Multilateralism

An approach to international trade, the monetary system, international disarmament and security, or the environment, based on the idea that if international cooperative regimes for the management of conflicts of interest are to be effective, they must represent a broad and sustainable consensus among the states of the international system. Multilateralism therefore lends itself to issues where clear common interests in the international community are identifiable. It should be thought of in contrast to strictly unilateral or bilateral initiatives.

Many recognized that during the inter-war years the exclusionary nature of bilateral bargains and the frequent resort to unilateral action had contributed to the breakdown of the international economy and the onset of war. Multilateralism therefore became the norm in such post-war agreements as Bretton Woods, the World Trade Organization/GATT, the United Nations, and, more recently, accords on the ozone layer or global warming. On questions of national security states have often proved reticent to accept the constraints of multilateral diplomacy, but there have been notable examples of multilateral action through the UN in the post-war period.

Global multilateralism has, however, been challenged, particularly with respect to trade, by emerging regional arrangements such as the European Union or NAFTA, not in themselves incompatible with larger multilateral accords. More seriously, the original sponsor of post-war multilateralism in economic regimes, the United States, has turned towards unilateral action and bilateral confrontation in trade and other negotiations as a result of frustration with the intricacies of consensus-building in a multilateral forum. As the most powerful member of the international community by far, the United States has the least to lose from a defection away from multilateralism, and the weakest nations the most, but the cost for all would be high.

In disarmament and arms control, important changes have also taken place in the post-war period. Initially it was felt that effective control of arms would require an ongoing multilateral forum in the context of the United Nations. As the nuclear arms race between the United States and the USSR emerged, however, it became clear that the two superpowers were unwilling to cede the issue of arms control policy to multilateral discussions. Despite consistent multilateral efforts, including the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1967, and the chemical and biological weapons agreement of 1971, key arms control measures depended largely on bilateral superpower accords outside UN processes. Even the multilateral success stories rested on superpower cooperation.

The US-Soviet SALT I agreement of 1972, coupled with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, was followed by SALT II in 1979. These opened the door to further multilateral agreements, especially with the changes in Soviet foreign policy under Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the end of the Cold War. This quickly resulted in the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement of 1990 between NATO and Warsaw Pact members, as well as additional bilateral nuclear arms control agreements such as the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 and START in July 1991. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, even nuclear arms control matters are now essentially multilateral because offshoots of the former USSR (e.g. Ukraine, Kazakhstan) possess nuclear weapons that were once Soviet property. These smaller states have recently agreed (Ukraine in 1994) to transfer their arms to the Russian Federation.

Multilateral agreements more often than not are underpinned by great-power understandings. The conclusion of the WTO Uruguay Round in December 1993 depended on prior EU-US agreements. But the powerful can wreck as well as underpin multilateral agreements. The arrival of a new administration in Washington in 2001 under President George W. Bush has called many aspects of multilateral cooperation into serious doubt, including nuclear arms control treaties and environmental protocols to which the US is a signatory. Without US support the future of multilateral cooperation would become uncertain.

— Geoffrey R. D. Underhill

Trade or diplomatic negotiations among several nations. (See diplomacy and recognition; compare bilateralism and unilateralism.)

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Multilateralism is a term in international relations that refers to multiple countries working in concert on a given issue.

Most^{[citation needed]} international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization are multilateral in nature. The main proponents of multilateralism have traditionally been the middle powers such as Canada, Australia, Switzerland, the Benelux countries and the Nordic countries. Larger states often act unilaterally, while the smaller ones may have little direct power at all in international affairs aside from participation in the United Nations (by consolidating their UN vote in a voting bloc with other nations, for example). Moreover, multilateralism involves all^{[citation needed]} nations acting together as in the UN and does not^{[citation needed]} involve regional or military alliances, pacts or groupings.

The converse of multilateralism is unilateralism in terms of political philosophy.

History

The first^{[citation needed]} modern instances of multilateralism occurred in the nineteenth century in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic Wars where the great powers met to redraw the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. The Concert of Europe, as it became known, was a group of great and lesser powers that would meet to resolve issues peacefully. Conferences such as the Conference of Berlin in 1884 helped reduce great power conflicts during this period, and the 19th century was one of Europe's most peaceful.^{[citation needed]}

Industrial and colonial competition, combined with shifts in the balance of power after the creation - by diplomacy and conquest - of Germany by Prussia meant cracks were appearing in this system by the turn of the 20th century. The concert system was utterly destroyed by the First World War. After that conflict world leaders created the League of Nations in order to try to prevent another conflict of similar scale. A number of international arms limitation treaties were also signed such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. But the League proved insufficient to prevent Japan's conquests in Eastern Asia in the 1930s, escalating fascist aggression and, ultimately, the outbreak of the Second World War from 1939.^{[citation needed]}

After the Second World War the victors, having drawn experience from the failure of the League of Nations, created the United Nations in 1945 with a structure intended to address the weaknesses of the previous body. Unlike the League, the UN had the active participation of the United States and the Soviet Union, the world's two greatest contemporary powers. Along with the political institutions of the UN the post-war years also saw a wide array of other multilateral organizations such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (now the World Trade Organization), the World Bank (so-called 'Bretton Woods' institutions) and the World Health Organization develop. The collective multilateral framework played an important role in maintaining world peace in the Cold War.^{[citation needed]} Moreover, United Nations peacekeepers stationed around the world became one of the most visible symbols of multilateralism in recent decades.

Today there are myriad multilateral institutions of varying scope and subject matter, ranging from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); although many such organizations were founded or are supported by the UN, by no means are all of them maintained within the UN system.

Challenges

The multilateral system has encountered mounting challenges in the period since the end of the Cold War. The United States has become increasingly dominant on the world stage in terms of military and economic power at the same time as it increasingly questions the relevance of multilateral processes to its interests, in some cases^{[weasel words]}. Concurrently, a perception has developed among some internationalists^[who?] that the United States is more inclined to act unilaterally in situations with international implications. This trend began^{[citation needed]} when the U.S. Senate, in October 1999, refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which President Bill Clinton had signed in September 1996. Under President George W. Bush the United States has rejected such multilateral agreements as the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel land mines and a draft protocol to ensure compliance by States with the Biological Weapons Convention. Also under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the Nixon administration and the Soviet Union had negotiated and jointly signed in 1972.

See also

• Democratic mundialization
• Mundialization
• Unilateralism (antonym)
• Bilateralism

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