Such relationships depend much more on upholding multilateral treaties and agreements, and supporting a more representative set of global decision makers at the UN and elsewhere, than on a throwback to the cold war concept of mutually assured destruction.
Much more open and multilateral configurations will be adopted, as occurs for example in the World Economic Forum (also known as Davos and which brings together business leaders, politicians, journalists, intellectuals, NGOs and other civil society representatives).
When people finally stop trying to appease Russia, the environment will be much more conducive for multilateral cooperation on combatting Russian human rights abuses.
This takes the WTO into a whole new series of behind-the-border issues where national preferences come much more strongly into conflict with multilateral rule-setting.
In my estimation, the United States stands to gain more, much more, if we can work with the United Nations to deliver a multilateral approach to disarming Iraq, even providing military force, if necessary.
After neoconservatism, I pledged a mix of realism and liberal internationalism, in which military force would be used much more sparingly, and American power would be placed in the service of a stable, rule-based, multilateral world order.
By his second term, much to the consternation of some conservatives, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush had moved to a more multilateral approach on issues like North Korea and Iran, but the first term had left a bad taste in some foreign capitals that persisted through the second.
However, given the track record of lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful multilateral trade negotiations in recent history, it is more likely that any agreement will take much more time to be concluded.
"Since I came to these shores over 30 years ago, Britain has become much more European," he told the dinner audience in Blenheim Palace, a mix of the global crowd mostly inclined to endorse his multilateral case.
"It is more strategic, more cooperative, more multilateral and, in the long run, more effective".
