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Design for a multipolar world.

Article Excerpt
The proposal for an L-20 can be appreciated as a belated attempt to create a suitable new multilateral architecture after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Neither the United Nations nor US unilateralism are adequate mechanisms for global governance in the twenty-first century. A selective and limited expansion of the G8 with the inclusion of four or five additional states is the best immediate way forward.

A New Era Without a New Architecture

The Cold War was one of the few historical cycles in modern times to end without a major international effort to organize a new world order to emerge out of the old. The Napoleonic Wars led to the Congress of Vienna. The First World War ended with the Treaty of Versailles. The Second World War inspired the political and diplomatic architecture agreed upon in San Francisco. In contrast, no major effort has been made to provide the current globalized and multipolar world with the institutional and conceptual framework that a new age requires. We extravagantly use the prefix post (as in postmodern, post-Cold War, etc.) to signify that we have not found or agreed upon the words necessary to define the new circumstances of our day. It is urgent and important to devise a new framework and vocabulary.

Initially, the sudden and surprising collapse of the Soviet Union and the bankruptcy of Marxist socialism in Eastern Europe gave rise to US unilateralism. The victorious superpower was unchallenged...

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