| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
OUR UNIPOLAR WORLD IS PASSING INTO HISTORY, AS THE ECONOMIC CENTER OF
gravity shifts eastward and southward and new centers of power emerge. Our
international governance systems and institutions, constructed out of the ruins
of World War II and the Great Depression, have been steadily lagging the steepening curve of change. Meanwhile, as the world struggles with the aftershocks
of the global financial and economic crisis, terrorism, transnational crime and
drug trafficking, climate change, food security and energy prices, the Arab
Awakening, Japan's triple crises, failing and fragile states, the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and so forth, the virtues of multilateral cooperation are being
rediscovered. Many see renewed merit in pooling national sovereignty in cooperative institutional arrangements.1 At the same time, the preeminent power
in the international system, the United States, burdened by debt, hobbled by internal divisions, newly conscious of its limits, led by a president whose formative years are more North-South than East-West, is itself putting greater stock
in partnership and multilateral cooperation.2
In response to this unprecedented
pace and scope of change, old institutions are innovating and new forms and
varieties of international cooperation are being called into being
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