We are now in the process of redefining the concept of ‘multilateralism’ in the wake of significant criticism leveled at recent unilateral activities by the United States, which led to two long and bloody wars in the Middle East at the beginning of the 21st century—the regional and global consequences of which are still being played out today.
Despite these high-profile cases of US-led unilateralism, multilateralism has never been entirely absent from the discourse, because even the sole hegemonic power has always made an attempt to harness a multilateral framework, such as the United Nations which is a quasi universal organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) where the United States exercises indispensable leadership, or ‘coalitions of the willing’, which operates on a formal multilateral framework principle. Against this context, therefore, analysis cannot be framed against a simple formula of unilateralism versus multilateralism, but more importantly, how we interpret the ambiguous nature of multilateralism and what frameworks and forms of multilateralism have come to be regarded as legitimate.
In general, multilateralism is deemed more legitimate than unilateralism and bilateralism. But the correlation between multilateralism and legitimacy still remains unclear and unresolved, even if we tend to view it as natural that multilateralism and legitimacy are connected in some way. Based on this premise, therefore, fundamental questions relating to multilateralism and legitimacy will be examined in this article. For instance, why do we see multilateralism as more legitimate than unilateralism and bilateralism? Why have various types of multilateralism emerged in our era? What frameworks and forms of multilateralism are regarded as more legitimate than others? Upon what grounds do we judge them as more legitimate? And what kinds of problems occur when we legitimatize a particular type of multilateralism over other formats?
These questions are crucial issues that are still undergoing important debate in political and policymaking circles. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to make a contribution to this debate by examining the issue of legitimacy in multilateralism in a comprehensive way. The paper will analyze the various characteristics of contemporary multilateralism and examine its inherently “ambiguous” nature through the lens of legitimacy, which is in itself a “slippery and complex” political concept because it reflects a range of existing tensions among its central tenets. Salient ideological tensions can be readily found in the dichotomy of new and old norms (for example, humanitarian intervention and non-intervention), the relationship between institutions and power, and the inherently problematic relationship between international law and morality, all of which belong to an international order reminiscent of a particular era.
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