Until recently, the one constant in all my meetings was media bashing. No matter what the subject or where we met, there was always a good round of media criticism, which usually elicited agreement that the media contributed to, if it did not create, many of the problems in the world. As a journalist, I am pleased to see that tendency has subsided. As a US foreign policy observer, I am troubled to note that it has been replaced by America bashing. From Sakhalin to Singapore, every conference starts with complaints about US foreign policy. Judging from the tenor of these conversations, US unilateralism is the greatest danger the world faces today.
Now, there is a lot to argue about when it comes to US foreign policy, but most of these critics are not talking about those things. In fact, a great deal of the criticism is just plain wrong.
First, every nation acts unilaterally when it comes to issues of vital national security. No country will ever cede those decisions to a third party or the international community; even the governments that appear to do so have calculated that acting as part of a group is a better way to safeguard their national interests. The Chinese government certainly did not ask for permission before it deployed hundreds of missiles opposite Taiwan.
To my mind, the most egregious act of unilateralism recently was the French announcement, during efforts to secure a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, that it would veto any such bill. That statement was made before Iraq even rejected the measure, guaranteeing there would be no real international pressure, and effectively undermining the UN's authority.
That leads to the second point: the issue is not unilateralism per se, but the purposes to which the US applies its power. While the US is regularly beaten up for trying to remake the Middle East in its own image, many of those same critics have no problem with the United States bringing that same influence to bear against Israel.
Third, some of the criticism is just plain wrong. While the Bush administration has acted unilaterally in some instances, it has not turned its back on multilateralism. Every significant foreign-policy initiative - from the war on Afghanistan to the Proliferation Security Initiative - has been undertaken by a coalition of forces.