Can Reforms Work?
Bennis shows well that ongoing tensions between the United States and the UN are substantive. Her findings belie the charge that the UN can simply be regarded as a tool of U.S. imperialism. With equal force and skill, however, she also shows that Washington does indeed “call the shots” in the UN. It has backed the UN when it felt that it can forge a consensus, and pursued its own course of action when it cannot. Calling the Shots leads us to a recurrent dilemma in multilateralism today: Without U.S. support, multilateralism is ineffective. But U.S. support for multilateralism has meant selective enforcement of international law and a predisposition towards military solutions. The problem is made even worse when U.S. reliance on multilateralism has not produced the ends it sought. When the UN has failed to line up behind U.S. dictates, the United States has openly declared its right to act unilaterally. This was brashly proclaimed by Madeline Albright (“We will act multilaterally when w
