Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement

✍ Scribed by Stewart Patrick (editor); Shepard Forman (editor)

• Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 520
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

When should the United States cooperate with others in confronting global problems? Why is the U.S. often ambivalent about multilateral cooperation? What are the costs of acting alone? These are some of the timely questions addressed in this examination of the role of multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy. The authors isolate a number of factors that help to explain U.S. reluctance to commit to multilateral cooperation. They then analyze recent policy in specific areas—e.g., the use of force, peacekeeping, arms control, human rights, the United Nations, sanctions, international trade, environmental protection—probing the causes and consequences of U.S. decisions to act alone or opt out of multilateral initiatives. A concluding chapter underscores the point that increasingly pressing transnational problems may require the U.S. to reform its policymaking structures and to reconsider longstanding assumptions about national sovereignty and freedom of action.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Setting the Context
1. Multilateralism and Its Discontents: The Causes and Consequences of U.S. Ambivalence
Part 2: Dimensions of U.S. Multilateralism
2. The United States, International Organizations, and the Quest for Legitimacy
3. The Growing Influence of Domestic Factors
4. Public Attitudes Toward Multilateralism
5. Multilateralism and U.S. Grand Strategy
6. U.S. Unilateralism: A European Perspective
Part 3: Policy in Practice
7. Unilateral Action in a Multilateral World
8. Multilateral Peace Operations
9. Nuclear Weapons: The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and National Missile Defense
10. The Chemical Weapons Convention
11. The United States as "Deadbeat"? U.S. Policy and the UN Financial Crisis
12. Extraterritorial Sanctions: Managing "Hyper-Unilateralism" in U.S. Foreign Policy
13. Unilateralism, Multilateralism, and the International Criminal Court
14. Why Is U.S. Human Rights Policy So Unilateralist?
15. Ambivalent Multilateralism and the Emerging Backlash: The IMF and WTO
16. Climate Change: Unilateralism, Realism, and Two-Level Games
Part 4: The Future of Multilateral Cooperation
17. Multilateralism as a Matter of Fact: U.S. Leadership and the Management of the International Public Sector
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Bibliography
The Contributors
Index
About the Book