As we consider unilateralism and multilateralism this week, recent events have highlighted how even the staunchest anti-globalists seek to use multilateralism to achieve their goals. The Trump administration, at the urging of former National Security Advisor John Bolton pulled the United States out of a multilateral deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In the reading for this week, Bolton decried any constraints on America’s military action or power as attempts by the global elites to control the American people. Bolton has long sought regime change in Tehran and believes diplomacy will fail to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear state.
The US withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and has sought to encourage other nations to follow its lead and push Iran back into isolation. The Trump administration has failed to convince any allies to join it in leaving the agreement, however. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has adopted Bolton’s policy of regime change and despite the imposition of sanctions and even a drone strike on a top general, the regime is in place and there are indications that uranium enrichment is increasing.[1]
Having failed to secure allies in their campaign against Iran, Pompeo went to the UN Security Council to try to push the UNSC to extend the UN arms embargo past its October expiration date. He was only able to convince the Dominican Republic to vote for the resolution. Now he has notified the Security Council the US will be triggering the snapback of sanctions as laid out in the original resolution. With the US no longer being a party to the agreement, other members of the Security Council reject that the US has any claim to initiate a snapback. Even the US’s closest allies, France and the UK, have indicated they will try to find a way to prevent the US from triggering the snapback and try to preserve the JCPOA.
Short of outright war, Pompeo has found that unilateral action will not create his desired result and now must turn back to the much-maligned multilateral institutions and attempt to bully them into supporting US goals. The Trump administration’s general disdain for US allies, and Pompeo’s in particular, have made it almost impossible to now try for multilateral action against Iran, even though France and the UK agree that Iran is in violation of the terms. Isolated and humiliated, the United States is facing the consequences of its unilateralist policy and repudiation of alliances.