7.  Describe your view of the meaning of American sovereignty. How would your
administration approach issues related to preserving and protecting American sovereignty in the 21st century? Please provide specific examples related to such things as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, UNESCO, international treaties, etc.

 

Mike Huckabee:

I will never relinquish one iota or one inch of our sovereignty.  I was the first presidential candidate to oppose the Law of the Sea Treaty.  I don’t have much faith in the U. N. except for some humanitarian missions.  I oppose the U. N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the North American Union, and the Kyoto Treaty.  I will never appoint judges who rely on foreign case law in reaching their decisions. 

John McCain:

The American president must jealously guard, preserve and protect American sovereignty, putting any element of it at risk only when the gains from doing greatly outweigh the actual and potential costs and with appropriate safeguards – which is why I have deep reservations regarding the Law of the Sea Treaty.  Like all other nations, the United States must reserve the sovereign right to defend our vital national security when and how we deem necessary. Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom, knowledge and resources necessary to succeed. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, it is in the national interests of the United States to persuade our friends and allies that we are right, and to be willing to be persuaded by them.

But our partners must be good allies, too.  No alliance can work unless all its members share a basic faith in one another and accept an equal share of the responsibility to build a peace based on freedom. 

I believe we should expand the circle of our democratic community, not by surrendering sovereignty but by strengthening its reach through key partnerships.  We should start bringing democratic peoples and nations from around the world into one common organization, a worldwide League of Democracies.  Too often, the United Nations has simply failed to act responsibly if it acts at all.  This new organization would not be like the universal-membership and failed League of Nations of Woodrow Wilson, but much more like what Theodore Roosevelt envisioned: like-minded nations working together in the cause of peace and freedom. It would be the one organization where the world's democracies could come together to discuss problems and solutions on the basis of shared principles and a common vision of the future.

I also believe that we have a strong national interest in upholding and strengthening international laws and norms, such as the Geneva Conventions.  We do so not out of a misguided desire to surrender sovereignty, but because it is profoundly in our interest to do so, since our failure to abide by these rules puts our own soldiers at risk.

America has fought a Revolution, a Civil War, two world wars and a Cold War to vindicate the principles we hold dear and to ensure that freedom could be enjoyed, as Abraham Lincoln promised, “by all people of all colors everywhere.”  We were right to struggle for these values then, and we are right to do so today.

Ron Paul:

American sovereignty means protecting our borders and our national interest from all threats.  My administration would seek to secure our borders with Mexico and Canada, and remove the United States from the entangling alliances which it has entered against the advice of the founders.  I have introduced legislation to remove the United States from the United Nations every year since returning to Congress in 1997, and I will continue to push for ending our relationship with the UN as president.  I have also urged the ending of our membership in the WTO.  Such supra-national organizations impose their will on us without any respect to our laws or traditions.  The United States must be free to act in its own best interest, not in the interests of a board of bureaucrats that are not responsible to the American people.   

I also favor ending our interventionist foreign policy.  By encouraging true free trade and commerce with and travel to all nations, we can greatly protect our national sovereignty.

 

Mitt Romney:

History has shown that a strong America, with the ability to act and defend our sovereignty and our interests abroad, is vital to serving and protecting the American people and building a safer world.  Throughout this campaign, I have made clear that I will act to exert and defend America’s sovereignty and stand strong against international institutions that can harm America’s interests or create unaccountable international bureaucracies like those threatened under the proposed Law of the Sea Treaty.

This means we need to talk honestly about where international organizations and alliances have failed and act where they do so. The United Nations has failed to contain aggression, failed to stop proliferation and failed to act when confronted with genocide.  This failure is all the more troubling as the Iranian regime both incites genocide against Israel and pursues the nuclear weapons that would make such genocide possible.  The United Nations’ failures often stem from a lack of community of interest on the part of the members. I have called for America to withdraw all support for the UN Human Rights Council that virtually ignores the governments with the worst records on human rights, like Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan, while targeting Israel.  When the UN and other international organizations undermine our interests and sovereignty we should speak clearly and act to unite nations with shared values in more effective ways to achieve our shared goals.

 

Fred Thompson:

American sovereignty was established by the Declaration of Independence and reinforced by the U.S. Constitution.   Explicit in these documents is the principle of consent – power is transferred from the people to the federal government in a specific and enumerated manner for specific purposes.   To enable the federal government to engage in effective foreign affairs, Article VI of the  Constitution allows it to enter into treaties and establishes these agreements as the supreme law of the land provided that they are not contrary the  Constitution.  Furthermore, the  Constitution allows the President under Article II to make treaties only with and by the Advise and Consent of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate.  These provisions were intended to ensure that the U.S. sovereignty is not transferred or conveyed to another nation or international organization.

Over the last 50 years, however, there have been numerous attempts to undermine U.S. sovereignty through international agreements and conventions.  These efforts are often intended to regulate the domestic concerns of our nation by reaching into our borders and  binding our citizenry.

Advocates for these agreements often argue that international conventions are needed to address problems affecting several different nations and to bring unanimity to the international community.   They believe the U.S. displays true leadership when it agrees to yield the rights of its people to international organizations that are not bound by our laws and are not constrained by the principle of consent of the governed.

I could not disagree more strongly with these advocates for ceding U.S. sovereignty.   Agreements like the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change, the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea undercut U.S. sovereignty by requiring the American people to comply with international mandates developed and arbitrated by international decision-makers who are neither accountable to nor elected by the American people.   These types of international agreements, such as international multilateral trade agreements, can be beneficial to U.S. interests, but they must be evaluated very carefully to ensure they never intrude excessively on our sovereignty.

I also believe we must be very judicious in our involvement in the United Nations.  While I believe the United Nations provides a useful forum for resolving disputes, all too often the U.N. has taken on issues beyond the scope of its charter and engaged in activities that run contrary to the beliefs and freedoms of our country.   The recent U.N. decision, for example, that allowed nations under Security Council sanction for gross abuses of human rights to be members of the newly-formed Human Rights Council was appalling and contradicted by the very purposes of the Council.  In another instance, the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that international human rights law requires all nations to adopt strict gun control laws.  These “minimum” provisions were much more restrictive than any of those on the books anywhere in the U.S. and would almost certainly violate the Second Amendment of our Constitution.

Finally, I would seek to appoint judges who do not rely on international law and international and foreign legal developments in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.  We do not share the same legal framework as other nations.  I agree with Justice Scalia that the Framers of our Constitution would have been surprised by the notion that the meaning of the Constitution could be determined by reference to foreign law.  The views of prospective judicial nominees on this subject would be important to know.

 

Rudy Giuliani

As a matter of policy, Rudy Giuliani does not respond to questionnaires, but his campaign provided a letter summarizing his positions. Click the above link to read the letter.

 

Click here to return to the main Questionnaire page

All responses are listed in alphabetical order. The American Conservative Union provides these responses for public information only. ACU neither endorses these candidates nor their responses.