ABSTRACT
The United States actions seem to reflect a unilateral U.S. agenda, not a widely shared one. Moreover, George Bush's attempt to broaden the war on terrorism by characterizing Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an 'Axis of Evil' produced strong opposition in Europe, by both publics and leaders. Unilateralist choices thus risk high costs. The choice to participate in only the international issues the United States cares about and to insist on only U.S. preferred solutions to those issues may be 'good politics' back home, but such behaviors are typically viewed abroad as hegemonic/imperial acts. In short, unilateralism is counterproductive. Current policy makers seem to have forgotten that multilateral approaches have been very successful before Americans need to develop better approaches to multilateral burden sharing to deal with issues arising out of the diffusion of power. For many, the 'heyday' of American leadership in world affairs was the 15 years following the end of the Second World War.
