Analysing The Challenges Facing Multilateral Organisations Today Politics Essay

Analysing The Challenges Facing Multilateral Organisations Today Politics Essay War is often the result of non negotiable problems/disputes. Since the end of the Second World War, liberal international theory advanced the establishment of international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and its sub bodies, in the belief that such international forums were where state members have a chance to discuss and air their common issues and grievances and could prevent war and, widen the corporations between nation states. However, since its creation, the legitimacy as well as the effectiveness of these multilateral institutions has always been questioned. The end of the Cold War marked a new era of world politics where the United States (US) became the predominant power in the international system. In addition, the Iraq war of 2003, led by the US, but was not authorised by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the issue raised a question about the hegemonic position of the US over the United Nations. This is just one of the many challenges multilater al organizations like the UN are facing today. The terrorist attack on 9th November on the US and similar attacks elsewhere in the world, as well as the increasing threat of weapon of mass destruction (being used by either a rogue state such as Iran or a terrorist group) in the 21st Century is another major challenge for the United Nations and its administrative departments. Moreover, with the increasing involvement of non state actors and non governmental organizations nowadays, the value of formal institutions like the UN is clearly affected in adverse ways. To clarify if multilateralism is in crisis or not, it is essential to firstly look at the difficulties posed by these new dimensions to multilateralism, then evaluate its reaction and effectiveness at tackling them. In this essay, the focus will be on UN as this is often seen as the vanguard of multilateralism. Firstly, the essay will examine what multilateralism can be defined as and will name the current challenges which Mul tilateralism faces, it will then go on to give analysis of the sources of those troubles. Finally, it concludes that such multilateral institutions like the United Nations are under real challenge to the effectiveness of their multilateralism; however, it is not yet in a crisis situation. The leaders of these organizations can no long presume their exchanges to be â€Å"business as usual† but need to take into account these growing troubles and think more about â€Å"reform† if multilateralism is to continue to function in a stable way. Before discussing whether multilateralism is effective one needs to consider what exactly multilateralism is. For Paul Nielsson, UN Commissioner, multilateralism is about ‘all parties’ carrying out ‘concerted efforts’ to strengthen the international regulatory framework’ (Jorgensen, 2007, p.2) and involves states ‘pooling’ both resources and sovereignty. The problem for many participants in multilateral processes is that the processes themselves are ‘often slow and difficult, and rarely do their results satisfy every participant’ (ibid). Thus, multilateralism is by definition a process where participants cannot expect a zero-sum outcome, where they can clearly identify their gains or losses and say it was a success or failure. Multilateralism is a compromise between states where its greatest success is that everyone is a winner and everyone is a loser, because nobody gets everything they want.