Is multilateralism nothing more than a dodge for simple inaction?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Since I came to the World Bank in 2007, I have argued that we must 'modernize multilateralism.'
There are differences in the world community. But we have a common interest in a strong multilateral system.
Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.
It is vital that the World Bank Group continually challenges itself to refresh our development thinking. It is vital that a modernized multilateralism be open to new ideas.
An increasingly multipolar world requires an entirely different kind of U.S. foreign policy: far from being unilateralist, it necessitates a complex form of power-sharing on both a global and regional basis.
Reviewing the record of American intervention in Indochina in the Pentagon Papers, one cannot fail to be struck by the continuity of basic assumptions from one administration to the next. Never has there been the slightest deviation from the principle that a noncommunist regime must be imposed and defended, regardless of popular sentiment.
So the president set out the policy guidance and said it had to take place in a multilateral fashion so that other countries in the region could be invested in the success of this process.
You know that we are not in the regime-change game. We are against interference in domestic conflicts.
International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.
On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.