Indispensability and Indefensibility? The United States in the Climate Treaty Negotiations

The United States has a penchant these days for joining international ne gotiations that spin out of control. We went to Kyoto to talk about cli mate change and discovered we couldn't sign the treaty. We went to Ot tawa to talk about landmines and found our military problems ignored by other states. We may be the country, as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright likes to say. But we often set ourselves up as Alamo holdouts, criticized as the indispensable country with indefensible positions.