As the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) encountered increasing resistance both in and out of Congress, the President began to look for support for the TPP by claiming that serious national security interests would be harmed if the agreement was not passed. In political discourse, a term like “national security” is often used casually, in the manner of a coercive slogan, without explanation of what is meant, even when using it in a crucial way.

Sometimes it is used with a narrow focus primarily meaning military security. However, it is also often used in a much broader fashion connoting an abstraction with multiple facets or dimensions. My own definition drawing on earlier work by Harold Brown and Upeka Premaratne, assumes that “national security” is properly viewed as multi-dimensional. Here it is:

National security is the capability, varying along a continuum from virtually zero to very high, for a nation to protect, maintain and/or strengthen its sovereignty, territorial integrity, population, socioeconomic, and basic political functionality and values in the face of adaptive challenges posed by external aggressors, economic, environmental and climate change, and internal political change.

Trade and other international policies and actions, have consequences relative to national security, either increasing or decreasing it. President Obama claimed that defeating the TPP would degrade the US position on one or more of the critical dimensions of national security, but he did not provide a full analysis of the compensating advantages on other critical dimensions of national security of defeating it ending with an overall result showing that defeat would degrade it.

But, the Investor — State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in the TPP agreement fail to support and defend the Constitution, and even subvert it, as I’ve previously argued in this post, and in an earlier e-book. The line of reasoning offered there, in addition, applies to all the ISDS-based agreements the US has already signed, including NAFTA, as well. They are all unconstitutional! Since they are unconstitutional in the many different ways detailed above, how can they possibly enhance US national security?

Can we give up the Constitution and its implications in the areas of national sovereignty, democracy, consent of the governed, separation of powers, federalism, and the rule of law under Article III courts and still be adding to our national security? The answer is obvious.

Anything that does these things results in a severe decline in key dimensions of our national security, and cannot do anything but degrade it severely in our current international and domestic situation. It is beyond understanding how anyone can claim that any ISDS-based trade agreement enhances our national security, even one, like the now dead TPP, that provides the US with an enhanced position in the Strait of Malacca.