Prospects of Multilateralism

Hard-pressed, that would have to be my answer to the question whether I could think of a more fascinating time to dig into the subject matter of international law on the international diplomatic playing field it so desperately seeks to dominate. With Syria still in turmoil, Palestine now in possession of an international ‘birth certificate’ in spite of strong Americanled reluctance thereto and political tensions rising in areas of Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa all too familiar to such tensions, the global economic crisis still only sporadically shows signs of relaxing the iron-like grip by which it has seized much of the ‘North’. Whereas students of international legal multilateralism one generation ago were bustling with new found optimism in the ruins of the Iron Curtain, the dust not even fully settled, pessimism seems to roam freely this time around. Pessimism about the elasticity of capitalism, the redistribution of global wealth and most of all about the prospects of international legal multilateralism presses down hard on the academic discipline of international law and the students it entertains.