For Multilateralism, Is This the Dark Moment Before the Dawn?
Let's hope so.
By David Rothkopf, ForeignPolicy.com, June 18, 2012

RIO DE JANEIRO – Remember when "leading from behind" was an insult? Right now, it would be a masterstroke. Hope is now the thing we are trying scrape off the bottoms of our shoes while Europe, the Middle East, and our entire global ecosystem shudder from the after-effects of a world that seems to be lacking effective global institutions.

[....]

Our problem is not that the biggest powers are incapable of action to address current problems. It's that just when the promise of a new post-Cold War, post-single-superpower era of collaboration among nations seemed to be greatest, many of the big powers have revealed themselves to be unwilling to assume the responsibilities of true global leadership -- of motivating, cajoling, inspiring, intimidating, confronting or blocking actions by other powers. It's not so much that we are in a G-Zero world as it is that most of our leaders are zeroes.

A few of those bear special responsibility for taking the bloom off the multilateral rose [....]