Understanding The Unilateralist Turn in US Foreign PDF

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Understanding the Unilateralist Turn in U.S. Foreign Policy
Article in Foreign Policy Analysis · July 2005

DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2005.00010.x
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Foreign Policy Analysis (2005) 2, 207–228
Understanding the Unilateralist Turn in

U.S. Foreign Policy
DAVID SKIDMORE
Drake University
How should we explain the recent unilateralist turn in U.S. foreign

policy? Some accounts treat growing American unilateralism as a passing
aberration attributable to the neoconservative ideology of the Bush ad-
ministration. This paper, by contrast, traces U.S. unilateralism to the
structural effects, at home and abroad, of the end of the Cold War.
Internationally, the removal of the Soviet threat has undermined the
‘‘institutional bargain’’ that once guided relations between the U.S. and
its major allies. Absent Cold War imperatives, the U.S. is less willing to
provide collective goods through strong international institutions and
other states are less likely to defer to U.S. demands for special privileges
that exempt the U.S. from normal multilateral constraints. Domestically,
the end of the Cold War has weakened the ability of presidents to resist
the appeals of powerful veto players whose interests are threatened by
multilateral commitments. These factors suggest that American unilat-
eralism may have deeper roots and more staying power than many
expect.
Many observers have lamented the movement from multilateralism to unilateralism

in U.S. foreign policy (Maynes, 2000; Spiro, 2000; Boniface, 2001; Nye, 2002;
Hoffman, 2003; Prestowitz, 2003).1 In recent years, the U.S. has rejected a series of
major international treaties and agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol on Cli-
mate Change, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the
International Landmine Ban Treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,
the Programme of Action on Illicit Trade in Small and Light Arms, the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, and a new protocol designed to verify compliance with the Biological
Weapons Convention. The U.S. decision to launch war against Iraq despite the lack
of an explicit mandate from the U.N. Security Council and without the support of
many key allies is the most dramatic manifestation of American unilateralism.
These events raise a number of significant questions for analysts of U.S. foreign
policy: how sharp a break from past practice is the ‘‘new unilateralism’’? What
factors account for growing U.S. isolation from international institutions and mul-
tilateral cooperation? To what degree has the behavior of other states played a role
in America’s changing foreign policy orientation? Are recent unilateralist policies a
passing anomaly, or do they presage a long-term retreat from multilateralism?
Author’s note: My thanks are due to the following individuals for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this
paper: R. Charli Carpenter, Rachel Caufield, Debra DeLaet, Daniel Emery, Robert Hariman, Thomas Lairson,
William Lewis, James McCormick, Todd Sechser, and two anonymous reviewers. I alone am responsible for the final
product.
1
Krauthammer (2002/2003) offers an intellectual rationale, what he terms the ‘‘new unilateralism.’’
r 2005 International Studies Association.

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
208 Understanding the Unilateralist Turn in U.S. Foreign Policy
Many commentators have treated the unilateralist turn as a short-term aberra-

tion associated with the presidency of George W. Bush. G. John Ikenberry
(2004:10), for instance, characterizes the Bush administration’s global strategy fol-
lowing the 9/11 attacks as a ‘‘radical’’ reorientation of American foreign policy.
Ikenberry contrasts President Bush’s willingness to act alone and to risk serious
breaches in relations with traditional allies with the institution-building heyday of
U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II period. He (2004:7) traces this ‘‘stra-
tegic wrong turn’’ to the influence of neoconservative ideas on the president and
many of his top advisers. In Ikenberry’s (2004:7) estimation, the Bush adminis-
tration’s reliance upon ‘‘the bold unilateral exercise of American military power’’
and ‘‘gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism’’ has done
enormous ‘‘damage to the country’s international position.’’ Consequentially, Iken-
berry (2004:7) argues that only a few short years after its debut, ‘‘the neoconserv-
ative moment is over’’Fimplying a likely return to the longstanding multilateral
traditions of post-World War II American foreign policy after Bush’s costly detour.2
While it is clear that something has changed in America’s relationship with the
international institutional order, the widely accepted interpretation outlined above
is flawed in characterizing the antecedents of unilateralism as well as the timing and
underlying causes of the unilateralist turn. This essay suggests an alternative ac-
count that traces the growing unilateralism of U.S. foreign policy to the structural
effects, at home and abroad, of the end of the Cold War. The highly conditional
U.S. commitment to international institutions and multilateral cooperation that
followed World War II depended crucially upon an environment of sustained
threat from a major power rival. With the removal of the Soviet threat, American
presidents have gained greater scope to act independently of international opinion
abroad combined with lesser freedom to resist the influence of parochial, anti-
multilateralist interest groups at home. This analysis suggests that the structural
sources of unilateralism in American foreign policy have deeper roots than the
ideological complexion of the Bush administration. Expectations that a change in
the occupant of the White House will alone prove sufficient to redirect U.S. foreign
policy along a multilateralist path are likely to be frustrated.
Antecedents: Hegemony, not Multilateralism

John Gerard Ruggie (1993:11) defines multilateralism as ‘‘an institutional form that
coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of generalized prin-
ciples of conduct.’’ A multilateralist foreign policy involves two crucial commitments
on the part of cooperating states:
To invest in the creation and maintenance of international institutions that serve to

facilitate coordination. This dimension of multilateralism has to do with the
inputs necessary to sustain international institutions. Institutional invest-
ment may take three principal forms: participation (ongoing involvement
in deliberations over the substantive and procedural terms of multilateral
cooperation), provision of resources (contributions of money, soldiers, in-
formation, expertise, and other assets essential to the operation of par-
ticular institutions), and rhetorical support (public expressions of backing
for the norms, principals, and goals of particular institutions).
2
On the role of neoconservatives, see Mann (2004). Elsewhere, Ikenberry attributes the Bush administration’s
unilateralist departure to ‘‘The passing views of highly placed administration elites’’ (2003b:539). Ikenberry’s pro-
lific writings on multilateralism and U.S. foreign policy serve as a touchstone for anyone approaching this topic. I
build upon some of Ikenberry’s ideas while taking issue with others. Most importantly, we differ over the depth of
America’s postwar commitment to multilateralism, the role that the Cold War and its passing played in shaping U.S.
attitudes toward international institutions, and the sources and prospects for America’s recent unilateralist turn.
D. SKIDMORE 209
To comply with the rules, norms, principles, and decision-making processes of these
institutions on an equal basis with other states. This dimension of multilater-
alism has to do with institutional outputsFhow institutions affect state
behavior. As Ikenberry (2003b:534) notes, multilateralism ‘‘entails some
reduction in policy autonomy’’ as participating states conform to institu-
tional constraints on behavior. Compliance involves not only the narrow
question of whether a state is in violation of specific commitments but also
whether a state seeks waivers, exemptions, veto or weighted voting priv-
ileges, or other prerogatives that allow it to more easily evade institutional
constraints that would otherwise apply. A state that subjects itself more
fully to constraint is more genuinely multilateralist than one that consist-
ently takes advantage of loopholes.
Critics of unilateralism often point to the generally successful record of the post-
World War II period as evidence that multilateralism has precedent in U.S. foreign
policy and that such an approach leads to positive results. Yet, this exaggerates the
degree to which U.S. foreign policy during this era was genuinely multilateralist in
either theory or practice (McCormick, 2002). In the wake of World War II, the U.S.
took seriously the first of the two multilateralist commitments cited above, but not
the second. While the U.S. invested in the creation of international institutions,
postwar administrations only loosely subjected themselves to the constraint of in-
stitutional rules and procedures. In other words, the U.S.-sponsored institutional
order was designed to bind the behavior of other states, but not that of the U.S.
itself. This strategic approach to constructing international order is hegemonic
rather than multilateralist. Appreciating this distinction leads to a somewhat more
pessimistic assessment of the likelihood that the U.S. might ‘‘return’’ to a recent set
of multilateralist traditions.
The U.S. became an active institution-builder after World War IIFnot as an
alternative to U.S. supremacy, but as an expression of it. This rather novel strategy
of hegemony rested upon a rejection of both America’s own isolationist past and the
imperialist precedent set by Great Britain during its nineteenth-century period of
international ascendancy. Hegemony is a type of authority in which the privileged
position of the leading state rests not upon coercion alone, but also upon the
institutionalized consent of other states. As Bruce Cronin (2001:107) puts it: ‘‘he-
gemony is a form of leadership, not domination.’’ U.S. policymakers sought to
channel the exercise of American power through a set of rules and institutions
perceived as broadly legitimate by most participating states. In the decades follow-
ing the war, U.S. leadership enabled the establishment of an alphabet soup of
international organizations, including the U.N., the North Atlantic Treaty Organ-
ization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Organization of Economic Cooperation and De-
velopment (OECD), the Group of Seven (G-7), and the World Bank, among many
others. In all cases, these institutions depended upon American power and re-
sources. Yet, their largely consensual character allowed the U.S. to shape an in-
ternational order congenial to its interests in a relatively cost-effective manner.
This hegemonic order rested upon what Ikenberry (2002:219–223, 2003a) has
referred to as an ‘‘institutional bargain’’ between the U.S. and its key allies. Outside
of the Communist world, most states voluntarily acquiesced to an American-shaped
set of international rules and institutions that considerably narrowed their own
policy autonomy. Significant benefits flowed from this subordination to American
leadership: military protection, support against internal challengers, foreign eco-
nomic and military aid, a stable dollar as anchor for the international monetary
system, access to U.S. markets, and, more generally, U.S. support for international
rules and institutions that provided collective goods and maintained international
order.
For its part, the U.S. insisted that, in return for these benefits, allied states sanc-
tion special prerogatives for the U.S. within this institutional matrix. While Amer-
ican policymakers demanded that other states respect the rules established by these
new institutions, the U.S. would preserve the freedom to act outside of these rules
when its interests dictated. In some cases, the very design of international insti-
tutions specified and legitimated special American rights and exceptional privileg-
es. In other cases, the U.S. simply bypassed normal institutional channels or
intentionally delimited the authority of various international institutions so as to
avoid challenges to American freedom of action. For instance, the U.S. Senate
regularly attached reservations or conditions to international treaties that weak-
ened the degree of constraint on U.S. behavior. As Nico Krisch (2003:53) concludes
in his review of U.S. attitudes toward international law, the U.S. ‘‘supports en-
forcement against others, little against itself.’’
This did not mean that American policymakers always or even regularly exer-
cised such prerogatives. More often than not, U.S. policy objectives could be
achieved through established multilateral mechanisms. When this was not the case,
however, U.S. officials did not hesitate to act independently of the institutional rules
and procedures that the U.S. itself did so much to create. Overall, the U.S. faced far
fewer constraints on its autonomy from the postwar institutional order than did
lesser powers.
Hegemonic Prerogatives
The special prerogatives enjoyed by the U.S.Fand sometimes shared with small
groups of other statesFwithin the postwar institutional order were many. In the
security realm, the U.S. exercised exclusive control over the postwar occupation
that reshaped the Japanese political and economic order and played a similar, if less
exclusive, role in the case of West Germany. The U.S. enjoyed veto power as one of
five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. When the Soviet Union
invoked its own Security Council veto to block certain U.N. actions in support of
U.S. policy in the Korean War, the U.S. sponsored a ‘‘Uniting for Peace’’ resolution,
through which the U.S. bypassed the Security Council and appealed instead to the
U.N. General Assembly for approval.
NATO was perhaps the most significant and highly institutionalized multilateral
commitment that the U.S. undertook after World War II. Given its major invest-
ment, the U.S. insisted upon a dominant voice within the alliance, as symbolized by
the practice of reserving the post of Supreme Commander of NATO for an Amer-
ican general. Although European views mattered on issues related directly to the
common defense, David Lake (1999:189) nevertheless concludes that the con-
straints NATO allies placed upon U.S. behavior ‘‘were not very significant, largely
because the U.S. might well have pursued quite similar policies anyway.’’ On stra-
tegic matters and the use of force outside of the European theater, U.S. poli-
cymakers gave only modest weight to European perspectives. U.S. consultation
with NATO allies was minimal in negotiating arms control agreements with the
Soviet Union during the 1970s (just as Japanese views were ignored with regard to
the U.S. opening to China), and Washington brushed aside European objections to
U.S. policy toward Vietnam.
The U.S. repeatedly intervened abroad in ventures of dubious international le-
gitimacy (e.g., military or covert interventions in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Domin-
ican Republic, Cuba, Central America, Iran, and Chile, among others). When, in
1984, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that U.S. intervention against
Nicaragua was in violation of international law, the U.S. argued that the ICJ lacked
jurisdiction to hear the case, a claim that the ICJ rejected (Gray, 2003:869–871).
In arms control, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty placed the U.S. and other
existing nuclear powers in a privileged position with respect to the possession of
D. SKIDMORE 211
nuclear weapons. Although the U.S. signed (1993) and ratified (1997) the Chemical
Weapons Convention, implementing legislation subsequently passed by the Con-
gress carved out unilateral U.S. exemptions to specific treaty obligations. Congress
gave the president authority to reject a challenge inspection of U.S. chemical fa-
cilities if the president deemed that such an inspection would pose a threat to U.S.
security interests. Congress also mandated that any samples collected through in-
spection must be analyzed on U.S. territory. Finally, the Congress narrowed the
range of industrial facilities that would be obligated to declare activities involving
chemicals posing a risk of proliferation (Smithson, 2002).
In the economic realm, weighted voting schemes gave the U.S. veto power over
decisions of the IMF and the World Bank. When the Bretton Woods monetary
order began to work against American interests in the early 1970s, the U.S. uni-
laterally changed the rules by abandoning the gold standard (Elliott and Hufbauer,
2002:379–382). The status of the dollar as a key reserve currency in the world
monetary system provided the U.S. government with seignorage benefits as other
countries held dollars in cash form without immediately trading them for goods
and services or collecting interest. Moreover, the U.S. faced far looser constraints on
its ability to run current account deficits without damage to the value of the dollar
than other states and enjoyed the privilege of repaying international debts in its
own currency. With respect to trade, the GATT, at U.S. insistence, excluded ag-
riculture and textiles, areas of particular political sensitivity to the U.S., and in-
cluded antidumping and escape clause provisions that were vigorously used by the
U.S. (Goldstein, 1993:217–220).
In the case of international human rights conventions, decades often passed
between the negotiation and U.S. ratification of major agreements (e.g., Genocide
Convention, Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Convention Against Torture,
Convention on the Political Rights of Women, the International Labor Organiza-
tion Convention on Forced Labor, Supplementary Slavery Convention, Convention
on Racial Discrimination) while a number of significant treaties still await American
signature or ratification (Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,
American Convention on Human Rights, Convention to Eliminate Discrimination
Against Women, Convention on the Rights of the Child).
Even in cases where eventual ratification was secured, it was often accompanied
by unilateral conditions that exempted the U.S. from relevant international legal
obligations. In 1986, for example, the U.S. Senate finally ratified the Genocide
Convention 38 years after it was approved by the U.N. General Assembly. Rati-
fication was conditioned, however, upon a series of reservations and understand-
ings that seriously diluted the significance of U.S. approval. These included an ‘‘opt
out’’ clause that gave the president the power to reject the jurisdiction of the ICJ in
any case brought against the U.S. under the treaty (Powers, 2002:162–169).
Of course, the U.S. was scarcely the only state that acted outside of or in conflict
with widely accepted international norms, rules, and institutions. Unlike other
states, however, the U.S. seldom faced sanctions when it violated international law
and U.S. allies generally tolerated, if reluctantly, instances of American unilater-
alism. This underlines the fact that U.S. hegemony consisted not simply in material
supremacy, but in influence that was exercised through, but only loosely con-
strained by, institutions generally accepted as legitimate by other actors.
The Contradictions of Hegemony

Nevertheless, the unusual position that the U.S. occupied in the postwar period
remained problematic in some respects. Hegemonic orders rest upon a dual set of
tensions that render them difficult to sustain. First, the special prerogatives enjoyed
by the hegemon are anomalous within an institutional context ostensibly based
upon universal rules and principles. If the hegemon too often or arbitrarily invokes
its special privileges, it risks growing resentment from other actors. The blatant
double standards that lay at the system’s core threaten its long-term legitimacy.
Second, the hegemon may weary of the special burdens necessary to sustain
systemic order. The logic of hegemony requires that the dominant state define its
interests in broad terms. The hegemon must curb the pursuit of short-term relative
gains vis-à-vis allied states and supply public goods in order to sustain broad in-
ternational support for the existing rules and institutions. Other states must remain
convinced that participation brings net benefits. Yet, the provision of international
public goods can be a costly enterprise for the hegemon. The temptation, over
time, is for the hegemon to push these costs onto others and to return to the sort of
narrow cost–benefit calculations that are more typical of states in the international
system.
As Bruce Cronin (2001) argues, these contradictions stem from the need for the
leading state to balance its role as guarantor of international order with its status as
a Great Power. The leading state serves to insure systemic stability by creating
universal rules and institutions and by providing collective goods. Yet, the hegemon
is also concerned with its narrower, self-regarding interests, which may require the
exercise of power outside of multilateral constraints.
Although one can point to manifestations of these tensions in various episodes
during the nearly half century following World War II, it remains remarkable that
these contradictions were successfully managed for so long. How was this possible?
The paradoxical answer is that the institutional bargain at the heart of the Amer-
ican-dominated hegemonic order was sustainable in large part precisely because
U.S. hegemony was partial rather than comprehensive. The Soviet Union and the
socialist bloc stood defiantly beyond the reach of American hegemony and re-
mained largely autonomous of the U.S.-designed institutional order. The Soviet
Union constituted an overall inferior yet still quite dangerous peer competitor of
the U.S. The emergence of the Cold War between these two powers had much to do
with the persistence of a hegemonic institutional order in the West.
Despite its enormous resources, the U.S. needed its major allies in order to
successfully balance and contain the Soviet Union. If nothing else, the U.S. relied
upon staging areas in Western Europe and Japan in order to project American
military power over the geographic expanses that separated the U.S. and its Soviet
rival. As a result, the Soviet threat compelled the U.S. to look beyond relative gains
in its relationship with its weaker and dependent allies and to accept responsibility
for the overall health of the Western order. Despite the costliness of providing
international public goods, reliance upon an institutional strategy that attracted
followers through consent rather than coercion remained a relatively efficient
means for maintaining a broad anti-Soviet coalition.
For their part, U.S. allies depended upon American power to protect them from
the expansionist potential of the Soviet Union. This dependence enhanced their
tolerance for U.S. claims of special prerogatives with respect to emerging rules and
institutions. If preserving an institution-based international order required an en-
forcer with the freedom of action needed to stave off external threats, then few
could reasonably complain. For the U.S. and its allies, mutual dependence in bal-
ancing against a common foe served as the cement that held the postwar ‘‘insti-
tutional bargain’’ in place.
Yet, it follows that the removal of this external threat would pose a serious chal-
lenge to the institutional bargain that stood at the core of the postwar order and
resurrect the dual tensions mentioned above. In fact, universalizing America’s he-
gemonic order has paradoxically undermined the basis for that order’s persistence.
With the removal of the Soviet threat, the U.S. has become less willing to carry
public goods that serve systemic interests and has instead pursued relative gains
and a narrower definition of America’s national interests. In the years since the end
of the Cold War, the U.S. has drawn down its investment in the international
D. SKIDMORE 213
institutional order and demanded that other states pay a growing share of the
burden. This narrower approach to defining the national interest applies even
with respect to international economic issues, where, in 1996, U.S. Trade Repre-
sentative Charlene Barshefsky made explicit the linkage between the end of the
Cold War and the hardening of America’s bargaining position in trade talks: ‘‘with
the Cold War over, trade agreements must stand or fall on their merits. They no
longer have a security component. If we do not get reciprocity we will not get freer
trade.’’3
Without the Soviet threat, in turn, U.S. allies have become less tolerant of special
U.S. prerogatives in relation to new and existing international institutions. The
international community increasingly expects the U.S. to conform to universal rules
on the same basis as other states.4
In sum, the end of the Cold War has weakened crucial supports that under-
pinned the institutional order created after World War II. With other states un-
willing or unable to take up the institutional burdens abandoned by the U.S. (as
American leaders have demanded) and the U.S. unwilling to forego the special
freedoms and prerogatives traditionally accorded it with respect to international
rules and institutions (as U.S. allies have demanded), the institutional bargain has
become substantially unstuck. U.S. allies seek to shift the international order from
hegemony to genuine multilateralism or one where the U.S. plays by the same rules
as everyone else. Resisting these pressures, the U.S. has in large measure aban-
doned a hegemonic strategy in favor of a unilateralist path, ratcheting down its
support for international institutions and instead assembling ad hoc ‘‘coalitions of
the willing’’ when the cooperation of other states has proven necessary. This shift
has been aptly characterized by Japanese Ambassador Hisashi Owada, who suggests
that while the U.S. pursued a strategy of ‘‘unilateral globalism’’ after World War
IIFproviding public goods including security, opposition to communism, an open
global economy, aid for economic development and international institutionsFthe
U.S. has now adopted a posture of ‘‘global unilateralism (quoted in Huntington,
1999).’’
Toward a Post-Hegemonic World

This analysis suggests two ironies. First, U.S. hegemony was sustainable only as long
as its power remained incomplete. Once the U.S. no longer faced a balancer or peer
competitor, the U.S. sought to fashion a post-hegemonic order that rested less upon
support for international institutions and public goods and more upon the direct
and often bilateral application of American power against varying levels of resist-
ance from other states.
Second, victory in the Cold War brought for the U.S. increased distrust from
allies and heightened efforts to control U.S. power through increasingly elaborate
and binding institutional mechanisms. Ikenberry points out that U.S. allies fear
both abandonment and domination by the U.S. (Ikenberry, 2002:219–220). During
the Cold War, fears of abandonment in the face of the Soviet threat took prece-
dence. Cooperation through U.S.-sponsored international institutions served to
ensure continued U.S. engagement. With the Cold War’s ending, fears of U.S.
domination came to the fore. Institutions came to be seen by other states less as
means for drawing out American power than as tools for constraining the reckless
use of that power. Thus, the deterioration in allied relations has stemmed not only
from growing U.S. unilateralism but also from the development of more assertive
multilateralist policies on the part of France, Germany, and other states.
3
Quoted in Mastanduno (1999:169).
4
Ikenberry (2003b:534,544–545) refers to a ‘‘new multilateralism,’’ that is more universal and legally binding
and offers fewer opportunities for the U.S. to escape international obligations.
TABLE 1. Strategic Orientations Toward International Institutions
High Institutional Investments

Hegemonic Multilateralist
Compliance (U.S.FCold War) (EuropeFPost-Cold War) Compliance
Low Unilateralist Acquiescent High
(U.S.FPost-Cold War) (W. EuropeFCold War)
Low Institutional Investment
The end of the Cold War has thus altered the strategic choices of the U.S. and its
allies and the relationships among them. Table 1 illustrates the shifting orientations
of the U.S. and its European allies toward the international institutional order. The
two dimensions represent the dual imperatives that serve to define a multilateral
foreign policy, as described above: investment in the creation and maintenance of
international institutions and compliance with institutional norms, rules, and pro-
cedures. Each variable ranges from low to high.
Together, these two dimensions help us to identify four strategic orientations that
states may adopt vis-à-vis the international institutional order. States that comply
with the rules, but contribute few resources in support of institutions, adopt an
acquiescent stance. Western Europe in the years immediately following World War
II arguably falls into this category, although the label itself suggests a degree of
passivity that does not fit Great Britain or France.5 Consumed by the task of re-
construction from the ravages of war, Western Europe depended heavily upon
American economic and military largesse. Western Europeans respected the
emerging postwar institutional order, but related to it mostly as free-riders, invest-
ing only modest resources while consuming resources channeled through institu-
tions such as NATO and the World Bank by the U.S. The U.S., on the other hand,
adopted a hegemonic position during the Cold War period. As previously de-
scribed, this entailed the considerable investment of American resources in creating
and supporting the post-World War II institutional order. But while America’s level
of institutional investment was high, it retained the prerogative to act outside of
institutional rules (i.e., compliance was low).
The end of the Cold War has altered the institutional orientations of both the
U.S. and its major allies. U.S. strategy has gradually moved away from hegemony in
the direction of unilateralism. The main adjustment that this has entailed is not an
assertion of independence from institutional constraintsFthe U.S. generally avoid-
ed such constraints throughout the postwar period anywayFbut instead the steady
withdrawal or abandonment of political and financial investment in new and ex-
isting international institutions. Europe and many other states, by contrast, have
gravitated from a position of acquiescenceFfree-riding on U.S institutional in-
vestments while generally acquiescing in the rules and procedures of these insti-
tutionsFto multilateralism. This entails a dual commitment to both invest in and
comply with the rules of an institutionalized international order. This helps to
explain why the transnational debate over unilateralism versus multilateralism has
assumed heightened salience in recent years in ways that it seldom did when the
U.S. pursued a hegemonic strategy in association with a constellation of generally
quiescent allies.
Comparing Interpretations
This argument bears comparison with interpretations offered by G. John Ikenberry
and Robert Kagan. Ikenberry (2001:170–175) rejects the idea that the institutional
5
Perhaps the pro-American governments of Central and South America during the 1950s would offer purer
examples of ‘‘acquiescent’’ states.
D. SKIDMORE 215
order that arose after World War II and American support for it depended so
crucially upon the Cold War. Instead, he argues that U.S. grand strategy in the
postwar years had a dualistic character: a ‘‘containment order’’ based upon realist
premises and aimed at countering Soviet power ran parallel to a cooperative mul-
tilateral order among Western countries centered on the spread of markets and
democracy. Ikenberry (2002:216) suggests that although the liberal order among
Western states was reinforced by the Cold War, ‘‘it was not triggered by it or
ultimately dependent on the Cold War for its functioning and stability.’’ The end of
the Cold War eliminated the need for the containment order, but the elaborate
Western order, by then deeply embedded after decades of cooperation, has ‘‘re-
mained relatively stable’’ (Ikenberry, 2001:217–218 and 219–255).
Yet, growing U.S. disengagement with international institutions was evident even
before Ikenberry offered his optimistic assessment, and events since have contra-
dicted his views on the underlying stability of cooperation among Western coun-
tries. As early as 1992, for instance, a draft Defense Department policy planning
document stated that in the post-Cold War period, ‘‘we should expect future co-
alitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confront-
ed, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be
accomplished’’ (Tyler, 1992).
Ikenberry’s failure to anticipate recent tensions can be traced to his dualistic
conception of the postwar order. If Western cooperation on political and economic
issues arose independently of the containment order, then the end of the Cold War
should have no effect on the institutional foundations of intra-Western relations,
which operate on a relatively autonomous basis. If, however, the liberal institutional
order among Western states depended in crucial ways upon the existence of a
common external threat, then it becomes more difficult to share Ikenberry’s op-
timism about the stability of a cooperative Western order.
Ikenberry underestimates the tight interdependence among security, political,
and economic issues for U.S. policymakers and the degree to which allied relations
across all areas were shaped by Cold War considerations. Virtually all of the major
diplomatic histories of the period stress that U.S. willingness to invest in interna-
tional institutions, carry public goods, and forego immediate opportunities for rel-
ative gains in relations with other Western states depended heavily upon the
perceived imperatives of security competition with the Soviet Union.6 The U.S.
desire to create strongpoints in Western Europe and Japan as counters to Soviet
power served as a key motivation for U.S. engagement in those regions. If, as a
historical counterfactual, one removes the Soviet threat, it becomes difficult to im-
agine the Marshall Plan, the relatively rapid reintegration of Germany into a co-
hesive Western alliance system, or U.S. encouragement of European political and
economic integration, and easier to imagine quite different outcomes, such as
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau’s proposal for the deindustrialization of
Germany. In short, the Cold War was indispensable to Washington’s conditional
embrace of international institutions in the postwar period and its passing has
weakened that set of commitments.
The argument offered here also differs in important ways from Robert Kagan’s
influential work on recent U.S.–European tensions. Kagan (2003) attributes the
unilateralist–multilateralist split between the U.S. and Europe in large part to dif-
ferences in powerFa straightforward structural realist argument. The U.S. prefers
to act unilaterally because it can and Europe seeks, in response, to contain U.S.
freedom through stronger and more universal international institutions. However,
the power gap between the U.S. and Europe is a necessary, but not a sufficient
6
Melvyn Leffler (1993:160), for example, concludes that ‘‘the economic motivations for the Marshall Plan were
secondary.’’ Rather, ‘‘the United States launched the Marshall Plan to arrest an impending shift in the correlation of
power between the United States and the Soviet Union (1993:163).’’ Also see Hogan (1987) and Milward (1984).
condition to explain the growing divide over international institutions. The U.S.
was strong and Europe was weak during the Cold War; yet, the U.S. invested
heavily in creating and supporting an elaborate institutional order. What has
changed over the past decade is not the gap in power between the U.S. and Europe
(which was greater in the late 1940s than today), but the removal of the Soviet
threat. Moreover, while power provides the opportunity for the U.S. to act uni-
laterally, whether it will actually do so or not depends upon how policymakers
define American interests. For this piece of the puzzle, we must consider domestic
political dynamics, as discussed in a later section.
Tracing the Unilateralist–Multilateralist Divide: The U.S. Versus the World

If the above argument is correct, then we should expect to see a declining will-
ingness on the part of the U.S. to invest in international institutions and greater
willingness on the part of U.S. allies to resist U.S. demands for special institutional
prerogatives. The latter should produce a growing number of cases where the U.S.
simply withdraws from multilateral cooperation and pursues instead an unambig-
uously unilateral course.7
The growing reluctance of the U.S. to invest in international institutions is best
illustrated by U.S. policy toward the UN. Periodically during the 1980s and 1990s,
the U.S. Congress unilaterally withheld a portion of U.S. dues to the UN general
budget and peacekeeping accounts in protest of various UN policies or organiza-
tional deficiencies. A deal to clear a portion of these arrears was reached in 1999
with the passage of the Helms–Biden Act, which provided for the staged payment
of arrears over a Three-year period contingent upon UN action to meet dozens of
conditions demanded by the U.S. The most important among these were reduc-
tions in the proportions of the UN general fund and peacekeeping budgets covered
by U.S. dues (Skidmore, 2000; Karns and Mingst, 2002).
In a myriad of other ways, the U.S. has challenged the authority, autonomy, or
financial viability of the UN. In 1996, the U.S. single-handedly vetoed the reap-
pointment of Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The U.S. withdrew from
the UN Industrial Development Organization in 1997 and U.S. representatives
walked out of the 2001 UN-sponsored World Conference on Racism in South Africa
in protest over what the U.S. characterized as the anti-Israeli tone of the meeting.
From 2002 through 2004, the Bush administration withheld U.S. contributions to
the UN Population Fund over allegations that the Fund indirectly contributed to
coerced abortions through its operations in China.8 All in all, Margaret P. Karns and
Karen A. Mingst (2002:268) flatly state that: ‘‘U.S. actions over the past decade have
weakened the UN.’’
Another indicator of weakening U.S. support for international institutions is the
fact that, compared with other members of the Organizations for Economic Co-
operation and Development’s Development Assistance Council (DAC), the U.S.
allocates a relatively large share of its overall official development assistance (ODA)
through bilateral as opposed to multilateral channels. Moreover, this gap, while
modest in the past, has been growing over time as other donorsFbut not the
U.S.Fhave come to rely more heavily upon multilateral institutions. For the years
1991 and 1992, bilateral aid accounted for 75% of overall U.S. foreign assistance
(with the rest channeled through multilateral organizations such as the World
7
Note that a unilateralist strategy does not preclude some forms of collective leadership, such as temporary, ad
hoc, and noninstitutional ‘‘coalitions of the willing’’ formed for specific purposes.
8
Officials of the UN Population Fund denied that the agency encouraged abortion as part of its family planning
programs and noted that in those Chinese counties where the Fund has been operating since 1998, use of con-
traceptives almost doubled while the number of female sterilizations and abortions both declined markedly (Mar-
quis, 2004).
D. SKIDMORE 217
Bank), while bilateral aid accounted for 70% of the total aid distributed by the other
member countries of the DAC. This gap widened during the following decade. For
the years 2001 and 2002, bilateral aid accounted for 76% of overall U.S. aid, while
the other member countries of the DAC channeled 66% of ODA through bilateral
programs (OECD, 2003: Table 14e).
In his 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush announced a
new U.S. initiative pledging $15 billion over five years to fight the spread of HIV
and AIDS. Significantly, however, only $1 billion of this amount was channeled
through the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The
remainder was to be administered through bilateral programs controlled exclu-
sively by the U.S. Moreover, the Congress unilaterally stipulated that the U.S.
contribution to the Global Fund could not exceed one-third of total contributions.
When U.S. contributions did in fact exceed one-third of the total in 2004, US AID
(U.S. for Agency International Development) was forced to withhold a portion of
the planned U.S. payment to The Global Fund (Brown, 2004; Office of the United
States Global AIDS Coordinator, 2004).
A major feature of U.S. participation in international institutions during the post-
World War II period was its demand for special prerogativesFveto powers,
weighted voting, exemptions, waivers, opt-out clauses, and so on. While, in the
past, other states have often acquiesced to such demands, they have become less
willing to do so in the post-Cold War period.
In some cases, international opposition has successfully forced the U.S. to drop
its assertion of privilege. The Helms–Burton Act, passed by the Congress in 1996,
directed the executive branch to impose extraterritorial sanctions on foreign firms
and individuals who engaged in business dealings involving property confiscated
from U.S. nationals by the Cuban government. It also authorized civil suits against
such firms. Close U.S. allies in Western Europe, Canada, and Latin America vig-
orously protested this attempt to force foreign firms into compliance with U.S.
sanctions against Cuba. A number of governments passed legal countermeasures
and threatened to challenge the Helms–Burton Act through the new World Trade
Organization dispute mechanism. Faced with such resistance, the Clinton admin-
istration suspended enforcement of Helms–Burton at both the criminal and civil
levels in return for allied pledges to bring increased pressure on Cuba for dem-
ocratic reforms (Mastanduno, 2002:305–311).9
More often in recent years, however, such conflicts have led to stalemate. Unable
to convince other states to accept its claim of privilege and unwilling to comply with
the rules and expectations embraced by a majority of other states, the U.S. has
retreated into a unilateralist stance, defying or withdrawing from international
agreements that pose unacceptable constraints. The examples are many.
During negotiations leading to the 1997 Land Mine Ban Treaty, the U.S. de-
manded an exemption allowing a nine-year grace period for the removal of U.S. anti-
personnel mines along the demilitarized zone in South Korea. The U.S. also sought
an exemption permitting U.S. deployment of antipersonnel mines as part of mixed
systems including antitank mines. Both demands were rebuffed by other parties to
the negotiations, prompting the U.S. to reject the final agreement. Although Pres-
ident Clinton pledged that the U.S. would sign the Ottawa treaty by the year 2006,
following the development of military alternatives to land mine use by U.S. forces,
this policy was placed under review by the Bush administration in 2001 when the
Defense Department recommended abandonment of Clinton’s earlier promise.
9
Extraterritorial sanctions such as Helms-Burton direct punishment at third parties who conduct commerce
with a target state. These are an extreme variation on the more general U.S. practice of imposing unilateral
sanctions against various countries. One author estimates that during the 1990s, the United States threatened or
implemented unilateral economic sanctions against 35 countries, representing 40% of the world’s population
(Maynes, 2000:46).
Although the U.S. signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the
Clinton administration declined to submit the treaty to the Congress because of the
dim prospects for ratification. When signatories met at The Hague in 2000 to work
out specific terms for implementing the Kyoto treaty, the U.S. sought maximum
flexibility to avoid costly economic adjustments in reaching the treaty targets for
emission reduction. The U.S. wanted no limits on its ability to trade for emission
rights with other countries and maximum leeway to count forests and farmland as
carbon sinks in lieu of emission reductions. Through these two mechanisms, the
U.S. could conceivably have met its obligations under the Kyoto treaty while ac-
tually carrying out little, if any, actual reduction in U.S. emissions. The Hague
conference ended in failure after European negotiators rejected the U.S. proposals
(Pitzl and Stewart, 2000; Revkin, 2000; Jacobson, 2002).
During negotiations on the ICC treaty, the Clinton administration proposed
provisions that would have given the U.S. effective veto power over the submission
of cases to the ICC. This approach was rejected by other nations. Although Clinton
ultimately signed the ICC treaty just before leaving office, the Bush administration
withdrew all U.S. support (nullifying Clinton’s earlier signature) and began a cam-
paign to ensure that other states would not submit charges against U.S. troops to
the ICC. Under American pressure, more than sixty countries signed bilateral
agreements in which these governments pledged not to bring charges against U.S.
troops (Brown, 2002; Nolte, 2003).
The Bush administration subsequently withheld U.S. economic and military aid
from thirty-five countries that initially refused to sign such bilateral pacts. In 2002,
the U.S. successfully obtained UN Security Council approval of a measure that
offered immunity from ICC prosecution to U.S. troops involved in six UN peace-
keeping operations. This measure, renewed in 2003, was the product of a U.S.
threat to withdraw U.S. troops from participation in UN peacekeeping missions
unless such troops were exempted from ICC coverage (Brown, 2002; Schmemann,
2002; Barringer, 2003; Becker, 2003). U.S. hopes for renewal of the immunity
measure were stymied in June 2004, however, when lack of support on the UN
Security Council and the opposition of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan forced
the U.S. to withdraw a resolution on the issue. Resistance to further grants of
immunity for U.S. troops stiffened in the wake of revelations that U.S. guards and
interrogators had been implicated in abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq (U.S. Drops Resolution Seeking War Crimes Exemption, 2004).
As the U.S. moved toward confrontation with Iraq in the summer of 2002, the
White House considered the possibility of invading Iraq without consulting with
other countries through the UN Objections to this course from Secretary of State
Colin Powell combined with resistance from domestic and international sources
prompted President Bush to seek UN approval. After vigorous diplomatic efforts,
the U.S. succeeded in securing UN Security Council passage of Resolution 242 in
November 2003, which demanded Iraqi disarmament of weapons of mass destruc-
tion and cooperation with renewed weapons inspections. In the debate leading up
to the passage, the Bush administration repeatedly threatened to move against Iraq
without UN approval if the Security Council refused to act. After inspections failed
to find evidence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, the U.S., along with
Great Britain, nonetheless opted for war. A vote to secure explicit Security Council
authorization for the invasion of Iraq was considered, but rejected when it became
clear that not only would France veto passage of such a resolution, but that the U.S.
would fail to obtain the support of a majority on the Security Council.
In the wake of the Fall 2001 U.S. campaign in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban
government and dismantle Al Qaeda, the U.S. placed hundreds of individuals of
various nationalities who were detained during that conflict under imprisonment
at U.S. facilities on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Contrary to the advice of Secretary
of State Colin Powell, President Bush sided with advisers who argued that these
D. SKIDMORE 219
prisoners were ‘‘unlawful combatants’’ rather than prisoners of war and that they
were therefore not covered by the legal protections of the Geneva Convention. In
2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed international criticism of
this U.S. policy as ‘‘isolated pockets of international hyperventilation’’ (Lewis,
2004).
Subsequently, several legal opinions prepared by lawyers in the Departments of
Defense and Justice during 2002 and 2003 argued that the president’s freedom to
order the torture of terrorists and other ‘‘enemy combatants’’ during a time of war
in order to obtain relevant information could not be legally constrained by the
provisions of either the Geneva Convention or the Convention Against Torture and
Other Cruel, Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both of which have been signed
and ratified by the U.S. (Lewis, 2004). Subsequent revelations that Iraqis held at
Abu Ghraib prison had undergone serious abuse at the hands of guards and in-
terrogators produced additional domestic and international criticism of U.S. han-
dling of detainees.
These examples suggest a pattern. The U.S. consistently seeks to shape or in-
terpret international agreements so as to minimize constraints on its own freedom
of action at home or abroad. In Stephen Walt’s apt characterization: ‘‘An 800-pound
gorilla just doesn’t like anything to restrict its freedom of action, unless it thinks it
can control it completely’’ (Schmemann, 2002). While the U.S. demanded similar
prerogatives during the Cold War period, such behavior was balanced by the fact
that the U.S. provided significant political and financial support for a wide range of
international institutions. For this reason, and because they depended upon the
U.S. for protection from the Soviet threat, American allies during that period sel-
dom challenged America’s privileged position of hegemony. With the passing of the
Soviet threat and a declining U.S. willingness to share the costs of supporting many
international institutions, other countries have become emboldened to reject spe-
cial treatment for the U.S. Faced with such resistance, the U.S. has retreated into a
unilateralist positionFleaving it isolated from many treaties and institutions that
attract widespread support elsewhere in the world.
The Domestic Sources of Unilateralism

Domestic politics has also played a role in the shift from hegemony to unilateralism.
The end of the Cold War has weakened the willingness and ability of the president
to pursue broad conceptions of the national interest while empowering parochial
interests who often oppose multilateralist commitments abroad based upon narrow
ideological or utilitarian considerations.
Of America’s unilateralist impulse, Arthur Schlesinger has remarked: ‘‘There is
no older American tradition in the conduct of foreign affairs’’ (Schlesinger,
2000:18). Yet, the assumption that unilateralism constitutes a sort of default setting
in U.S. foreign policy is challenged by the fact that a majority of Americans remain
multilateralist in their foreign policy preferences. Steven Kull’s (2002) (also see
Reilly, 1999) review of recent survey data offers compelling evidence that most
Americans support strong international institutions, such as the UN, prefer close
U.S. cooperation with other states to solve common problems, and oppose unilat-
eral U.S. military intervention abroad under most circumstances. The internation-
alist and multilateralist tilt of the American public is illustrated by the data displayed
in Table 2, which are drawn from a December 2002 survey conducted by the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press (2002).10
Ikenberry (2003b:542–544) cites a number of features in America’s enduring
political culture that provide underlying support for a multilateralist foreign policy,
including a universalist creed, a strong belief in the rule of law, the multiculturalism
10
For similar findings, see a study conducted for the Aspen Institute (2002).
TABLE 2. Multilateralism and U.S. Public Opinion
Agree (%) Disagree (%) Do Not Know (%)
The U.S. should cooperate fully with the UN 67 28 5

In deciding on its foreign policies, the U.S. should 85 10 5
take into account the views of its major allies
Since the U.S. is the most powerful nation in the 25 72 3
world, we should go our own way in international
matters, not worrying too much about whether
other countries agree with us or not
The U.S. should mind its own business 30 65 5
internationally and let other countries get along
the best they can on their own
Source: PeW (2002).
of American society, and a nationalism built upon civic rather than ethnic foun-
dations. Yet, these characterizations of American political culture and contemporary
public attitudes present a puzzle. Why would presidents who care about their own
political fortunes pursue unilateralist policies that run contrary to majority senti-
ment? Two factors seem significant hereFone dealing with the organization of
societal interests and the other with the structure of political institutions.
First, a range of relatively narrow but highly organized political groups have
material or ideological reasons to oppose either specific multilateral commitments
or multilateralism in general. The broader but far more diffuse public supporters of
a multilateralist foreign policy are generally unorganized and thus unable to com-
pete effectively for influence. Second, the decentralized and relatively open struc-
ture of the American political system provides ample means by which committed
minorities can block the will of the majority. Veto players whose interests would be
harmed by multilateral commitments often find it possible to stymie positive steps
toward international cooperation (Tsebelis, 2002). This combination of interests
and institutions explain why diffuse public support for multilateralism is not always
translated into public policy. Moreover, these same features account for the failure
of neofunctionalist theoriesFwhich stress the favorable cost–benefit ratio that
multilateral participation offers even very powerful statesFto anticipate the uni-
lateralist turn in U.S. foreign policy. Even if the aggregated interests of Americans
as a whole would be well served by a multilateralist U.S. foreign policy, the nar-
rower interests of various elite coalitions may tip the scale in a unilateralist direc-
tion.11
Three types of antimultilateralist groups play significant roles in shaping U.S.
foreign policy. The first among these are the long list of special interest groups who
have lobbied against particular international initiatives that threaten the interests of
their members: oil and gas companies, along with most business and farm groups,
opposed the Kyoto treaty; the National Rifle Association objected to a proposed
treaty to restrict trade in small arms (Crossette, 2001); antiabortion groups suc-
ceeded for a number of years at holding hostage U.S. dues to the UN (Skidmore,
2000); Cuban–American groups lobbied in favor of the Helms–Burton Act; labor
unions and certain narrow farm and business interests have hobbled U.S. partic-
ipation in multilateral trade negotiations; the Bush administration cited objections
11
Keohane (1984) relies in part upon neofunctionalist reasoning in explaining the incentives that induce states
to make multilateral commitments. Ikenberry (2003b) offers a neofunctionalist argument in support of his con-
tention that the long-term benefits of sustaining a rule-based institutional order will eventually draw the U.S. back
onto a multilateralist path. Moravcsik (1997) offers a persuasive critique of such arguments, stressing instead the
driving role that societal coalitions play in defining state interests.
D. SKIDMORE 221
from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry in rejecting a new protocol designed to

strengthen verification provisions of the Biological Weapons Convention (Wheelis
and Dando, 2003); lobbying by U.S. steel companies and labor unions prompted
President Bush to impose tariffs of up to 30% on steel imported from Europe in
March 2002; and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the
Center for Freedom and Prosperity successfully lobbied U.S. Treasury officials to
oppose an initiative by the OECD to close down tax havens abroad (Anderson,
2001).
Why are antimultilateralist groups such as these stronger in the U.S. than in most
European countries and less effectively balanced by groups favoring international
cooperation? One possible explanation is that, despite the global power of the U.S.,
the forces of interdependence have cut less deeply in the U.S. than in most other
countries. As compared with its European allies, for example, the U.S. is less de-
pendent upon foreign trade and investment, less exposed to foreign media, and its
people are less well traveled and less well informed about the world beyond their
own borders (Johnson and Caruson, 2003).12 Under these conditions, the social
forces favoring international cooperation are weaker in the U.S. than in many other
countries.
Second, the military–industrial complexFproportionately larger in the U.S.
than in any other advanced industrial countryFoften serves as a brake on mul-
tilateral initiatives that impinge upon the resources or autonomy of the U.S. def-
ense establishment. American military leaders and their allies in the Congress and
the private military–industrial sector have lobbied against a number of recent in-
ternational agreements with considerable effectiveness. Military officials have op-
posed U.S. participation in the ICC and the Landmine Ban Treaty. Pentagon
officials also opposed strengthened verification measures under the Biological
Weapons Treaty and supported U.S. withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile
Treaty. More generally, the shift from hegemony to unilateralism in American for-
eign policy has coincided with the growing dominance of the Department of Def-
ense over the Department of State in the bureaucratic competition for resources
and influence. Although it is difficult to discern cause from consequence, the uni-
lateralist turn has clearly empowered bureaucratic advocates of hard power (i.e.,
military force) relative to those responsible for the deployment of soft power (i.e.,
diplomacy).13
A third category includes groups and individuals motivated by strongly nation-
alist ideological commitments. In Europe and Japan, nationalist movements were
closely associated with authoritarian regimes and imperialist policies. The defeat of
fascism and the collapse of imperial systems in the middle decades of the twentieth
century discredited and disempowered right-wing nationalist forces in these coun-
tries. In the U.S., by contrast, nationalism (often labeled ‘‘patriotism’’) developed
within the context of a liberal political culture centered on the shared commitment
to a national creed rather than attachment to blood and soil (Pei, 2003). This
melding of nationalism and liberalism, along with the fact that the U.S. has been
spared the experiences of defeat in war or imperial decline, accounts for the con-
tinued potency of nationalist symbols and appeals in American politics. Nationalist
ideas and movements have taken varied forms in American society, ranging from
isolationism to neoconservatism. All have in common a deep sense of American
12
In 2002, overall trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) equaled 68.6% of the combined GDP of the
member states of the European monetary union. The comparable figure for the U. S. was only 23.7% (World Bank,
2004).
13
Beginning in the mid-1980s through the 1990s, both the overall State Department budget and that of the
Agency for International Development suffered steep cuts. In relative terms, the overall nondefense spending on
international affairs equaled roughly one-half of the defense budget in 1948, but averaged only 6% as much as
defense spending in the 1990s (Hook, 2003:25). For additional discussions of the growing role that the military plays
in American foreign policy, see Johnson (2004) and Priest (2003).
exceptionalism, a strong commitment to unfettered U.S. sovereignty, and an aver-

sion to international commitments that constrain American power and freedom
of action.14
This underlying array of antimultilateralist social and bureaucratic actors func-
tion in the context of a political structure that empowers minorities who wish to
block international cooperative initiatives.15 The decentralized character of the
American stateFthe shared responsibility for foreign policy between Congress and
the president, the common phenomenon of divided government,16 the super-
majority required for treaty ratification by the Senate, the many points of access to
the policymaking process, the relative autonomy of certain bureaucratic agencies,
the high density and mobilization of interest groupsFcreates a fertile environment
for the growth of veto players capable of obstructing unwelcome policy initiatives
(Moravcsik, 2002:258–59; Patrick, 2002:18–20).
Although this has generally been the case for much of U.S. history, the Cold War
period was a partial exception. Cold War presidents enjoyed greater scope for the
pursuit of broad national interests (as they perceived them) than presidents before
or since. Despite the ‘‘weak’’ character of the American state, conditions of high
external threat tend to reinforce the power of the president and to push decision-
making authority toward the apex of the governing structure (Lowi, 1979). Pres-
idents face fewer constraints at home at times when international constraints are
highest. International crises, for instance, tend to produce a strong ‘‘rally around
the flag’’ effect among the American public. Although presidents did not always
enjoy the domestic support provided by acute crises, the Cold War as such con-
stituted a period of chronic crisis and threatFthus enhancing presidential freedom
of action and more often allowing broader interests to trump special interests. The
waning of the Cold War has weakened this centralizing tendency and empowered
particularistic interests.
Clinton and Bush Compared

So just as the end of the Cold War reduced some of the international incentives for
American presidents to support strong international institutions, the demise of the
Soviet threat also created new opportunities for particular interests to veto mul-
tilateral commitments that presidents might otherwise find to be in the national
interest. This pattern was particularly evident during the Clinton administration.
Clinton and his top foreign policy aides came into office trumpeting the admin-
istration’s support for ‘‘assertive multilateralism.’’ Yet, multilateral initiatives at first
embraced by Clinton were again and again abandoned under the pressure of ob-
jections from identifiable societal or bureaucratic actors or in consequence of the
president’s own growing impatience with multilateral diplomacy. Domestic con-
straints tightened in 1994, when the Republican Party gained control of both
houses of the Congress. Key Republican leaders, such as Senate Foreign Relations
Committee chair Jesse Helms, adopted openly unilateralist positions on many for-
eign policy issues.
14
I am indebted to Thomas Lairson for suggesting the ideas presented in this paragraph. Moravcsik (2002:353–
357) makes a similar point, focusing on the conservatism of American political culture. Also see Spiro (2000).
15
American political institutions have become even more open and decentralized over the past quarter century
through a series of reforms to political parties, Congress, and presidential nominating processes that were designed
to render the system more democratic. Fareed Zakaria (2003:161–198) argues that these measures had the par-
adoxical result of further empowering highly organized special interests at the expense of the general public by
weakening the aggregating role of political parties and the autonomy of office-holders.
16
The term ‘‘divided government’’ here refers to a situation in which one or both houses of Congress are
controlled by a party other than that to which the president belongs. Since 1980, there has been divided government
for all but five years (the exceptions being the first two years of Bill Clinton’s first term of office and three of the four
years of George W. Bush’s first term).
D. SKIDMORE 223
Aside from the area of international trade (where the U.S. exercised leadership
in concluding the North American Free Trade Agreement and creating the World
Trade Organization),17 the Clinton administration compiled a rather dismal record
with respect to U.S. participation in major international treaty initiatives during the
1990s (see above for examples). The Clinton years also brought shrinking U.S.
funding for the State Department, the UN, development assistance, and interna-
tional agencies of all kinds. U.S. support for UN peacekeeping missions fell sharply
after the deaths of eighteen U.S. soldiers during fighting in Somalia.18 U.S. inter-
vention in Bosnia was plagued by disputes with America’s UN and NATO partners.
While the Clinton administration did secure NATO support for military interven-
tion in the Kosovo conflict, the U.S. bypassed the UN Security Council. The same
was true of U.S. and British enforcement of no-fly zones over northern and south-
ern Iraq, which never received explicit Security Council authorization. What seems
striking is that even an administration ideologically sympathetic to multilateralism
found itself drawn toward unilateralist policies by the combination of international
incentives and domestic constraints described in this paper.19
In contrast with Clinton, unilateralism appears to have been an overdetermined
outcome in the case of George W. Bush’s presidency.20 Not only were Bush and
many of his top advisers ideologically hostile to multilateralism, the societal and
bureaucratic interests who acted to veto significant multilateral initiatives during
the Clinton years constituted important elements of George W. Bush’s political
coalition. In Clinton’s case, for example, the U.S. oil and gas industry served as a
political problem as he sought a formula that would allow U.S. participation in the
Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change under terms acceptable at home, and abroad.
For Bush, on the other hand, the oil and gas industry was treated not as an op-
ponent to be mollified if possible, but as a key ally whose preferences were given
priority in shaping the administration’s position on multilateral efforts to curb glo-
bal warming. Whether working from the outside or the inside, however, the out-
come of oil industry opposition to Kyoto was much the sameFU.S. nonratification.
It is a mistake to exaggerate the differences between Clinton and Bush in the
debate over multilateralism and unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy. Under both
presidents, U.S. behavior was strongly unilateralist. Under Clinton, U.S. unilater-
alism was less a preference in itself than the outcome of a policy process driven by
domestic constraints. Without the authority bestowed upon the presidency by Cold
War imperatives, Clinton was unable, and perhaps unwilling, to overcome domestic
resistance to multilateralism. Under Bush, unilateralism was the product of a com-
bination of unchecked power abroad, the sway of particularistic interests at home,
and the ideological inclination of Bush and his top advisers. Even the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, proved insufficient to deflect the Bush administra-
tion’s unilateralist tendencies, contrary to predictions offered by some observers at
the time (Miller, 2001/2002).
17
Nico Krisch (2003:50) observes that the U.S. accepts multilateralism more readily in the area of trade because
the U.S. is less dominant in this issue area than in most others.
18
Presidential Decision Directive 25, issued in March 1994, specified a set of stringent criteria by which the U. S.
would judge whether to support new UN peacekeeping operations. See Sewall (2002:196–198).
19
See Huntington (1999) for an overview of growing U.S. unilateralism during the Clinton era. A similar
pattern was evident during the Carter administration. Jimmy Carter’s early reformist and multilateralist foreign
policy agenda was undermined and ultimately reversed under the pressure of concentrated domestic opposition.
See Skidmore (1996).
20
For an overview of the Bush administration’s early foreign policy record, see Daadler and Lindsay (2003).
Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy document (White House, 2002) makes the case for the unilateral and
preventive use of force in some circumstances.
Summarizing the Argument

This paper has attempted to account for the recent unilateralist turn in American
foreign policy. The argument can be summarized as follows:
The U.S. has never pursued a genuinely multilateralist foreign policy.
Rather, U.S. strategy in the post-World War II period is best characterized
as hegemonic. While the U.S. embraced the creation of international in-
stitutions as an effective means for exercising U.S. power and maintaining
international order, the rules and procedures of these institutions bound
other states far more than the U.S. itself.
The growing conflicts between the U.S. and its major allies in recent years
are the result of two shifts: the waning willingness of the U.S. to invest in
strong international institutions and the growing insistence by other states
that the U.S. conform to the same international rules as the rest of the
international community. These dual challenges to the two principal pil-
lars of U.S. hegemony have resulted in an increasingly unilateralist Amer-
ican foreign policy, one that rests more upon the raw application of power
and less upon the willingness of other states to follow the U.S. as a le-
gitimate international leader.
This move from hegemony to unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy can be
traced to the end of the Cold War. The demise of the Soviet Union re-
moved an important constraint on U.S. power while reducing the de-
pendence of allied states on U.S. protection. At home, the removal of the
Soviet threat weakened the authority of the president to pursue broad
national interests while empowering parochial interests that generally op-
pose multilateral commitments.
The foreign policy differences between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
are not as stark as many have perceived. The preferences, ideology, and
rhetoric of the two presidents are quite different. But structural forces at
home and abroad have played more important roles in driving both pres-
idents (Clinton reluctantly and Bush enthusiastically) toward a pattern of
unilateralist behavior in U.S. relations with the world. The appropriate
contrast is not between a multilateralist Clinton and a unilateralist Bush,
but between two unilateralisms that differ not in kind but more in tone,
emphasis, and degree. Although the passing of George W. Bush’s pres-
idency may result in numerous consequential changes in U.S. foreign
policy, a decisive or lasting shift toward a genuinely multilateralist brand of
U.S. diplomacy appears unlikely.
What remains is to briefly consider the implications of a sustained unilateralist

phase in U.S. foreign policy.
Conclusion: The Costs of Unilateralism

Is the new unilateralism sustainable? Given America’s vast resources and power
advantages over other states (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002), the answer is probably
yesFbut only at considerable cost. Even though structural forces at home and
abroad weigh heavily against a multilateralist turn in U.S. foreign policy, it does not
follow that unilateralism serves well the interests of either the U.S. or the world.
While a full accounting of the consequences of American unilateralism is beyond
the scope of this paper, three kinds of costs deserve mention.
Despite the increased willingness of other states to invest in the maintenance of a
strong institutional order that provides important international collective goods,
there is considerable danger that such efforts will fail without the active support of
the world’s most powerful state. The meager progress in devising international
D. SKIDMORE 225
solutions to the problem of global warming is only one example. The U.S. is simply
too large and too central to the present international order for it to successfully
free-ride on the contributions of others. As a weakened international institutional
order fails in providing significant public goods, the U.S. will suffer along with
everyone else.
A second cost lies in growing U.S. isolation from the main currents of world
opinion. Since the 1950s, for instance, the proportion of UN General Assembly roll
call votes in which the U.S. has voted with the majority has steadily declined (Karns
and Mingst, 2002:270). The U.S. runs the growing risk that other states, even if
they lack the capacity or will to ‘‘balance’’ against the U.S. in traditional military
terms, may nevertheless complicate U.S. foreign policy through active non-coop-
eration with unilateral applications of American power.21 An important example
has been the reluctance of some major allies to aid American and British occupation
efforts in Iraq. Even in cases where allied cooperation is eventually secured, the
incentives or price that the U.S. must pay in order to obtain that cooperation may
be driven up by the questionable legitimacy surrounding unilateralist U.S. policies.
Finally, the yawning gap between the unilateralist character of U.S. foreign policy
and the multilateralist public preferences revealed in numerous opinion surveys
points to a troubling democratic deficit at home. The growing influence of paro-
chial interests over U.S. foreign policy suggests additional reason for concern. A
democratic deficit can lead to unexpected consequences. When faced with a
skeptical public, presidents have strong incentives to oversell threats and solutions
in an effort to secure domestic support for controversial foreign policies. The result
can be a politics of fear and an unnecessarily bellicose foreign policy.
In short, the U.S. has greater freedom, by virtue of its unchecked international
power, to pursue a unilateralist foreign policy than at any time in its history. Yet, the
wisdom of such a course remains as doubtful as ever. Indeed, one might wonder
whether the maladaptive consequences of unilateralism will someday prove suffi-
cient to prompt a reconsideration of the multilateralist option in spite of the struc-
tural biases that work against such an approach. Unfortunately, it is precisely
because the U.S. is so large and powerful that it is less sensitive to negative feedback
from its policies abroad than smaller states, which have less margin for error in
their international endeavors (Skidmore, 1994). An ocean-liner, once off course,
takes considerable time to turn in a new direction. In an iceberg-strewn sea, one can
only hope that the near-sighted captain locates his corrective lenses in time.
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Understanding the Unilateralist Turn in U.S. Foreign Policy

Article in Foreign Policy Analysis · July 2005

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Understanding the Unilateralist Turn in

How should we explain the recent unilateralist turn in U.S. foreign

Many observers have lamented the movement from multilateralism to unilateralism

r 2005 International Studies Association.

Many commentators have treated the unilateralist turn as a short-term aberra-

Antecedents: Hegemony, not Multilateralism

To invest in the creation and maintenance of international institutions that serve to

The Contradictions of Hegemony

Toward a Post-Hegemonic World

TABLE 1. Strategic Orientations Toward International Institutions

High Institutional Investments

Tracing the Unilateralist–Multilateralist Divide: The U.S. Versus the World

The Domestic Sources of Unilateralism

TABLE 2. Multilateralism and U.S. Public Opinion

Agree (%) Disagree (%) Do Not Know (%)

The U.S. should cooperate fully with the UN 67 28 5

from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry in rejecting a new protocol designed to

exceptionalism, a strong commitment to unfettered U.S. sovereignty, and an aver-

Clinton and Bush Compared

Summarizing the Argument

What remains is to briefly consider the implications of a sustained unilateralist

Conclusion: The Costs of Unilateralism

LAKE, DAVID (1999) Entangling Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

RUGGIE, JOHN GERARD (1993) ‘‘Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution.’’ In Multilateralism

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