On a number of critical international issues – global warming, illegal small arms sales, germ warfare, ballistic missiles – the U.S. has stood apart from the rest of the world, rejecting treaties, pulling out of agreements, and spurning international consensus.

The administration calls its approach “a la carte multilateralism,” or looking at each issue separately. But critics of the approach see an alarming new pattern where the United States is becoming not an independent thinker but a “rogue state” in the international community. In recent weeks, America has been sharply criticized by European leaders, foreign observers, and her own citizens for:

• Pulling out of the Kyoto treaty on global warming, claiming it’s bad for American business
  
  
• Watering down a pact prohibiting illicit sales of small arms, which kill mostly women and children, asserting it would have infringed on Americans’ right to own guns
  
  
• Threatening to skip the first global conference on racism, set to begin Aug. 31, if its agenda includes Zionism as racism and reparations for slavery
  
  
• Killing a draft treaty to enforce the global ban on germ warfare, saying the treaty would allow international monitors to gain access to U.S. military secrets
  
  
• Threatening to trash the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, a cornerstone of arms control

Is this a principled policy of selective engagement or a cynical demonstration of the arrogance of power? Does it help or harm our long-term interests?