For European leaders, multilateralism is a moral category, designed to restrain the brutal consequences of nationalism. In the distrust of national ambition and their a priori commitment to entities like the IMF, World Bank and multiple U.N. agencies -- as well as purely European contrivances -- the Europeans are joined by the functionaries of international humanitarian and human rights NGOs, as well as diplomats and public officials of many countries -- especially European -- for whom the rhetoric of multinationalism and multilateralism has become the common currency of public discourse.
The United States has a very different experience of nationalism and therefore a very different view of multilateralism. From the U.S. point of view, World Wars I and II were exercises in European savagery; it fell to the United States to save Europe from itself. However, the United States never saw itself as responsible for Europe's disease, nor did it see itself as susceptible to it. Washington was not afraid of its own nationalist tendencies. Americans believed that the Europeans would not behave as civilized human beings unless they were forced into institutions that limited their sovereignty and behavior. In the American view, the lesson of the 20th century was precisely the opposite: The United States could be trusted to behave responsibly without institutional constraints. During the Cold War, an American might argue, nuclear holocaust was prevented precisely because the United States unilaterally managed its nuclear strategy. Had the European statesmen of 1914 or 1939 had nuclear weapons, or had the weapons been held multilaterally, another holocaust might have followed.
The United States has a very different experience of nationalism and therefore a very different view of multilateralism. From the U.S. point of view, World Wars I and II were exercises in European savagery; it fell to the United States to save Europe from itself. However, the United States never saw itself as responsible for Europe's disease, nor did it see itself as susceptible to it. Washington was not afraid of its own nationalist tendencies. Americans believed that the Europeans would not behave as civilized human beings unless they were forced into institutions that limited their sovereignty and behavior. In the American view, the lesson of the 20th century was precisely the opposite: The United States could be trusted to behave responsibly without institutional constraints. During the Cold War, an American might argue, nuclear holocaust was prevented precisely because the United States unilaterally managed its nuclear strategy. Had the European statesmen of 1914 or 1939 had nuclear weapons, or had the weapons been held multilaterally, another holocaust might have followed.