Copenhagen and the Future of International Cooperation Posted by David Shorr

Over at RealClearWorld's The Compass blog, Greg Scoblete weaves together thoughts from Les Gelb, Walter Russell Mead, and himself to glean what the Copenhagen summit tells us about the prospects and limits of future international cooperation. While Gelb and Mead give astute analyses of the dynamics between different players and blocs at the summit itself, Scoblete's own piece from back in July does an especially good job at juxtaposing the hopes and ambitions of the Obama administration against the diplomatic messiness of trying to get things done:

Time and time again, the vision of America rallying the world to confront common dangers blurs into the less-than-thrilling reality of a world with more important things to do. This should not surprise anyone. During the Cold War, when U.S. leadership was arguably at its apex, even allied nations (most famously France) bucked America's will. While the Obama administration has sought to paint the 21st century's threats in menacing terms, climate change and nuclear proliferation haven't quite sharpened as many minds as the Red Army.

This, then, is the terminus of America's global leadership. If the U.S. proceeds along the course set by the Obama administration and defines leadership as the ability to bring other nations along its preferred path, then they should be prepared to define success down. "Solving" the world's problems, as Secretary Clinton suggested, is altogether a bridge too far. Instead, finding a globally acceptable, lowest-common-denominator outcome will be the order of the day (and even that won't be easy).

This captures the dynamic quite nicely. It's not that other nations necessarily have sharply divergent interests or are fundamentally at cross purposes with us. They're at least faintly aware of common global interests -- enough to be dragged along, if not serve as full problem-solving partners. Scoblete is correct that appeals to urgency have yet to concentrate the minds of others, and yet I'm reluctant to "define success down." On the one hand, the lowest common denominator could yield slow and steady progress, as Greg predicts; on the other hand, the price of watering down our collective responses could be steps that fall short of alleviating the problems at hand.

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