Is it relevant? Yeah, but only for coordination international aid to desolate hellholes and making certain countries feel good about themselves. Is multilateralism at an end? No, but I suspect it will be limited to only a couple major countries working together at a time. No big loss in either case.
Cooperative aid and "feel good" between nations are fundamental components of modern geopolitical stability. New American unilateralism, and blatant deferment of humanitarian aid for corporate aid are clearly emerging as dangerous destabilizing influences. Multilateralism is healthier than ever, but the difference is that the United States is presently falling out from the rest of the world, which is not only bad news for "bleeding-heart liberals"- It's bad for business.
I agree with Hype, the end of multilateralism is not good news for anyone. If you are a global-ist (like I am) this creates more un-necessary warfare disrupting the flow of jobs, labour, and economic development. The UN for a capitalist is quite a good thing, it can provide the necessary legal, and governmental backup needed to keep everything going good, more power should be given to the UN not less. No one wants one state to own the world, and it won't happen. What we need is to get rid of this ancient nationalist idiocy and get to making the world into a richer better place.
The United States has been Unilateralist for the majority of its history. Short of a brief respite from 1945 to the early 90's in order to beat the Soviets, the U.S. has followed a policy of fairly strict self-centered thinking. It will be interesting to see what rises from the ashes of the old U.N. when that long dead horse finally quits kicking.
$7 per capita currently goes to the UN from the US, when it is actually paid. Japan, Germany, France, and the UK follow the US in total contributions, but with much higher per capita commitments. What sets them more apart is that these other countries really do honor their commitments to the UN. The US has been continuously in default, and is the organization's greatest debtor and less-than gracious host: 2003 Contributions by Member States UNAUSA
multilateralism isn't dead. it's just that players are switching teams, and some are on the fence the UN is overdue to be reshuffled and refinanced while per-capita US may be not the largest donor, and according to some mysterious "UN Documents" from hype's link it's also the bigges debtor, it still contributes the largest sums to most programs. besides. do you know why it is the greatest debtor? because it pledges the most. the fact it started to withhold (as some claim it is intentional 'blackmail') payments shows that it might be rethinking UN's usefulness and practicality. if the UN is bitching about not enough US funds, just wait till all the funds go away. we'll see how strong the UN is then.
if the UN is bitching about not enough US funds, just wait till all the funds go away. we'll see how strong the UN is then. Interesting take on the subject, but one must not forget that the US loves the UN as well. The US knows that if the conditions are right, with a UN mandate she can do quite a bit. If the UN was to sanction the Iraqi War in 2002 then the US would love the UN for it, so would most Americans. It's a love hate relationship; the US will not leave the UN anytime soon. So the rhetoric from the neo-cons of this unilateralist crappola is just that. Iraq has shown how much a disaster unilateralism really is. Also a new reality is going to ferment this century with a China and an EU at the SC table with their respective weighs equaling and eventually dwarfing the US. They are committed UN members, and the US does not want to be left out in the cold.
