« The Weapon of the Weak » for a superpower. Multilateralism and the United States Foreign Policy

Résumé du document

One reads a lot, especially in Europe, about American hegemony, unilateralism and even imperialism. For a lot of observers, that the current United States administration is pursuing an unilateralist foreign policy is obvious. On issues ranging from the Iraqi war to global warming to the International Criminal Court, the United States is currently loosening its commitments to the international community's common agreements. This appears to be tremendously important to America's partners who cannot disentangle themselves from such a set of rules and fear from the viability of the international system inherited from the post World War II era. Therefore, a first set of questions are raised: is America really taking an unilateralist turn? What are the causes that might provoke such an attitude? In such a case, does America differ from other historical dominating countries? The most common answer would be a realistic approach, linking the tremendous power of the United States to a go-it-alone behaviour. The US doesn't need the help of any other country in pursuing its interests and therefore, one can assess that power breeds unilateralism. Thus, the means of action are more important than the ideology in explaining why a country develops a rather unilateralist foreign policy pattern.

Extraits

[...] The USA ignoring the rules of foundational multilateralism would be as the USA violating its own political identity, and therefore is not likely to happen without a major revolution in both international and US domestic scenes. Notes American Multilateralism in Decline?' in Perspectives on Politics, September 2003 Shaping the Post-war Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO', in John G. Ruggie ed. Multilateralism Matters, New York: Columbia University Press ‘Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research', International Journal, autumn 1990 History and the Issues', in Diebold ed. [...]

[...] Therefore, multilateralism serves as a critique of the neorealist paradigm by providing an alternative conceptualization of international politics and its practices. Multilateralism, again according to Kratochwil, has also a clarification impact on regime theory, by stressing the importance of the architectonic nature of the multilateral principles and showing therefore that the formation of regimes is not really driven by issue-specific need for regulation: the form this regulation takes is crucially influenced by the generative logic of the deep structure provided by principles (12). [...]

[...] A definition work : the qualitative dimension of multilateralism From a common point of view, multilateralism refers to international institutions, such as the United Nations Organization of NATO. According to Robert Keohane, there is multilateralism when and where there is practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states This nominal definition of multilateralism may be useful for some purposes, but it poses the problem of submising institutional forms that have traditionally been viewed as being expressions of bilateralism, not multilateralism. [...]

[...] Each one can be, but not necessarily, multilateral in form Multilateralism : a critical theory Multilateralism is a very demanding institutional form, for it requests, according to John Ruggie, two corollaries: the social construction of indivisibility (no segmentation between economic and security realms like in bipolarism for instance) and the belief in diffuse reciprocity (the argument is expected by its members to yield a rough equivalence of benefits in the aggregate and at the end) Therefore, its historical incidence is likely to be less frequent than of its alternatives such as bilateralism or imperialism and that is the reason why it is rather difficult to claim that multilateralism might be a full and successful alternative. However, Friedrich Kratochwil emphasises the critical contribution of the multilateralism theory and its impact on the clarification of regime theory. [...]

[...] Moreover, one should keep in mind the distinction between the rejected contracts and the foundational agreements at the core of multilateralism. However, the current ideology of American key policy-makers is definitely aimed at loosening the ordering multilateral system bounds. Could that be possible? Is it representative of a deep structural shift in the American position or simply a contingent and passing whim? First, the USA might be the last Westphalian state it is nonetheless acting in a non-westphalian era: it is constraint by global politic economy. [...]