A la carte suggests the idea of picking and choosing. The term a la carte multilateralism was coined by Richard Haass, Director of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department from 2001 to 2003. In a speech in July 2001, Haass told a Washington think-tank that “what you're going to get from [the George W. Bush] administration is a la carte multilateralism… we'll look at each agreement and make a decision, rather than come out with a broad-based approach.”

Haass' use of the term came against a backdrop of debate about the Bush administration's supposed preference for unilateral action, signalled by its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. According to one analyst the formulation was intended to suggest that “multilateralism was not rejected out of hand, but would be engaged only as and when the United States chooses to participate”. Treaties will “be judged one issue at a time, one negotiation at a time, one summit meeting at a time”. As such, the term clearly shares much with ideas like “ad hoc multilateralism” or “coalitions of the willing” in which one leading state creates a multilateral group by “picking and choosing its allies and mechanisms as circumstances dictate”.

Advocates of an a la carte approach argue that it is realistic and pragmatic. Rather than accepting multilateralism as an end in itself, a la carte multilateralism puts emphasis on achieving outcomes. Satu Limaye has said the Bush administration's approach more closely resembles “accountable multilateralism” in which “a premium is placed on making institutions achieve concrete ends”. Robert Kagan agrees, arguing that, “contrary to fashionable wisdom, the debate today is not between multilateralism and unilateralism. It's between effective multilateralism and paralytic multilateralism”. John Bolton, then U.S. Under-Secretary of State for international security affairs, explicitly links the efficacy of a la carte multilateralism to its ability to serve the national interest.