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Most international organizations are multilateral in nature such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. The main proponents of multilateralism have traditionally been the middle powers such as Canada and the Nordic countries. Larger states often act unilaterally, while the smaller ones have little involvement at all in international affairs.

The alternatives to multilateralism are trilateralism , bilateralism, and unilateralism.

History

The first instances of multilateralism occurred in the nineteenth century in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic Wars where the great powers met to redraw the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. The Concert of Europe, as it became known, was a group of great and lesser powers that would meet to resolve issues peacefully. Conferences such as that at Conference of Berlin in 1884 helped reduce great power conflicts during this period, and the nineteenth century was one of Europe's most peaceful.

The concert system was utterly destroyed by the First World War, but after that conflict world leaders returned to multilateralism to attempt to prevent another such conflict. This lead to the creation of the League of NationsThe League of Nations was an international organization founded after the First World War with goals of reducing armaments, settling disputes between countries and maintaining living conditions, but The League proved incapable of preventing aggression by. A number of international arms limitation treaties were also signed such as the Kellogg-Briand PactThe Kellogg-Briand Pact also known as the Pact of Paris is a treaty between the United States and other nations "providing for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. It was proposed in 1927 by Aristide Briand, foreign minister of Fra, but these all proved ineffective as Europe again went to war in 1939Events January-June January 2 End of term for Frank Finley Merriam, 28th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Culbert Levy Olson. January 24 Earthquake kills 30. 000 in Chile about 50. 000 sq mi razed January 26 Falangists take Barcelona January 26.

After the Second World War the victors, having learnt from the failure of the League of Nations created the United Nations in 1945Events January January 5 The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland. January 7 British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge. January 12 World War II:. Unlike the League the UN had the active participation of the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in and the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1, the world's two greatest contemporary powers. Along with the political institutions of the UN the post-war years also saw a wide array of other multilateral organizations such as the GATT (now the World Trade Organization), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization develop. The collective multilateral framework played an important role in maintaining world peace in the Cold War. United Nations peacekeepers stationed around the world became one of the most visible symbols of multilateralism. Today there are a myriad of multilateral institutions ranging from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); not all by any means within the UN system.

The multilateral system has encountered mounting challenges in the period since the end of the Cold War. Part of this is due to the increasing dominance of the United States on the world stage in terms of military and economic power, and a perception among some that Washington D.C. is more inclined to act unilaterally in situations in which the rest of the international community has a stake, for instance in the case of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Under President George W. Bush the United States has rejected such multilateral agreements such as Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel land mines and a draft protocol to ensure compliance by States with the Biological Weapons Convention.

Yet the situation is more complex than it first appears. Challenges of complexity are increasingly confounding the multilateral system as transnational issues - international terrorism, drugs, economic crimes such as money laundering, people and arms trafficking and a rise in the spread of infectious diseases, for instance - overtax its ability to respond effectively, especially as some governments are less than committed to providing leadership or resources they have promised. This is a source of frustration for many in civil society, for instance in the humanitarian and public health fields: the UN's Millenium Goals identified global poverty and disease as major causes of misery and instability to be addressed in the first decade of the 21st century. Thus, there is a certain irony in that while the post-war multilateral system has eased the way for globalization in a myriad of different ways, it has also been identified as a target for backlash. Protests against economic organizations such as the WTO and IMF by a range of protestors from developed and developing countries are examples.

Overall, the multilateral institutional framework can be viewed as a system in difficult transition, from a relatively stable bipolar order in which its functions were comparatively pre-ordained and circumscribed by opposing international blocs to a much more uncertain climate in which it must deal with a wide range of new threats and challenges reaching right down into many societies. It is important in considering the multilateral system to recognize (a) that it is not a unitary actor, but instead a myriad web of different agencies and institutions; (b) that globalization and multilateralism are different phenomena - although each affect the other and (c) that leadership in multilateralism flows from national governments, rather than the institutions themselves, which are instead tasked with implementing specific mandates to the best of their resources and ability.