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This chapter discusses the third phase of UN involvement in Iraq, characterized by creeping unilateralism, occurring within the context of a more multidisciplinary approach to peace operations. That approach often incorporated humanitarian objectives into peace operations, as reflected in the deployment of UN ‘Guards’ to northern Iraq; but it was also characterized by the early resort (or reversion) by several Security Council members to unilateral action. The chapter specifically examines the imposition by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States of no-fly zones over Iraq in 1991 and 1992, and the launch of Operation Provide Comfort to protect Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq. This creeping unilateralism was a harbinger of further unilateral enforcement measures to come that would sunder the unity of the Security Council’s purpose on Iraq by 1998.

The central argument is that US power, once established as predominant in the hemisphere, has been nothing short of decisive in the founding, nature, and functioning of the regional multilateral institutions/organizations in the Americas in which it has taken part. The examples of the Pan American Union (PAU) Organization of American States (OAS) and of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are used to show this state of affairs in play; the most attention is paid to the OAS because of the lessons that can be derived from the very long history of US membership of this organization. In another case, that of Mercado Comun del Sur (Mercosur, or the Common Market of the South), it is shown how, even where the US is not a member of a multilateral organization in the hemisphere, its weight is still felt in terms of the aims and behaviour of that body. At the same time, it is seen that such organizations may on occasion be useful for the smaller states in restraining to at least some extent US behaviour, although in general such a restraining role is reserved for moments when US vital interests tend not to be involved and where Latin American, or more recently Canadian, actions to limit US unilateralism do not negatively affect goals perceived to be key by Washington. The first section gives an overview of the US and the hemisphere over the more than two centuries of its diplomatic and related action therein, the next looks at the specific experience of the PAU and the OAS, and the following two at NAFTA and Mercosur.

Argues that we are witnessing the development of a new norm of military intervention for humanitarian purposes in contemporary international society. Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations Security Council has been more active in the realm of intervention, extending its Chapter VII powers into matters that had previously belonged to the domestic jurisdiction of states. Without the material power of Western states, this activism would not have been possible. However, a purely materialist explanation for this development fails to consider the changed normative context within Western states that permitted, and in some cases encouraged, intervention. While normative evolution has occurred, it is also limited in its scope, specifically over the question of whether military intervention must have Security Council authorization.

This chapter contends that, in a world where the West stands truly triumphant, a fundamental debate has broken out within its ranks about unilateralism versus multilateralism. The Bush administration is not simply more unilateral than previous American administrations; under Bush, America has seemingly forfeited its leadership position as the steward of the rules and institutions of governance. “Europeans want more liberal global governance while the United States seems to want less—perhaps none.” This is at the heart of the difficulties today. Still, the chapter is optimistic about the future of the Atlantic relationship. No country can solve the world's problems alone. Ultimately even the United States will have to recognize that some form of multilateralism is necessary, although it may not necessarily be the variant espoused by the Europeans today.

The book has sought, first, to determine whether there is any meaningful variation in US behaviour towards multilateral organizations and which factors carry the most explanatory weight in determining US behaviour and policy towards these organizations, and also to explore the extent to which US behaviour differs across issue area, from security to economics to the environment. Second, it has sought to assess in a more detailed way the nature of the US impact on multilateral organizations and what forms of impact are particularly salient, whether this varies across cases, and why. The general finding is that there is no clear pattern or trend that signals a growing US rejection of multilateral organizations as venues for the promotion of US foreign policy interests, although in the different issue areas there is more evidence of unilateralism in the area of security than economic cooperation. The candidate explanatory factors suggested in the introduction are revisited in the light of the empirical evidence offered by the authors, in order to provide an overall assessment of the forces shaping US practice: the internal factors highlighted include American exceptionalism (the most important), partisanship, interest groups, and bureaucratic interests; the external factors include the enhancing and sustaining of US power, and the perceived effectiveness of the organizations concerned. Last, an assessment is made of the impact of US policy towards multilateral organizations across the range of cases.

Discusses the transatlantic drift (or split) that has occurred between the US and Western Europe since the election of George W. Bush in December 2000, and the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 Sept 2001. The further tensions that have arisen since then over the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are discussed, as is the crisis over North Korea and the huge expansion in NATO and in the EU through the entry of Eastern European countries. The author presents speculations on the future of the American–Western European relationship, and forecasts an even further drift apart. This he bases on eight primary reasons, which he discusses in detail. These are: the Cold War is over; unilateralism is growing stronger in the US; the EU is slowly but steadily taking on an ever stronger role; out‐of‐area disputes are becoming increasingly frequent and they have been notoriously difficult to handle for the two sides of the Atlantic; redefinitions of leadership and burdens are always difficult to do; economic disputes are proliferating; even cultural disputes are becoming increasingly numerous; and finally, demographic changes are taking place, particularly on the American side of the Atlantic, that in the long run are likely to challenge the existing relationship.

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine why powerful states such as the United States intervene multilaterally more often than not. When does the United States instead sidestep multilateral channels and intervene alone? When it sticks with multilateralism, how does it choose from the menu of multilateral institutions, whether a formal institution such as the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or an informal coalition of the willing? To answer those questions, this book looks at instances of American military intervention after the Cold War. The combination of theoretical and empirical analysis shows why multilateralism often prevails even for the one player on the field that counts. It clarifies why unilateralism is desirable in some cases but why these are exceptions. Finally, it spells out why multilateralism can take many forms and how lead states choose among them. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter examines the case of the 2003 Iraq War. One of the most unilateral interventions in the post-Cold War period, this case challenges this book's argument. With long time horizons (absent a direct threat) and costly operational commitments, this theory would expect a highly multilateral intervention, the opposite of what was obtained. The chapter shows the importance of ex ante assumptions about the nature of security challenges in influencing cooperation strategies. Inadequate assessments of both time horizon and operational commitment led to a flawed cooperation strategy in which the United States took on almost the entire burden. The chapter details these inputs and examines how each contributed to the unilateral strategy the United States pursued in the Iraq War.

This chapter describes NATO: how the organization works, how its origins give its members latitude to influence their contingents, and how the commanders of its multilateral efforts cope with the challenges of multilateral contingents. As caveats, red cards, phone calls, and other techniques for managing individual contingents have proven to be problematic, NATO has worked hard to mitigate those techniques' impact upon ISAF's (International Security Assistance Force) effectiveness. Despite these efforts, the alliance cannot hope to compete with national command chains. The chapter then compares the intervention venues that states can use from a theoretical perspective, to include unilateralism, coalitions of the willing, and alliance actions. NATO interventions provide individual alliance members with the benefits of multilateralism while maintaining ultimate national controls on deployed troops. In NATO interventions, national commands have authority over choosing their nation's commanders, delegating authority to those commanders, conducting oversight, and providing incentives for appropriate military behavior—authority that the alliance cannot match.

This chapter analyses the concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction and underlying fundamental notions, such as sovereignty, non-intervention, balancing of interests, proportionality, and legal principles. It provides a refined definition of extraterritorial jurisdiction. Moreover, it examines a plurality of ways to infer the proportionality principle from the structure of the legal order and shows that it can be classified, inter alia, as an element of teleological interpretation. The chapter argues that one cannot deny the existence of this principle in international law and that the principle of proportionality, understood as a scheme for rational argumentation, provides an adequate framework as to how exercises of extraterritorial jurisdiction can be assessed in a legally adequate manner.

This chapter assesses the extent to which George W Bush's foreign policy was shaped by ideology and represented a departure from traditional tenets of conservative American foreign policy. It argues that Bush operated largely within the traditions of conservative US foreign policy and that under him there was an emphasis on American primacy and a tendency toward unilateralism as well as a black and white view of the world. It examines how Bush combined the defense of American interests with the promotion of democracy, and explores the Bush administration's willingness to use force to pursue its objectives.

On February 15, 1954 the US Northwestern Victory sailed into the ancient Spanish port of Cartegena. It carried the first consignment of United States aid to the Spain of General Francisco Franco, a man widely regarded in the Western democracies as the pariah of Europe for his leadership of the fascist-style government dominated by the Falange party, and for overt support of the Axis powers in World War II. The occasion demonstrated the depth of division between the United States and Britain, as well as the ultimate independence of United States foreign policy from that of its closest ally. Spain offers a unique area for examination of Anglo-United States relations, and of the domestic and external contexts which helped form them within a new world order increasingly divided between the internationalism embodied in the embryonic United Nations, and the unilateralism demonstrated by the emergent bipolarity of the United States and the Soviet Union.

This chapter introduces the book’s central research question: Why have European proponents of multilateral treaty initiatives dealt in varying ways with US opposition to their proposals, at times accommodating US objections and at times opting for non-hegemonic cooperation? The chapter discusses why varying European responses to US policy have remained a blind spot in the current debate about ‘US unilateralism’, and why understanding European strategic choices vis-à-vis the reluctant hegemon is of both practical and theoretical relevance. It maps the historical trend toward transatlantic conflicts over multilateral agreements and the pattern of varying European responses to these conflicts after 1990. It reviews various ‘ad hoc’ explanations of European choices that have been advanced by analysts in commenting on recent high-profile transatlantic controversies and discusses the methodological shortcomings of these contributions. The chapter concludes with a brief sketch of the book’s theoretical argument, case selection, and structure.

This chapter explores the main efforts to produce compliance-focused indicators that can help improve international treaties against human trafficking. It shows that the power held by the US State Department (the organization that tried to pursue such indicators) is used unilaterally, and that this unilateralism can overcome a collective action problem. It then examines other functions of unilateralism, and shows that the indicators for human trafficking created by the US State Department are produced using criteria set by the US legislation.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2008, this chapter discusses events occurring between 2005 and 2008 that altered the socio-political, economic, and geographical context for Israeli and Palestinian peace activism. The election and boycott of Hamas in the 2006 elections, the completion of new checkpoint “terminals” and large segments of the separation barrier, as well as the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip affected how and where peace and justice groups could hold activities. Faced with trends of militarism, unilateralism, and fragmentation at the official level, combined with the absence of a sustained or legitimate political process, existing forms of nonviolent struggle had little resonance. The chapter discusses continued activities of awareness raising, institution building and constructive confrontation and outlines the obstacles facing activists in 2008, including a further distancing from the term “peace.”