It is a fair criticism that the administration's rejection of the International Criminal Court (ICC) hasn't been persuasively explained to our allies, let alone to the Third World. All that the international public is getting is: The United States alone refuses to submit its personnel to the ICC. This U.S. action is arrogant, contumacious, and a burden on the machinery of justice.

In fact, the decision of the Bush administration was strategically wise. The difficulty lies in explaining to non-Americans why this is so.

Everyone with any experience driving through the international diplomatic thoroughfare knows that the experience can be nightmarish for Americans. We hear honking horns every minute. The mini-policemen at intersections stop us repeatedly, alleging that we have violated the traffic laws in this and that way, often while deposing that other nations are not guilty of similar offenses.

I was a U.S. public delegate at the U.N. General Assembly's 43rd session, in charge of the Third Committee (human rights), and concluded a study of voting patterns on terrorism, colonialism, the Mideast, nuclear proliferation, and the recognition of revolutionaries and governments-in-exile. The only country that voted with the United States 100 percent of the time was South Africa, and in 1973 South Africa was a white man's club.

The U.S. voted 14 times on controversial issues. Great Britain was with us 64 percent of the time; France, 43; Germany and Denmark, 29; Japan, 21; Italy, 36; Greece, 29. Most nations were with us half the time, or less.

Now a country's vote in the United Nations is not the indelible fingerprint of national probity. But the record is instructively there to remind us that the United States disagrees with much of the world. That is as would be expected -- the United Nations did not anticipate unanimity. On the contrary, it gave special protections to a few nations by extending them a veto in the Security Council. The United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China were told that they would never need to submit to U.N. policies they disapproved of. All they needed to do was exercise their veto. This, of course, was regularly done by the Soviet Union, 1945-1991.