The challenge for East Asia, of course, is achieving a "multilateralism of the unwilling".
Political leaders, he reminds us, "speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of coercion and noncoercion" while concluding that "This is no answer to the terrorists".
So, even as the two countries aim for but never reach a G-2 arrangement, the best way to maintain global coordination and overcome regional rivalry would be by setting up a "multilateralism of the unwilling" in East Asia to manage disputes between large and small powers.
Brazil and France wish to offer to the world their shared vision of a new multilateralism adapted to our multipolar world.
A top American says bluntly that if the EU cannot agree to a package of agricultural reforms before a crucial WTO meeting in September, Doha will be "in deep, deep trouble".You might expect such considerations to weigh heavily on Mr Chirac, who fancies himself as a champion of multilateralism and of the poor world.
Obama has reached back to the earlier traditions of his Democratic predecessors for inspiration, borrowing a measure of modesty from Carter and a measure of multilateralism from Clinton.
That caution is warranted given the administration's demonstrated intention of using others, whether allies or the United Nations, to give a patina of multilateralism and legality to an adventure that is clearly unilateral and destabilizing.
Far from a fighting coalition, the arrangement is a payment on Cold War debts to the US, a token contribution to the symbolic "war of perceptions" projecting an image of multilateralism.
In some ways Bush offered only a variation on the Clinton theme of "a la carte multilateralism" in which the United States picks and chooses the international structures with which it wants to cooperate.
True, it has tended to do so behind a veil of multilateralism, acting in the name of the United Nations or NATO.
