James Traub on Winning Back Our Allies

We need to return to our collective enterprises like the UN and the IMF, advises James Traub.

 
James Traub: I mean, the whole idea that this is America's gift to the world is what makes it sound so obnoxious.  I mean, there are many things that had made us seem obnoxious.  I mean, torturing Guantanamo and so forth have made America seem like a country that scarcely has a right to be telling other people how to behave democratically.  But the whole, this whole idea that God poured these democratic blessings on America, and now, in our bounty we are affording it to others that is going to provoke the nationalism even if not [virulently] nationalist person.  And so, clearly, in the future, we have to view this as a [collective] enterprise.  An enterprise which all of the world's democracies recognize as being a matter of deep security as well as a moral imperative for all of them.  So that means working with their allies it means working with the UN, the UN Development Program where we focuses on issues of governance, the rule of law.  Means working with the financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, so, yes, it has to become a [collective] enterprise.