Multilateralism

Indivisibility

To better understand the nature of multilateralism, it is useful to contrast it with bilateralism, a good example of which is the commercial policies of Nazi Germany, in which the German government negotiated bilateral agreements with other countries specifying which goods and services were to be traded, their prices, and the quantities to be exchanged. Through this, a significant number of nations were connected by trade agreements, with Germany acting as a central hub. By contrast, the multilateral commercial regime, centered on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), used the principle of most-favored nation (MFN). Under German bilateralism, third parties were excluded from interstate arrangements, whereas in the GATT, third parties were treated in a more inclusive manner and were granted equal treatment by virtue of the MFN clause. Thus, the German system was built around systematic discrimination, whereas the GATT assured nondiscrimination for all contracting parties.

In security arrangements, the principles of multilateralism are best embodied in a collective security system such as NATO, in which a war against one state is automatically considered to be a war against all states, ensuring that any act of aggression against a member of the collective system is met with a response from all members. By contrast, a bilateral arrangement only ensures that A comes to the aid of B in the event of an attack by C. It would not ensure that C receives similar protection from A in the event of an attack on C by B. In this instance, the system discriminates against C. Bilateral security arrangements are, therefore, like their counterparts in commercial policy, inherently discriminatory, whereas multilateral arrangements have a more inclusive character in which all participants are afforded equal treatment.

In both these examples, there is a notion of the indivisibility of interests. In security arrangements, peace is treated as being indivisible, such that no participating member can be at war while others are at [Page 579]peace. In commercial policy, the norm of MFN makes the trade system an indivisible whole. Bilateralism, by contrast, necessarily fragments relations between states. Indivisibility is therefore the first core principle of multilateralism.

Diffuse Reciprocity

Along with, and related to, the principle of indivisibility of interests, multilateralism is considered to give rise to expectations of diffuse reciprocity among participants. In situations characterized by diffuse reciprocity, there is an expectation that there will not be an equivalence of obligations or concessions in any one exchange but, rather, a balance is expected over an ongoing, potentially indefinite, series of exchanges with a group of partners. For example, in the collective security system outlined previously, members do not expect to be compensated for the military resources they may expend in defending a threatened member country. Their recompense lies in the knowledge that should they be attacked, they too will benefit from a collective response to that attack. By contrast, bilateralism is more associated with specific reciprocity and an explicit balancing of obligations between each pair of actors, as with the commercial relations of Nazi Germany.

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