“Unilateral actions by powerful nations, like the United States, can destabilize global order and harm the efforts on global governance. Ignoring international and multilateral institutions harms global efforts and creates tension in international relations and world order.”
In general, unilateralism is defined as an approach or an agenda where a decision is taken by one party without consulting another party. The USA has made many independent decisions since the beginning of the Cold War, which affected the international order. The decisions taken by the USA currently are autocratic internally. Countries with the aid of the USA are flourishing whereas other countries are afraid of going against them. Other countries themselves are nuclear powers but still work on the support system of the States. For instance, Israel-Palestine conflict, where USA is one of the major suppliers of arms and ammunition to Israel to fight against Hamas.
During the Cold War, the USA had taken significant unilateral decisions to promote its foreign policy and strategic interests. On July 7th, 1950, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) empowered the United States to lead a unified military command, marking its official entry into the Korean War under the UN’s banner. The US was successful in preventing the spread of communism in East Asia. The US was also involved in the Vietnam War, the Military, Navy and the Air Force of the US trained and supported South Vietnamese to go against the North. Many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations also took place in this period like overthrowing the Iranian democracy, the British appealed for help from the USA, which led to the replacement of Mossadegh by the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, was a major turn in world politics which led to the emergence of US hegemony and unipolar world order. In 2003, lack of approval by the United Nations Security Council and opposition from many countries like Turkey and other Middle Eastern nations, the American military and the allied troops unilaterally were sent to disarm the weapons of Iraq which could cause mass destruction and overthrow the rule of Saddam Hussain. The US faced allegations of false information about weapons which led to the killing of 4,700 US troops and the allies and a hundred thousand Iraqi deaths.
In 1989 US held an operation called ‘Operation Just Cause’ and invaded Panama without the involvement of the UN invaded Panama which destabilized the economy, destroyed the sovereignty and led to the death of many civilians in the country. The US action also led to the removal of General Manuel Noriega who faced charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, increasing dictatorship and rigged 1989 elections. This exposes the US’s continuous violation of international law, by leading operations without authorization UN and interfering in other countries’ internal affairs.
In 2001, the US established ‘Operation Enduring Freedom‘ in Afghanistan to respond to the 9/11 attack to dismantle AL-Qaeda and Taliban in the name of the global war on terrorism. The main idea of this operation was to prevent future terrorist attacks like 9/11. The US was supposed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after the completion of the operation but was involved in human rights violations in the name of countering terrorism. Finally due to internal political changes and pressure US withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in 2021.
On 12th December 2015 at COP21, the Paris Agreement was cast under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), setting a new global course for addressing climate change. It was legally binding on all countries to achieve the targets on climate change. Under the leadership of Donald Trump’s presidency, the USA withdrew itself from the Paris Agreement. Which affected the enforcement of the agreement as the USA is the largest and most prominent economy in the world. The US is releasing almost 15 per cent of greenhouse emissions which affect the global environment. After, backlash from the international community, the US reentered the agreement under President Biden’s leadership.
Similarly, the Iran nuclear deal was negotiated with US, Russia, UK, France and China. A Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in July 2015 with the United States. The main idea of this agreement was to disassemble the nuclear program of Iran. The idea was to reduce the chance of strife of Iran between Saudi Arabia and Israel. However, under Donald Trump came USA withdrew itself from the agreement in 2018. Iran started ignoring the restriction and restarted building nuclear arms and ammunition, and purchase of uranium and also saw deadly attacks on the Iranians.
Similarly, the US exited from the Trans-Pacific Pact (TPP) in 2017 after Trump came to power. TPP was one of the most powerful economic and geopolitical strategies, which involved 40 per cent of the economies in the world. The US and other nations like Canada and Australia withdrew from the project, which was designed to increase economic growth and create jobs and profit for member countries including Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Vietnam and Brunei.
It has always been noticed that the USA wants complete dominance of the world order and they have been successful in expanding their hegemony. The USA has been making independent decisions for the longest time in history and it became more significant after the cold war.
The NATO allies were forced to support the unilateral decisions of the USA. The lack of active participation of the USA in WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the production of vaccines. The US has also criticized the WTO for malfunctioning and has restricted the appointing designations of judges in the Appellate Body which has weakened the functioning of the organization. The USA has sanctioned International Criminal Court (ICC) officials so that it can limit its powers and prevent from investigating the US military actions. The international community have faced a lot of problems with the US’s unilateral decision-making.
The US involvement in the Middle East received a lot of criticism from the international community. The USA also declared Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 by shifting its embassy from Tel Aviv, which affected its relationship with Middle Eastern states.
Currently, we can see a lessening of US unilateralism and growth of multilateralism with the rise of China, India, Japan, South Africa and Brazil as economic power from different regions. The emergence of multilateral and regional alliances like SAARC, BRICS, SCO and EAEU forced the US to accommodate multilateral decisions in its foreign policy.
The Unilateralism is always advocates individual interests over coon interests of the global community. US unilateral policy weakened the international, and regional organizations along with international law. Countries should reduce their financial dependency, reform the UN, improve their military technology form alliances and follow international law to prevent US unilateral decisions.
