Multilateralism and the International Organizations Essay

Multilateralism and the International Organizations - Essay Example The first modern instances of multilateralism occurred in the nineteenth century in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic Wars where the great powers met to redraw the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. The Concert of Europe, as it became known, was a group of great and lesser powers that would meet to resolve issues peacefully. Conferences such as the Conference of Berlin in 1884 helped reduce great power conflicts during this period, and the nineteenth century was one of the Europes most peaceful. This system, however, was destroyed by the First World War and consequently, the League of Nations was created by the conflict world leaders in order to try to prevent any other form of conflict. Still, after the Second World War, the leaders saw the League of Nations failure and decided to create the United Nations in 1945 with a structure intended to address the weaknesses of the previous body. Unlike the League, the UN had the active participation of the United States and the Soviet Union, the worlds two greatest contemporary powers. Along with the political institutions of the UN, the post-war years a wide array of other multilateral organizations such as the GATT (now the World Trade Organization), the World Bank and the World Health Organization developed. The collective multilateral framework played an important role in maintaining world peace in the Cold War. Moreover, United Nations peacekeepers stationed around the world became one of the most visible symbols of multilatera lism in recent decades. Today there are so many   multilateral institutions of varying scope and subject matter, ranging from the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU) to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and Organisation For the Prohibition Of Chemical Weapons(OPCW); although many such organizations were founded or are supported by the UN, they are   by no means maintained within the UN system.  Ã‚