LONDON–Does the U.S. have permanent interests even if perhaps it doesn’t believe it has permanent friends? Its performance the last two months over the negociations to create an International Criminal Court suggests that it doesn’t care a toss whether Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, Denmark, Spain, or most of the world for that matter, think it’s important. Indeed, during the tense stand-off in Rome earlier in the month it went so far as to threaten its NATO allies with pulling its troops out of Europe if they didn’t kowtow to the American line and water down the court’s independence.

Quite rightly, the allies called Washington’s bluff and pushed the issue to a vote. When 120 nations voted for the creation of the court and only 8 against, (the U.S., China, Israel, Libya, Quatar, India and Iraq what interesting bedfellows!) the chamber erupted into the kind of cheering more heard on the bleachers than at a diplomatic gathering. The American delegates looked demoralized, part of despised minority, not the proud representatives of a world leader, the country that President George Bush said “the world trusts with power. They trust us to do what’s right.”

America should watch out. There comes a point when isolationism becomes counterproductive. If American political leaders, television chiefs and newspaper editors abrogate all responsibility for an educated public and refuse to give leadership, knowledge and inspiration to rank and file Americans then to be consistent they should not stop here, but wind the clock back to the 1920s when isolationism was rather more viable. But then there was little overseas investment, only a small fraction of the economy engaged in foreign market places and the inward flow of money into Wall Street countable on one hand, not to mention an absence of long-range rocketry.

America’s opinion leaders need to take a leaf out of Madison Avenue: you CAN change people’s opinions and there’s nothing wrong with trying to–it’s certainly not elitist. For starters, how about a government blitz of TV commercials, replaying the wreckage on the ground of PanAm 103, the flight that was blown out of the sky by Libyan terrorists, according to U.S. and British investigators. The voice over would be minimal: “The world has no recognized way of prosecuting those we suspect of perpetuating this dastardly act. That’s why we need an International Criminal Court.”

It is quite a revelation to watch how the Congress is coming round to the replenishment of the International Monetary Fund. For dangerously long, during the East Asian and Russian financial crises, it has refused to budge and offer a single extra dollar for a capital increase, either saying the remedy should be left to market forces or that America shouldn’t be party to an international institution becoming so powerful. But now the evidence suggests the Asian crisis might spill over into Wall St. and undermine every Congressman’s private shareholdings and pension fund and that the beleaguered Russian government may possibly lose control of its nuclear arsenal opinion has suddenly changed. Newt Gingrich, the House Speaker, recently made it plain that Congress will not allow the IMF to run out of money.

American isolationism comes perilously close to playing with fire. It is the kind of walking away from problems (“that faraway country of which we know little”) that has made mud of the name Chamberlain for ever more.

Ironically, just as the White House gave orders to its delegation in Rome to vote against an international criminal court it has been trying to negociate a compromise with Libya. The UN-imposed embargo is badly leaking. Ten years on the relatives of those killed in PanAm 103 have lost all patience with the American and British governments in their insistence that the only trial they would respect is one on their own soil. Now it appears Washington is prepared to consider a trial in a neutral country–Holland.

But ad hocing it round political and legal impasses of this nature, with ten-year delays, is no long term solution. That has been done ever since the Nuremberg trials convicted the Nazi war criminals. It was resolved at the time that a permanent institution was needed for future war crimes and genocide. The Cold War put the issue on ice.

What has America to fear today? This is a question that produces a strange answer. America has no recent skeleton in the closet. There have been no American atrocities in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti or Bosnia.

Yet the Pentagon has succeeded in undermining support for the court, voiced at one time quite regularly by both President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. And the Pentagon’s interest? Apparently to protect its highly dubious Joint Combined Exchange Training Program which operates in secret defiance of successive Congressional limitations on foreign military activities in countries with poor human rights records. Recently revealed was the training by the American military of Indonesian special forces which, if Suharto had not decided to step aside, would have been used to put down pro-democracy demonstrators.

Why is the military tail wagging the civilian dog in Washington? The same happened last year with the treaty to outlaw land mines, which again left the U.S. isolated from its allies. The U.S. has a greater and more permanent interest in promoting a world ruled by law not by military might–“In the midst of arms, law stands mute”, as Cicero declared in Rome 2,000 years ago. America should moreover be careful of riding so rough shod over its friends. In this day and age interests and friends often go together.