Council of Councils
Think Global Health
Online Store
Introduction
Over the last several decades, governments have collectively pledged to slow global warming. But despite intensified diplomacy, the world is already facing the consequences of climate…
The Four Contending Approaches to Multilateralism Under Biden
The debate between going it alone versus working with others has ended. The debate over alternative forms of multilateralism has just begun.
Originally published at World Politics Review
June 3, 2021 12:50 pm (EST)
- Post
- Blog posts represent the views of CFR fellows and staff and not those of CFR, which takes no institutional positions.
In my weekly column for World Politics Review, I examine the most promising institutional foundations for world order in the twenty-first century.
The travails of the rules-based international system have set off a vigorous debate within U.S. foreign policy circles over the most promising institutional foundations for world order in the 21st century. The Washington establishment is united in its repudiation of Donald Trump’s “America First” orientation. But it remains divided on what form of U.S. internationalism is best suited to a historical moment defined by two powerful, countervailing trends: the rise of transnational challenges that can only be resolved through collective action and the resurgence of geopolitical competition that hinders international cooperation.
More on:
The four distinct models of multilateralism currently vying for primacy can be characterized as the charter, club, concert and coalition conceptions of world order. Each of the “4 Cs” can lay claim to a distinctive virtue: legitimacy, solidarity, capability and flexibility, respectively.
Read the full World Politics Review article here.
More on:
Creative Commons: Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.
View License Detail