Unilateral and Multilateral Options in the Execution of Foreign Policy

Extract

The argument whether the United States in the conduct of foreign policy should lean toward multilateral or unilateral action tends to revolve in the stratosphere. Proponents of each course cite the conspicuous failures of the other and submit wishful designs varying from triumphant world government to uninhibited national sovereignty. Unfortunately, the range of real choices confronting the policymaker is very much narrower. Constraints on decisionmaking in a democracy, even in a dictatorship, are very strict and nowhere more so than on issues having to do with sharing among nations decisions affecting major national interests.