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Such a policy under Clinton in the former Yugoslavia, where NATO was deployed for the first time in an offensive military capacity without the approval of Congress, led to the famous case of Army Specialist Michael New refusing orders to serve a foreign U.N. commander in Macedonia. After saying he had signed up for the green team, not the blue team, he was court-martialed and discharged for "bad conduct." His lawyers in the Michael New Action Fund (web site)fought the discharge in the courts for over 10 years, arguing that presidential orders to report to the U.N. were illegal and unconstitutional. While the Supreme Court ultimately refused to review the case, many members of Congress and the public rallied to Michael New's defense.

Clinton had ordered U.S. troops to serve the U.N. under the still-secret Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 25, which has never been repealed by President Bush. Although Bush had promised never to assign U.S. troops to U.N. command, American soldiers have continued to be inducted into U.N. "peacekeeping" operations during his administration. He has also begun to cooperate with the ICC and on January 5 ordered the airlift of military supplies to Darfur in support of a U.N. military force.

Schwartz's job, quite clearly, is to dramatically expand this policy and get the Senate to ratify the ICC treaty and accept unconstitutional ICC jurisdiction over American troops. Such an approach would mark the end of U.S. military superiority and perhaps the end to U.S. status as a superpower.

Officially, Schwartz is identified merely as a "member" (web site) of the Obama-Biden "working group" on national security with jurisdiction over U.N. issues. In addition to Power, members of the "national security team" on "US/UN" issues are Michael Pan, Jennifer Simon, Elizabeth Cousens, Grant Harris, and Victoria Holt. No detail about these individuals or their backgrounds is officially provided, but some information is available (web site) through research conducted from public Internet sources. Many have links to the U.N., leftist think tanks, or Congressional Democrats.

Letters to Podesta and Schwartz seeking an explanation of the failure to disclose these meetings―and what was discussed in them and what documents were exchanged or provided―have gone unanswered.

Publicly, the media focus has been on personalities―such as whether Senator Hillary Clinton, whose nomination as Secretary of State is the subject of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday, can get along with Susan E. Rice, Obama's nominee as Ambassador to the U.N., whose nomination will be the subject of a hearing on Thursday.

This "controversy," however, is largely phony, since Clinton and Rice are both associates of Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, a prominent advocate of "global governance" and increased U.S./U.N. collaboration. Talbott, one of the leading foreign policy thinkers in the Democratic Party, was an official in the Clinton State Department and is considered an old friend of Hillary Clinton, while Talbott and Rice, another former Clinton State Department official, served together at Brookings.

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