There is a bigger danger. By treating some countries preferentially, bilateral and regional deals exclude others — fragmenting global trade and distorting the world economy. Instead of liberalizing trade — and widening growth — they carve it up. Worse, they have a domino effect: bilateral deals inevitably beget more bilateral deals, as countries left outside are forced to seek their own preferential arrangements, or risk further marginalization. This is precisely what we see happening today. There are already over two hundred bilateral and regional agreements in existence, and each month we hear of a new or expanded deal. There is a basic contradiction in the assumption that bilateral approaches serve to strengthen the multilateral, rules-based system. Even when intended to spur free trade, they can ultimately risk undermining it.
This is in no one's interest, least of all the United States. America led in the creation of the multilateral system after 1945 precisely to avoid a return to hostile blocs — blocs that had done so much to fuel interwar instability and conflict. America's vision, in the words of Cordell Hull, was that "enduring peace and the welfare of nations was indissolubly connected with the friendliness, fairness and freedom of world trade". Trade would bind nations together, making another war unthinkable. Non-discriminatory rules would prevent a return to preferential deals and closed alliances. A network of multilateral initiatives and organizations — the Marshal Plan, the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT, now the WTO — would provide the institutional bedrock for the international rule of law, not power. Underpinning all this was the idea that freedom — free trade, free democracies, the free exchange of ideas — was essential to peace and prosperity, a more just world.
It is a vision that has emerged pre-eminent a half century later. Trade has expanded twenty-fold since 1950. Millions in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are being lifted out of poverty, and millions more have new hope for the future. All the great powers — the US, Europe, Japan, India, China and soon Russia — are part of a rules-based multilateral trading system, greatly increasing the chances for world prosperity and peace. There is a growing realization that — in our interdependent world — sovereignty is constrained, not by multilateral rules, but by the absence of rules. All of these were America's objectives. The US needs to be both clearer about the magnitude of what it has achieved, and more realistic about what it is trying to — and can — accomplish. Multilateralism can be slow, messy, and tortuous. But it is also indispensable to managing an increasingly integrated global economy. Multilateralism is based on the belief that all countries — even powerful countries like the United States — are made stronger and more secure through international co-operation and rules, and by working to strengthen one another from within a system, not outside of it. Multilateralism's greatest ideal is the ideal of negotiation, compromise, consensus, not coercion. As Churchill said of democracy, it is the worst possible system except for all the others.
This is in no one's interest, least of all the United States. America led in the creation of the multilateral system after 1945 precisely to avoid a return to hostile blocs — blocs that had done so much to fuel interwar instability and conflict. America's vision, in the words of Cordell Hull, was that "enduring peace and the welfare of nations was indissolubly connected with the friendliness, fairness and freedom of world trade". Trade would bind nations together, making another war unthinkable. Non-discriminatory rules would prevent a return to preferential deals and closed alliances. A network of multilateral initiatives and organizations — the Marshal Plan, the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT, now the WTO — would provide the institutional bedrock for the international rule of law, not power. Underpinning all this was the idea that freedom — free trade, free democracies, the free exchange of ideas — was essential to peace and prosperity, a more just world.
It is a vision that has emerged pre-eminent a half century later. Trade has expanded twenty-fold since 1950. Millions in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are being lifted out of poverty, and millions more have new hope for the future. All the great powers — the US, Europe, Japan, India, China and soon Russia — are part of a rules-based multilateral trading system, greatly increasing the chances for world prosperity and peace. There is a growing realization that — in our interdependent world — sovereignty is constrained, not by multilateral rules, but by the absence of rules. All of these were America's objectives. The US needs to be both clearer about the magnitude of what it has achieved, and more realistic about what it is trying to — and can — accomplish. Multilateralism can be slow, messy, and tortuous. But it is also indispensable to managing an increasingly integrated global economy. Multilateralism is based on the belief that all countries — even powerful countries like the United States — are made stronger and more secure through international co-operation and rules, and by working to strengthen one another from within a system, not outside of it. Multilateralism's greatest ideal is the ideal of negotiation, compromise, consensus, not coercion. As Churchill said of democracy, it is the worst possible system except for all the others.