It is puzzling that even an unrivaled superpower may act multilaterally and not unilaterally. A signaling model is developed to address the puzzle of multilateralism pursued by a hegemon, when it can also act unilaterally. Given the asymmetry of information, the informed player (hegemon) wants to signal to the uninformed player (follower) that it is not a bad-type, coercive hegemon, but a good-type, benevolent hegemon. The coercive hegemon seeks to entrap the follower into behaving cooperatively while the hegemon reneges on its commitment. The benevolent hegemon will honor its commitments. The choice of multilateralism, as opposed to unilateralism, is costly and may function as this signal. The model attains various equilibria under different conditions: pooling on unilateralism; separating; pooling on multilateralism. The signaling game reveals under what conditions the benevolent hegemon is able to reveal its type, separating itself from the coercive hegemon. The United States’ attitude in the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 could be seen as a signaling behavior.