The Diplomatic Lessons Learned from the Renewal of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Charting the " hows " of Foreign Policy Institute for the Study of Diplomacy • Charting the " hows " of Foreign Policy Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) sponsors discussions , research, and publications focusing on the implementation of foreign policy — seeking to answer the question " how " announced policy objectives can best be pursued. It does so by drawing on the concrete experiences of practitioners and the conceptual, comparative, and historical work of academics. In so doing, the Institute fills a special niche within the academic and practitioner communities. sic structure of international relations has been in a state of transition. The apparent collapse of bipolarity has yielded to arguments for unipolarity by some, mul-tipolarity by others, and, in this fiftieth anniversary year of the signing of the United Nations (UN) Charter, for UN-polarity by still others. The de-emphasis of ideology as a factor in relations between nation-states may ultimately prove less seminal than the number of nation-states we admit as players into the arena of global decisionmaking. On the one hand, dormant national-isms and both transnational and subnational groupisms are emerging, often accompanied by violence. On the other, there is an inexorable trend toward global integration through the spread of consumerism and the revolution in communications technology. These developments are parallel and not always in conflict. The global system of nation-states as we have known it may be undergoing a transition as we witness the power of nonstate actors, especially in the economic field—but also, increasingly, in the I n a period that has seen a remarkable acceleration of historic change, the ba-security area—to determine the ebb and flow of world trends. The interaction of people in cyberspace is also dramatically changing cultural patterns. Through this confluence of currents there is the overriding principle of multilateralism in global politics, a principle that has never been easily reconciled with realpolitik. The pressure for the multilateral approach grew with decolon-ization after World War II. It intensified after the Cold War ended and several new states entered the global system following the implosion of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The tension of the Cold War contest between two blocs, which was a disincentive to multi-lateralism, is now absent. Thus, we have a unique opportunity to reap the benefits of the multilateral approach to global problems. The " level playing field " of the speechwriters of international …