With the end of the George W. Bush Presidency and the inauguration of the Obama administration, observers and policymakers around the world hailed the potential for the United States to engage in a new era of multilateralism on issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to climate change to humanitarian intervention. In contrast to the perceived unilateralism of the Bush era, the Obama Presidency raised expectations of international cooperation and increasing interdependence between countries, as well as promising to usher in a more diplomatic and consultative approach by the US to the challenges of global governance. This article discusses the contested nature of hegemony, disaggregates the concept of ‘multilateralism’, and generates a set of indicators that are used to examine the character of US engagement in multilateralism in the ‘Age of Obama’. It focuses in particular on analyzing the Obama administration’s response to international crises in the area of global security governance.
