Research and reading on Shifts in Multilateralism

Research §

Shifts in Multilateralism §

• How would the US be too big for multilateral negotiation regimes?

• During the Bush admin, the US was so big it used unilateral actions to expand its influence

  • through unilateral solutions rather than mutlilateral frameworks in pursuing US’s interest
  💡 Cases of US picking unilateral over multilateral solutions:

  • The Bush administration’s willingness for military intervention when US national security was supposed to be at stake, without even a mandate from the UN Security Council
  • the sudden withdrawal of all support for the implementation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty
  • the US Senate’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)
  • the US refusal to accede to the Statute of Rome on the creation of the International Criminal Court
  • the neutralization – for example through the North American FreeTrade Association (NAFTA) – of multilateral WTO agreements by ‘voluntary’ bilateral covenants with trading partners

• Is mutilateral negotiation regimes becoming obsolete because US won’t use them anymore?

• What are the consequences of US only using unilateral approaches?

• Obama administration changed and recognized the consequences of dismantling the multilateral order (unilateral actions)

  • Collateral damage of one-sided actions can be bad for national interests in the long run
  • a Structural Realism strategic perception: what is the specific concept its referring to?

• we live in a world of increasing mutual dependency, with a natural tendency in the direction of regime-building in order to reach more predictable negotiation results

  • if negotiation processes are embeded in strong and stable international structure, it will make gauranteed outcomes possible.

Coping With Challenges §

• New international orders come into being after man-made disasters
  • World War 1 created the League of Nations
  • World War 2 created the United Nations
  • Cold War created NATO and the Warsaw Pact
  • 3 German-French Wars created the European Union
• Regimes are created after major threats arises but only under strict conditions
  • But only if the threatened can’t deal with it on its own and need allies
    • If a strong state is threatened, a regime would hamper its capabilities
  • Also only if Ad-Hoc coalitions can’t be used and institutionalized structure is needed
• New challenges can revive existing organizations that wasn’t used or lost its usefulness
  • Need for peacekeeping in Africa revived The Organization of African Unity, now African Union
  • The need for security, stability, protection of human rights and the emergence of new democratic systems revived the CSCE into the OSCE
• Dilemma of new institutions
  • it creates a bargaining platform, but at the same time it restricts the bargaining range and freedom of the more powerful states
    • Powerful states would rather not be in an institution and form unilateral, bilateral, or trilateral arrangements instead
    • Sometimes states need institutions, but sometimes they choose not to
      • That can be disasterous for the common good of everyone in the institution

Possible Future Development §

• Evolution of regimes could be observed through the increasing cost of violence and the increase of international organization and cooperation
• In the 21st century
  • a equilibrium or peace maintaining instrument is needed for a regime to mature and flourish
    • similar to the past of Mutually assured destruction, risk management, Concert of Europe, or a balance of interest
  • and this can take the first half of the 21st century
  • regimes can only strengthen if states also prioritize less-structured modes of cooperation such as

    • ad-hoc negotiation processes

    • bilateral bargaining because multilateralism doesn’t work without bilateralism

      “As negotiations are the life-blood of regimes, so bilateral negotiation is the gist and juice in creating a new balance of power among the major regimes, whether they are states or international organizations”

• Level of negotiation is another problem
  • Some governments in the European Union push their national problems to the EU to handle and blame them for not being effective
• Inclusiveness is also important as inclusiveness can bring both opportunities but also problems and exclusions even more so.

Conclusion §

Main takeaways

• bargaining with boundaries is a viable alternative to warfare and other tools of conflict management,
• However boundaries could pose problems to effective cooperation that we have to undo. These problems are
  • Geographic boundaries
  • Systemic exclusion
  • Unwillingness to negotiate
  • Regulations obstructing creativity
  • Time Management
• Regimes build networks to deal with negative aspects of boundaries
• Context and processes affect and shape each other in the long run.