Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization, 1919-1999 (Century Foundation Books (Brookings Paperback))

At the end of the millennium, the US is in danger of losing its vote in the General Assembly for non-payment of its arrears. There are troubling parallels between this situation and the struggles over and within the League of Nations in 1919. Why is America at once so eager to create international bodies and so quick to abandon them? What is it in American political culture that breeds the most ardent supporters and the most vocal detractors of international organizations? This volume seeks to uncover the roots of American ambivalence towards international organizations. It traces eight themes that have resurfaced again and again in congressional and public debates over the course of the 20th century: exceptionalism, sovereignty, nativism and racism, unilateralism, security, commitments, reform, and burden sharing.