The idea of mutilateralism is that with all the world's nations acting in concert wars can be avoided and trade and other issues can be better dealt with. 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 Scandinavian countries. Larger states often act unilaterally, while the smaller ones have little involvement at all in international affairs.
The alternatives to multilateralism are bilateralism, which are two countries working toghether and unilateralism which is a single nation acting on its own.
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 Nations. A number of international arms limitation treaties were also signed such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but these all proved ineffective as Europe again went to war in 1939.
After the Second World War the victors, having learnt from the failure of the League of Nations created the United Nations in 1945. Unlike the League the UN had the active participation of the United States and the Soviet Union, the world's two greatest powers. Along with the politician UN the post war years also saw a wide array of other multilateral organizations such as the GATT, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. The agencies 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.
Since the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as the world's only dominant power it has generally been accepted that multilateralism is on the decline. The United States has the freedom to act unilaterally in most situations. Under George W. Bush it has rejected such multilateral agreements such as Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court and the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines. As well there has been a backlash against the economic organizations such as the WTO and IMF by western protestors.History