The Primacy of Unilateralism: The American Superpower and the International Organizations in the Clinton Era

Since the beginning of the Clinton administration a basic trend has been observable in American foreign policy. While the initial foreign-policy conception emphasized multilateral action, it increasingly gave way to military strength and unilateral freedom of action as the dominant approach to deal with international problems. This article is designed to corroborate or refute this trend by analyzing the US policy toward three international organizations: the UN, NATO and the OPCW. These three bodies serve as a good means of highlighting the differences and parallels in American policy. By examining the American debate on how the US is dealing with its hegemonic position we conceptualize different explanatory factors for multilateral and unilateral behavior respectively. We especially focus on the relationship between the administration and Congress. After the Republican takeover of Congress, the Clinton administration gradually gave in to Republican demands which aimed at emphasizing an 'America First!'-approach instead of cooperative international engagement. In conclusion, we assess the plausibility of the explanatory factors to account for the different behavior of the United States toward the UN and the OPCW, on the one hand, and NATO, on the other. Finally, we raise the question of the permanence of the American hegemon's basic unilateral stance.