Andrew Harnik/AP

National security adviser John Bolton speaks at a Federalist Society luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel, in Washington, Sept. 10. He said Washington would not cooperate with The Hague-based International Criminal Court and threatened it with sanctions, saying it put US sovereignty and national security at risk.

National security adviser John Bolton’s vigorous defense Monday of national sovereignty in the face of what he views as globalism run amok was enthusiastically received by his immediate audience, the Washington-based Federalist Society.

Ambassador Bolton, the White House’s über nationalist and defender of American hard power, directed warning shots against the International Criminal Court and its purported plans to take up alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and in third-country “black sites.” Underlying his remarks was what he called President Trump’s reassertion of national sovereignty after years of erosion at the behest of President Obama and other internationalists.

“This administration will fight back to protect American constitutionalism, our sovereignty, and our citizens,” Bolton said. “No committee of foreign nations will tell us how to govern ourselves and defend our freedom.”

But his conservative audience’s response notwithstanding, US public support for Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from multilateralism and collective action on global issues is less clear.

Indeed, some international affairs experts see a growing gap between the president’s anti-internationalist actions – from withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and the United Nations Human Rights Council, to funding cuts to UN organizations – and an American public that surveys show favor robust US involvement in addressing global security and economic challenges collectively.

That is not to say Americans favor global government. Yet support for globally addressing issues from security and peace-keeping to the environment and trade seems to have steadily grown.

“If you look at recent polls, you see growing public support for international institutions and multilateral cooperation, even occasionally support for supranational entities or powers,” says Stewart Patrick, director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ program on international institutions and global governance in Washington. “That support does not appear to buy into the absolutist vision of national sovereignty that sees something like the ICC as a grave threat to the US constitution.”

Mr. Patrick – whose 2017 book, “The Sovereignty Wars,” argues that America can both safeguard its national sovereignty and be a robust participant in international institutions and global problem-solving – says most Americans are comfortable with a more elastic conception of national sovereignty that basically says you have to give a little to win a little.

“I think most Americans support the notion that if the US can gain influence by participating in international institutions,” Patrick says, “it’s worth the cost of some measure of freedom of action.”

Patrick worked in the State Department over some of the same years as Bolton, and says he recalls him even then acting to pre-empt any suggestion of US cooperation with the ICC.

Consistent public support

If anything, recent surveys of American attitudes toward international institutions and engagement in global affairs suggest growing support for US involvement, particularly in the UN.

“For a long time the American public has not been on the same page as those in our government and elsewhere with a muscular commitment to national sovereignty,” says Dina Smeltz, senior fellow in public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “On the contrary, the public is much more supportive of a range of international institutions and working with other countries to address global issues.”

That support extends specifically to the ICC, Ms. Smeltz says. Citing results of the Chicago Council’s annual survey of US attitudes on global affairs, set to be published in October, she says this year’s survey shows a slight upward trend in support for US participation in the ICC, which has hovered around 70 percent for over a decade.

SOURCE:

Chicago Council Surveys

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Other surveys confirm this broad support for US global engagement. One study published last year by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed a “dramatic rise” in positive views of the UN over the last decade.

Whereas fewer than half of Americans (48 percent) had a favorable view of the UN in 2007, that had climbed to nearly two-thirds (64 percent) by mid-2016.

Another survey by the Chicago Council last year found that growing numbers of American young people have a tarnished view of US interventionism, particularly of the military variety. But the survey found that Millennials do not equate their views with isolationism or a US withdrawal from global engagement, but rather with a desire for a more humble and realist US role in the world.

‘Americans govern Americans’

In post-speech remarks to reporters Monday, Bolton asserted that the Trump administration will continue with its absolutist view of national sovereignty – and suggested that the president could take further steps to disentangle the US from supranational restrictions, for example a withdrawal from the World Trade Organization. Trump has threatened to pull out of the WTO.

“The Trump administration view is that Americans govern Americans. How’s that for a radical thought?” quipped the former US ambassador to the UN.

Asked specifically about further steps Trump might take to curtail multilateral institutions such as the WTO and US involvement in them, Bolton said, “concern for national sovereignty is extremely important to the administration. How that plays out in future decisions, I’d rather not forecast,” he added, “but I think it is something that goes directly to democratic theory of who governs.”

In his lengthy comments on the ICC, Bolton said the US position should not be interpreted as opposition to justice for victims of atrocities but rather as adherence to the conviction that perpetrators “should face legitimate, effective, and accountable prosecution for their crimes by sovereign national governments.”

He took US rejection of the ICC further than ever, however, announcing that any effort by the court to investigate American citizens would be met with sanctions, travel restrictions, and even criminal prosecution of ICC judges and prosecutors involved in those investigations.

The US has never been a state party to the ICC, established by the Rome treaty in 1998, although the US did sign the statute establishing the court under President Clinton. Bolton said Monday that President George W. Bush’s 2002 authorization for him as then-undersecretary for arms control and international security to “unsign” the Rome statute was “my happiest day in government.”

In bad company

But other international legal experts and human rights proponents take a dim view of the US action, saying it puts the US in a league with the world’s worst violators of international norms against genocide and other crimes against humanity – many of whom also reject the court’s authority and legitimacy.

“The ICC was created to end impunity for perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, when nations are unwilling or unable to prosecute,” said Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association, in a statement Tuesday. “Despite its complicated relationship with the Court, the US has always stood strong against impunity, and supported the ICC’s jurisdictional mandate involving atrocities committed in Sudan and Libya.”

In his view, he added, “the Trump administration seeks to dismantle completely a legal entity, the sole purpose of which is to bring justice to victims of the most unimaginable atrocities.”    

When asked, Bolton said he strongly supports US participation in multinational security organizations like NATO, which bring together sovereign nations in the pursuit of common defense interests. And while he espoused no enthusiasm for the UN, which he said is good mostly for “wasting” US taxpayers’ money, he added that most UN activities pose no threat to American sovereignty.

But Smeltz of the Chicago Council suggests that even such a neutral position on US multilateral engagement is out of touch with an American public that exhibits enthusiasm for global engagement – even at the price of some measure of national sovereignty.

“What we see is that Americans understand that to work with international institutions and within the multilateral system, we sometimes have to accept deals and rules that aren’t always going to be the United States’ first choice,” she says. “They get that some aspects of multilateralism might constrain us, but they support strong US involvement, and by wide margins, anyway.”

In the memories of the elders, passed down over bowls of coconut and octopus stew in the shacks of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis, the Chagos Islands were paradise.

They spoke of palm trees bowing their fronds over white sand beaches, and Indian Ocean water so brightly turquoise it hurt your eyes. They spoke of their neat, thatched cottages and the Saturday evening sega dances, a blur of whirling skirts and beating drums.

Karen Norris/Staff

What they didn’t speak of, because they hardly needed to, because everyone listening already knew, was how the story ended.

The Chagos were still paradise. It was just that now, that paradise belonged to someone else.

Between 1968 and 1973, the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago, a freckled spattering of islands equidistant from east Africa, India, and Malaysia, were forcibly removed to make way for a US military base. Today, some two dozen massive military cargo ships bob in the blue waters off the largest island, Diego Garcia. The base, meanwhile, is a coastal American city in miniature, complete with beach BBQ, windsurfing regattas, and coconut bowling tournaments.

But now, Chagos’ original residents and their descendants have renewed reason to hope they might soon go home.

Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the main court of the United Nations, heard arguments about who has the legal right to the islands. On one side was Britain, which formally controls the territory and leases Diego Garcia to the United States for its base. On the other was Mauritius, itself a former island colony of the British, which alleges the Brits snatched the territory from it unlawfully on the eve of its independence – and which has promised to let the Chagossians return.

“Mauritius fully supports their immediate right of return,” Anerood Jugnauth, Mauritius’ former prime minister and president who now heads its delegation to the ICJ, said at the hearing. “But as long as our decolonization is not complete, we are not able to implement a program for resettlement.”

The right to go home would help bring closure, many Chagossians say, to a fight for recognition and basic rights that has sprawled across five decades and two continents, and pitted them – a dwindling group of fewer than 2,000 original islanders and their descendants – against some of the world’s most powerful countries. But the battle at the ICJ could also help set a broader precedent for other countries fighting twenty-first century decolonization battles.

Although the ICJ’s decision is not legally binding, “if Mauritius wins, it will assist in furthering arguments around the global right to self-determination and decolonization,” says Allan Ngari, an international law expert and senior researcher with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in South Africa. “It has the power to say, before the eyes of the law there are not big states and small states – everyone is equal.” And that, he says, could be important in cases before the court over sovereignty issues in the future.

Reuters/File

Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos archipelago, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The island is the site of a major United States military base, on land leased from the British. In early September, the International Court of Justice held hearings in a dispute over the Chagos's sovereignty.

A population problem

For Chagossians, that equality has been a long time coming.

The islanders, or Ilois, descend from enslaved and indentured Africans and Indians who were brought to the archipelago in the late 1700s to harvest coconuts on French plantations. Over time, the islands became a kind of floating company town, and a distinctive society developed, with its own French-based creole, warbling music, and coconut-heavy cuisine.

More than 1,000 miles away lay colonial Mauritius, which administered the distant Chagos on behalf of the British. Sabrina Jean’s father was 17 in the late 1960s when he boarded a boat to Port Louis for medical treatment, as islanders often did when they needed facilities more advanced than the Chagos’s small hospitals could provide. But when he returned to the dock a few weeks later to sail home, he was brusquely turned away. The Chagos were closed, port officials explained. No one would be allowed to return.

“He was stuck,” says Ms. Jean, now a prominent activist for Chagossian rights. As it turned out, he would never go home again.

Unbeknownst to the Chagossians, they had been caught up in a cold war security deal between the British and their American allies.

A few years earlier, US military officials had approached the British asking for help setting up a military base in a remote area of the Indian Ocean. The Chagos, they reasoned, would be perfect – isolated but within easy range of potential conflict zones in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

There was only one slightly thorny matter. The islands had a small population of “Tarzans and Man Fridays,” one British official explained in a memo.

And so the US and British officials said there were no permanent inhabitants on the island, only migrant laborers they were sending “home” to Mauritius or the Seychelles.

“To recognize that there are permanent inhabitants will imply that there is a population whose democratic rights have to be safeguarded,” one British brief on the Chagos explained.

Anyway, Britain had a bigger issue. Chagos was part of Mauritius, and Mauritius was about to become independent. So, Mr. Jugnauth told the court last week, the British approached the Mauritians with a do-or-die deal: Let us keep Chagos and take your independence, or the whole colony stays with us.

The Mauritians chose independence.

And so the Chagossians were forced into exile. To get residents off the island, authorities began restricting supplies. In 1971, they rounded up pet dogs and gassed them to death, as detailed in David Vine’s “Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia.” In 1973, the remaining Chagossians were finally boarded onto ships and dropped off in Mauritius or the Seychelles.

“To Mauritians, we were a lower class of human,” says Jean, who was born there after her father’s removal. “In school, kids called us monkeys, they mocked us.”

The US, meanwhile, gave the British a $14 million discount on nuclear ballistic missiles as payment for the lease, and went to work building their base.

“That base has been critical to every major US military intervention or war in the greater Middle East since the 1980s,” says Professor Vine, an anthropologist at American University. In recent decades in particular, Diego Garcia acted as a crucial launchpad for major bombing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and allegedly served as a “black site” for detaining terrorism suspects.

'The chance to go home'

Over the decades, Chagossian advocacy groups won a number of concessions from the British government, including cash settlements and in 2000, the right to British citizenship. But the US has repeatedly maneuvered itself away from the conflict. In the ICJ case, the US sidestepped the issue of Mauritius’s rights to the island, joining the United Kingdom, Australia, and Israel in arguing that the sovereignty of the islands must be decided in negotiations between Britain and Mauritius – not an international court.

But Mauritius – along with 17 other countries and the African Union – argued that the time for those kinds of one-on-one deliberations had long passed. (Ninety-four countries had already voted last June in favor of a UN resolution to take the dispute to the court.)

Mauritius and its allies contend that splitting off the Chagos from the rest of Mauritius violated UN resolutions on decolonization that prohibit governing powers from splitting up territories – including a 1965 resolution specifically asking Britain not to divide Mauritius before its independence. The country’s leaders say they were coerced into accepting the split anyway, in order to gain their independence.

But that’s where the international courts have an unique role to play, says Mr. Ngari of ISS. “International courts can help to redress historic power imbalances” between countries, he notes.

A decision on the Chagos is expected in March 2019. Whichever way it goes, many Chagossians say they only want the right to go back to where they came from – whether that place is officially British or officially Mauritian. And many would be happy to share Diego Garcia with the military base, whose current lease runs until 2036.

“The British dumped us, the Mauritians treated us like animals, we have been left by the world to be forgotten,” says Isabelle Charlot, a second-generation Chagossian and the chairperson of Chagos Islanders Movement, a Britain-based advocacy group. “Now we just want the chance to go home.”

Anticipation was high as we boarded Air Force One last Thursday for a two-day trip with President Trump to Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

The day before, The New York Times had published an anonymous op-ed by a “senior administration official” claiming a “resistance” to Trump policies from the inside. And the day before that, tidbits from Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” had come out, portraying a chaotic White House under an unstable boss.

What would Mr. Trump say to us, the reporters traveling with him – and hanging on his every word?

The president didn’t have to say anything. But chances were high, we felt, that he’d want to come back to the press cabin. Which he did – the next morning, right after takeoff from Billings, Mont. And he did not disappoint. Key quotes from our Q&A session, transmitted by us to our editors and the entire Washington press corps after we landed in Fargo, N.D., created instant headlines. 

“Trump says Justice Department should investigate who wrote anonymous New York Times op-ed,” said the news alert on my phone.

I was about two feet away from Trump when he said that in response to a reporter’s question, and I had that “wow” feeling that comes from seeing news happen right in front of you. When you cover the White House, there’s nothing like up-close, off-camera interaction with the president.

But when I tell family and friends I just spent two days flying around the country on Air Force One, they aren’t just interested in Trump. They also want to know about the plane, the setting for many a historic event and Hollywood film. In fact, there’s more than one Air Force One. We flew in a big one, a Boeing 747, with first-class accoutrements – big seats, a basket of fruit and candy ever present, various toiletries and a big stack of terrycloth hand towels in the restroom.

Linda Feldmann/TheChristian Science Monitor

The Monitor's Linda Feldmann (c.) was part of the press pool aboard Air Force One during President Trump's trip to Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, September 6 and 7, 2018.

Sequestered in the back of the plane, the 13 members of the traveling press “pool” – a rotating group of reporters, photographers, and a TV crew – are kept away from the president and accompanying staff and guests. But flying on Air Force One does have its privileges. Tray tables stowed away for takeoff? Not necessary. Seat belts never buckled? Not a problem. Electronic devices still on? Don’t worry about it.

We pool reporters love that we can stay on our phones well after liftoff, keeping connected with the outside world a few extra minutes. Though once the signal fades to black, we’re truly trapped in the presidential bubble. There’s no WiFi inside the press cabin. 

Then there are the delicious meals, prepared in a galley behind the press cabin. They always seem to involve cheese, and are quite hearty, perhaps to keep the Secret Service agents happy. (This observation goes back way before Trump took office, so no judgment on him.) For dinner on Thursday, we were served steak tacos and tres leches cake, with real silverware, tiny glass salt and pepper shakers, and a cloth napkin wrapped in a paper ring featuring the presidential seal. The next evening, on our way back to Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland, we got heaping plates of lasagne, salad, and tiramisu. 

By now you may be wondering who pays for all this. After previous Air Force One trips, I’ve had readers call me out for flying with the president “on the taxpayers’ dime.” The reality, for all the press on board, is that our employers pay the bill – the cost of the flight, the meals, the ground transportation. It’s expensive, but doable (for us, two or three times a year).

It’s an honor and a privilege to serve in the pool. Our job is to serve as the eyes and ears of the entire White House press corps, and, by extension, the public. The reports that we file are directly transmitted to our colleagues, and not censored by the White House press office. And as much as Trump is known for busting norms, it must be noted that he has continued the practice of bringing representatives of the White House press corps with him on trips. There’s no law saying he has to do that. 

True, Trump uses us as props at events – pointing to the back of the arena and calling us “fake news” or more recently, “fakers” (and even more seriously, “enemies of the people,” though that historically ominous slur usually comes by tweet). This treatment is not a joke, and we don’t smile or laugh. We just do our jobs. 

Linda Feldmann/TheChristian Science Monitor

Dinner is served: The press pool's meal aboard Air Force One on September 6, 2018, included steak tacos and tres leches cake.

But there are plenty of good reasons for the press to stay as close to Trump as possible. Getting to ask him questions tops the list. In all my years of flying Air Force One, I had never had a visit with the president. President Barack Obama rarely came back, but Trump – who is more of a schmoozer than his predecessor – does so regularly.

The night before, at our hotel in Billings, some of us badgered Trump aides to bring him back the next day – or better yet, bring us to the front of the plane, where he has an office and other comforts of home. A few pool reporters under Trump have had that privilege.

… 

Sure enough, the next morning, soon after takeoff, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley appeared in our cabin and silently swept his hands upward: Rise up! We knew what that meant. I fumbled for my recorder and iPhone, and seconds later, there was Trump. “This will be off the record,” we were told. That means nothing can be quoted, either by name or more vaguely, such as “senior administration official.” Audio was allowed, but no video.

Trump was in good spirits from the rally the night before, and seemed to enjoy the back and forth with us – on China tariffs, the anonymous op-ed, the Woodward book, North Korea, Robert Mueller.

At one point, Trump temporarily changed the ground rules, suggesting an “off the record” comment could be quoted: “I say ‘off the record,’ but you can use it if you want,” he said of the decline in the Chinese stock market.

Then, as we wrapped up, he was asked the magic question. Can we put everything on the record? After some back and forth, he settled on, “Yeah, just be fair with me.” Then he turned to Mr. Gidley for affirmation. Here’s that part of the “gaggle”:  

THE PRESIDENT:  You okay with that, Hogan?  Do I have that?

Q: It’s up to you, Mr. President. (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think we said anything very tricky, Hogan. What do you think?

Q: You said great stuff.

THE PRESIDENT: Huh?

Q: About the country being great. 

And so, we got what we wanted: the president, answering questions, on the record. 

The rest of the day, fundraisers in Fargo, N.D., and Sioux Falls, S.D., seemed anticlimactic. We also discovered Friday that a hashtag had emerged from the televised Billings rally: #PlaidShirtGuy, a high school student who stood behind Trump making facial expressions that went viral. Eventually, the young man, Tyler Linfesty, was removed from the rally. 

But we in the press pen without telephoto lenses didn’t see that. Thus is life in the presidential bubble – the privileges are many, but the perspective can be narrow.

And what about the future of Air Force One? The current pair, dating to 1987, is being replaced with two new Boeing 747s – and a new look. Instead of the Kennedy-era blue and white color scheme, Trump has ordered red, white, and blue.

“It’s going to be the top of the line, the top in the world,’’ the president told CBS News in July. 

But Trump won’t get to use them, at least as president. They won’t be ready until 2024.

AP Photo

This photo shows the shuttered Beta Theta Pi fraternity house on Penn State University's main campus in State College, Pa. The fraternity was closed up after the February 2017 death of a pledge from a night of hazing and drinking.

At college fraternities across the United States and Canada, the true meaning of brotherhood has just been clarified.

After several high-profile deaths from heavy drinking at parties or initiation rites, the major association representing fraternities announced Sept. 4 that it will no longer allow frat houses to serve hard liquor at chapter facilities and events.

The ban, which is expected to go into effect at hundreds of campuses within a year, is designed to return these private men’s clubs to their original purpose. “At their core, fraternities are about brotherhood, personal development, and providing a community of support. Alcohol abuse and its serious consequences endanger this very purpose,” said Judson Horras, president and chief executive officer of the self-regulating North-American Interfraternity Conference.

The NIC’s move adds to other recent moves in higher education to persuade students, especially incoming freshmen, that liquor is not a liberator from the stress of making friends or fitting into campus life. And the fact that fraternities themselves are taking action – rather than school administrators – hints at a culture shift in Greek life away from the notion that heavy drinking is an obligatory rite of passage.

In recent years, many colleges and universities have tried to regulate fraternities and sororities, such as by delaying the recruitment of freshmen until spring, or have even banned them outright. These measures are designed to prevent deaths from drinking during hazing rituals as well as sexual assaults.

Punitive steps, however, while sometimes necessary, may not be effective if students, both men and women, simply form underground groups off-campus where they can hide destructive behavior. A far more lasting solution is to ensure they are offered healthy pursuits and fulfilling opportunities beyond academic learning.

Restoring the highest meaning of brotherhood (and sisterhood) is a good start. Students must not only find aspiration toward learning and a career but also inspiration about what constitutes the good life.

With so many challenges facing students on campuses, a group of prominent colleges joined together in 2013 and formed the Resilience Project. These schools are pooling ideas on how to assist students in learning from failure and coming out stronger. At Bates College, for example, students are encouraged to discover “purposeful work.”

At Cornell University, fraternities and sororities have emphasized outdoor recreation, such as camping trips. At other schools, frat houses have refocused on volunteering.

Brotherhood can be a great unifier for students if it is based on higher pursuits, such as giving and trust. Forming common bonds is also a sure way to avoid excessive drinking and the tragedies that come from it.