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Persistent “isms”

I noticed with some interest and a little dismay that Ambassador Dhanapala’s short list (Op-Ed, September 18) of negative “isms” (pun intended) did not include “hegemonism”— as in uni-polar hegemonism. While his suggested solution, multilateralism, is the answer to unilateralism, what is the answer to uni-polar hegemonism, which sometimes combines precisely with multilateralism to negative effect (as in the case of Kosovo) and often generates the very ills and “isms” that he identifies? Maybe we should add another solution to that of multi-lateralism, namely multi-polarity, another word for a global order marked by pluralism.

Dayan Jayatilleka,

Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations at Geneva

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