Globalization and Diplomacy: A Practitioner's Perspective

Talbott
Working "Multi-Multilaterally"
Paradoxically, while globalization induces international cohesion and
empowers international enterprises, it also accentuates the limitations of
national power. Governments are often too cumbersome to respond effectively
to transnational threats-including when those threats are manifest
within their own borders. Partly as a result, political authority is devolving
from the top down and from the center outward, to local and regional governments,
and to community organizations working at the grassroots.
Therefore, many governments, including the U.S., have sought to
leverage scarce resources and improve their ability to address transnational
threats by forming coalitions with "nonstate actors"-multinational
corporations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and
international institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank,
and the International Monetary Fund. These coalitions allow the
United States to work not only multilaterally, but multi-multilaterally,
through several organizations and institutions at the same time.
In Bosnia, nine agencies and departments of the U.S. government are
cooperating with more than a dozen other governments, seven international
organizations, and 13 major NGOs-from the Red Cross to the
International Crisis Group to the American Bar Association-to implement
the Dayton Peace Accords.
In the Middle East, the United States chairs the Multilateral
Working Group on Water Resources, a group of 47 countries and
international organizations that are working to ensure that the
region's shared dependence on a scarce resource does not become a
threat to political stability. The governments of Israel, Japan, Oman,
South Korea, and the United States have established the Middle East
Regional Desalination Center in Muscat to support research to
reduce the cost of desalination.
An interagency Food Security Working Group co-chaired by the
Department of State, Department of Agriculture, and USAID is looking at
new ways to apply American knowledge, technology, resources, and influence
to ensure that there will be adequate food to meet the demands of the
next century. Under this group's auspices, the U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration is leading an international initiative that
brings together governments, private companies, and NGOS to begin experimental
forecasting of seasonal climate patterns, so that crop planting can
be adjusted to anticipated annual rainfall, thereby helping to reduce the
severity of food emergencies.
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