ABSTRACT

Throughout the recent, long US presidential campaign, various voices supportive of the United Nations could be heard expectantly predicting that, whichever candidate was elected, the long estrangement of the United States from the UN was about to end. This chapter looks back at not only the last eight years, but also the longer history of the US-UN relationship. That history suggests something different: While it may be unwise to ignore the extreme estrangement caused by recent US policy (as one distinguished French scholar, Jacques Fomerand, did when he noted a “remarkable pattern of continuity with previous administrations” that “runs counter to the comforting notion that we are in a mere fleeting moment of irresponsible insanity”1), there is little reason to expect rapid change in the overall pattern that existed throughout the George W. Bush years. The celebrations that will mark the new US embrace of multilateralism in 2009 may well be followed by disappointment within both the UN and the United States. This will not be the fault of individuals – of untested or distracted leaders in Washington or New York. Rather, it will be a consequence of the structural position of the United States within a global political economy that remains governed by the state system (a legacy of the Agricultural Age) even while the outlines of the (necessarily) global political system of the Industrial Age are becoming more apparent.