration of Independence was written, he noted, Benjamin Franklin reported that members of the Continental Congress were “continually” studying an international treatise on what was then known as the Law of Nations.

“This was fundamental to the founding fathers. Being a small state, they thought it was necessary that they mastered how nations were required to conduct themselves. The Declaration of Independence, from the standpoint of international law, was an attempt to establish a web of relationships with other states,” Swaine said. “At the end of the document it said, in effect, ‘We’re open for business. We’re interested in entering into congress with other states. We’re ready to sign treaties.’”

The U.S. Constitution adopted in 1789 also carried references to war powers, treaties, international commerce, and maritime affairs, a sign that the new country, even at its beginning, had an eye on the world.

“When the Constitution was adopted and the first statutes enacted after the founding of the republic, it is striking to see how many of their provisions have to do with international affairs,” said Sean D. Murphy, the Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law and a former member of the U.N. International Law Commission. “The founders were looking out at the world and recognized that the United States was a relatively weak country surrounded by European powers, with the British in Canada, Spain in Florida, and France out west. If the United States didn’t abide by international law as it was expected to, that could trigger armed conflict.”

Indeed, in many ways, the United States was created through international law. International acquisitions in its first century—including the Louisiana Purchase from France, the Oregon Territory from Britain, Alaska from Russia—extended the new nation’s geographic borders while shaping its relationships with some of the most powerful countries on the planet.

The United States approached foreign relations as an avenue for power and authority, but also as a tool to peacefully resolve international disputes. This push for military restraint was evident when the United States and Britain took their dispute over seal hunting before an international tribunal in Paris. The 1893 Bering Sea Arbitration more clearly defined maritime jurisdiction while also protecting seal populations. That was followed by the Hague Peace Conference, which set up the Permanent Court of Arbitration as a forum to resolve conflicts. The court’s first case resolved a U.S. dispute with Mexico over a fund for religious endowments in California.

A contested border issue with the United States, Canada, and Britain was settled through the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal. Then came U.S. sponsorship of the 1907 Drago-Porter Convention, which generally prohibited the use of military force to collect foreign public debts. By 1909, the United States had negotiated a web of bilateral arbitration treaties with more than 20 foreign powers.

“Of course, it’s hard to make a claim that the United States was sowing flowers everywhere. It was exploiting its power and using treaties to subjugate others in some cases,” Swaine said. “It’s easier to say the United States has long viewed its ability to develop international law as a tool for its advantage, rather than something more charitable, whether that meant becoming a state coequal at its founding, as a way of growing by adding territory, or as a way of resolving disputes with other states.”

Ironically, it was through war that the country’s advocacy for peace and justice became most powerful.

With World War I, the country’s position as a rising military and economic power opened the door to President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. This playbook for ending the war and preventing future global conflicts espoused principles of free trade, open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, national self-determination, human rights, and creation of an international peacekeeping body.

“Wilson took what had been developed as part of our national law in the Bill of Rights and largely transposed it to the international domain. I think other countries were looking to find a way out of the quagmire of world war, and they were very receptive to Wilson’s overtures,” Murphy said.

The 1919 Paris Peace Conference whittled away much of the proposal, although one major point survived: establishment of the League of Nations. However, the United States did not become a member, one of many moments when it championed inspiring propositions but did not join their frameworks.

World War II sparked some of the most durable U.S. contributions to global justice. After the war, states were motivated to develop the U.N. Charter, which took a broad view of the illegal use of force and established a new mechanism for collective security through the U.N. Security Council. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt guided the success of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—a landmark of U.S. foreign policy. The Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, along with the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, entrenched the ethical influence of the United States.

Murphy said he can see advantages to the retrenchment that began in the 1990s, even if it weakens the role of the United States.

“We are not living in the world we had before. It’s a better world in many respects, with longer lifespans, medical breakthroughs, more renewable energies, and remarkable technological progress. In the context of human rights, in constitutions across the world are found some of the same rights that we have in our Bill of Rights. Indeed, some countries have taken the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights that Eleanor Roosevelt helped create and incorporated it verbatim in their constitutions,” he said. “By the United States being a less dominant player, it might allow other countries to step up economically or politically, creating a more level playing field for international law. It could allow regional organizations to take on more of the role of coordinating transnational behavior.

“If so, then it’s not necessarily a statement about the decline of the United States, but more about the maturing of other countries and other regions, of a continuing upward trend in the way countries around the globe participate in the international system,” he added.

If the U.S. is no longer the voice behind international law, how will the world cope with climate change, war, famine, pandemics, and other global challenges? What will the future world order look like?

Many are watching China’s rise. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney envisions “middle powers” and smaller countries uniting to advance global policy marked by liberal democratic values. Religious authorities and states have gained traction. Fragmented informal alliances are arising around specific issues.

In a world once commanded by monarchies, the international order advanced by the United States was distinctive. It integrated domestic law with international law, pushing aside Westphalian principles in order to embrace moral benchmarks that included democratic governance, individual rights, and private property rights. But after the Cold War ended and the threat of the Soviet Union was removed, Murphy said, a slow shift started.

“It is in this time period that the United States begins to lose sight of some of the aspirations it had in the post-World War II period,” Murphy said. “Popular opinion begins to see the United States as using too much of its own economic resources to support others. Government leaders begin to feel that the international rules the United States helped to create have shackled its interests. And in so doing, sight is lost of the value of being in a rules-based relationship with other states, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

“You begin to see the United States pull back from the United Nations, from ratifying the Convention on the Law of the Sea, from joining the International Criminal Court, from supporting the World Trade Organization, and so on,” he added. These shifts come against the backdrop of a country and a world that have changed in far-reaching ways since 1776. For starters, there are fewer kings and more democracies.

Domestically, executive power has strengthened. From the Emancipation Proclamation to the New Deal to the Korean War, presidents have bypassed Congress to act quickly, in secrecy, or without public deliberation. The Trump administration has made that strategy an anchor of its playbook as partisan politics dilute the checks-and-balances power of the legislative and judicial branches of government.

“In international affairs, we have for a long time been trending toward executive authority without [oversight by] Congress,” Swaine said. “That is a trend that is difficult to square with the Declaration of Independence.”

Evolving technology, weakened international institutions, and shifting geopolitics are among the many influences rewriting the international law landscape. The United States still holds enormous leverage. It has a massive, technologically sophisticated military, and the U.S. dollar is the closest thing to a world currency. But, more and more, U.S. foreign policy appears to be pivoting away from the international order it spent two centuries building.

The Future of Foreign Relations Law
Professor Laura Dickinson

“The U.S. played a tremendously important role in shaping the post-World War II international legal order, including key treaties such as the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, which regulate how armed conflict is fought, and the international human rights treaties, which protect against abuses to human dignity in peacetime,” said Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law Laura Dickinson, whose work focuses on national security, human rights, the law of armed conflict, and foreign affairs privatization. “The United States was also at the forefront of establishing key international institutions, including the United Nations, NATO, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and many others.

“These institutions protect liberal democratic values and the rule of law in international affairs,” she said. “One question is whether these institutions and these laws will persist.”

Dickinson said resistance to liberal values and the rule of law has come from multiple corners. She called Russia a “longtime scofflaw” and pointed to China’s efforts to advance illiberal goals. She also noted that the United States has not been supporting international institutions as strongly as it has in the past.

New threats are emerging to global peace and security, Dickinson said. Some of that momentum is driven by big nations’ aggression against smaller states, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s threat to Taiwan. Many commentators have raised questions about U.S. interventions in Venezuela and Iran.

At the same time, the birth of combat drones and cyber-weapons has given small countries—and terrorists—new leverage against bigger opponents. The availability of autonomous weapons systems that operate with less human control, the growing ability of militaries to use generative AI tools, and the spread of conflict to urban battlegrounds are also putting pressure on existing legal frameworks, Dickinson said. For example, it is much harder to minimize civilian harm, and terrorist groups often exploit the urban setting by operating out of dense, civilian areas.

Since AI tools are generating a need for data, she explained, military operations often involve attacks on data. However, if there are no kinetic effects when data is destroyed or acquired, it is unclear if the law of armed conflict applies at all.

While new technologies and tools may be speeding up the pace of war, they also offer promise to enhance the rule of law, such as through capabilities to enhance precision in targeting, minimize civilian harm, and even deliver humanitarian aid and investigate atrocities.

The United States is still positioned to lead within international organizations and globally on these cutting-edge legal and ethical issues, but will it continue to do so?

“I think we’re at a crossroad,” Dickinson said. “That answer is unclear.”

The U.S. and the Global Economy
Professor William Dodge

The country also took the lead on a rules-based web of global commerce. At the end of World War II, with Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China decimated, the United States had become the world’s dominant industrial economy. Its support for new institutions—notably the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—underpinned the free movement of goods and capital across borders.

“There was a desire after World War II to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression,” said William Dodge, the Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence. “And countries that are more economically integrated and more prosperous are less likely to go to war. Thomas Friedman 30 years ago called it the Big Mac Theory of Conflict Prevention. Two countries that have a McDonald’s will not go to war with each other.”

Economic tools, including trade, have also been weaponized to achieve political goals, a strategy currently used aggressively by the United States.

“Using economic tools for political influence, things like sanctions, export controls, and tariffs, represents a very different approach to the international economic environment,” Dodge explained. “The ideas in the 1990s were about free trade, tariffs, and just-in-time logistics. There was a belief that greater prosperity and greater interdependence would lead to more peace. We now use interdependence to create conflict. We’re in a mindset that views everything through the lens of national security, with a very narrow concept of what national security is.”

“Other countries are going to find alternatives—although it’s difficult to predict what they will be,” Dodge said. “It will take a while, but I don’t think we’ll go back to the system that existed for 80 years following World War II. Another 250 years from now, we may not even have international law. We may simply find other ways of organizing the world.”

Although sometimes slow to fulfill its own aspirations, the United States has driven great strides in international law over the past 250 years. Dodge points to the famous “Spirit of Liberty” address on the essence of democracy that Judge Learned Hand delivered at an “I am an American Day” celebration in 1944. The GW Law scholar fears the current government is abandoning that vision.

“I think about his speech in connection with the current political moment,” Dodge said. “Law is important, but legal structures only get you so far. Judge Hand said, ‘Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.’

“I fear the spirit of liberty is dying.”