The operational tool-kit of economic diplomacy remains to this day woefully outdated and in need of a major re-think. The arguments seeking greater innovation in the past decade have centered on the possibilities that may be opened through the “integration of integrations” channel of international diplomacy, whereby a horizontal platform for regional integration arrangements as well as perhaps for the rising number of minilaterals and plurilaterals, would provide the foundation for new connectivity and new communication lines across the world economy. What we propose now is to take this a step further and transition from thinking in terms of existing blocs to imagining alliances across whole hemispheres. And while such a hemispheric paradigm has not been as tested thus far by diplomatic apparatus, there may well be a need to explore new approaches to building international alliances given the sorry state of the world order that we are dealing with today.
Hemispheric geometry
Thanks to the relatively parsimonious setup of hemispheric governance, the combinatorics of all possible pairs of alliances is exhausted by just six possible outcomes. The most straight-forward outcomes involve the two alliances that bring together the two opposite hemispheres: the Western and the Eastern Hemispheres as well as the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. These outcomes would de facto represent a scenario of a full planetary alliance that resolves a given global challenge such as agreement on cuts in emissions undertaken first at the hemispheric level before carrying it further to the global scale. Earlier we explored one such potential scenario of a link-up between two opposite hemispheres as part of our hemispheric model of environmental policy coordination, in which the advances made in environmental regulation in the climatic zones of the Southern Hemisphere would be replicated by the corresponding climatic zone in the North[1].
Of further interest is the geometry that involves the intersecting hemispheres – the possible combinations include the following pairs: Southern and Western hemispheres, Northern and Eastern hemispheres, Western and Northern hemispheres as well as Southern and Northern hemispheres. The result of an alliance between the two intersecting hemispheres is a common intersection/overlap represented by the respective core quadrant – in the case of an alliance between the Northern and Western hemispheres, this is the Northwestern quadrant represented mostly by North America; the other result of such an alliance is the co-integration of the two opposite quadrants of the global economy – the South-Western quadrant and the North-Eastern quadrant. In a way, hemispheric alliances may render the most distant corners of the globe part of a common platform, allowing international diplomacy to alleviate (even if moderately) the gravity of distance.
Furthermore, the framework of hemispheric diplomacy leaves open the possibilities for outreach and inclusivity vis-à-vis those regions that have been left out of the intersecting hemispheric pairs. In particular, if the Southern and Western hemispheres form a common platform, and in order for the Northeastern (NE) quadrant of the global economy not be isolated, both the Southern and Western hemispheres may use their presence in the Northern and Eastern hemispheres to engage and connect with the NE quadrant. In other words, a hemispheric formation in international diplomacy leaves open reserves and options (including through representation of any country in several hemispheres) in terms of connectivity and outreach to attenuate the risks of isolation. In effect, countries by being represented in several hemispheres become endowed in such an extended version of global governance with additional diplomatic capital (in a way this is akin to share issuance, but for political/diplomatic purposes[2]) that may be employed to build a wider web of connections and alliances.
Hemispheric undertakings: FTAA and the Valdivia Group
In looking at the world map, arguably the most feasible of the 4 intersecting options of hemispheric alliance formations is the potential link-up between the Southern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere platforms. This is because of the stronger commonality in the economic priorities of the two regions as well as the greater headway made in these regions in the discussions on the possibility of forming their respective hemispheric platforms.
With respect to the latter point, an integration project proposed for the Western hemisphere was the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that was meant to create a free trade area spanning both North and South America[3]. The move to bring together the economies of the Western Hemisphere into a single free trade arrangement was launched at the Summit of the Americas in 1994 in Miami. Since the year 2005, however, the project went into decline due to the disagreement of countries such as Brazil and Argentina with the US agricultural subsidies and other concerns voiced over the planned agreement by the region’s economies.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the launching of the Valdivia Group[4] — also referred to as the Group of Temperate Southern Hemispheric Countries on Environment — took place in 1998, with the bloc now considered functionally inactive. It was created by Australia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Uruguay and New Zealand to coordinate environmental strategies across the Southern Hemisphere with respect to themes such as biodiversity and climate change.
While both hemispheric undertakings have lost momentum for a variety of reasons, there may be a case now for renewed efforts to resuscitate initiatives geared towards boosting hemispheric cooperation. Since the 1990s environmental challenges have become significantly more pressing, while new formations emerged globally, including the G20 platform, where the economies of the Southern and Western hemispheres could form their respective blocs – in the beginning of this year we advanced the proposal to create the Southern Five group with the G20 that would bring together the economies of the Southern Hemisphere with membership in the G20 platform[5]. We note that within the Southern Five only Indonesia was not a member of the Valdivia Group, leaving scope for an extended Valdivia Group 2.0 to be created with the main goal of addressing the region’s environmental challenges.
The escalation of geopolitical tensions since the 1990s has given formations such as the Southern Hemisphere particular significance in view of the relative quiescence of geopolitical conflicts in that part of the world. This in turn makes the Southern Hemisphere and its potential alliance with its Western counterpart an attractive platform for building resilient supply chains and maritime connectivity networks. A link-up between the two hemispheric formations would also serve to attenuate concerns regarding potential US excesses in the Western Hemisphere, while also imbuing the extended platform with greater economic weight and vitality. But in our view the possible scope for hemispheric alliances is far from being exhausted by just this one pair of the relatively more “advanced hemispheres” – so what are the possibilities elsewhere in the global economy?
(To be continued in Part 2)
[1] https://brics-plus-analytics.org/a-hemispheric-model-of-environmental-policy-coordination/
[2] The analogy of share issuance or SDR issuance with boosting the political capital of countries in the formation of hemispheric alliances may be carried over into the “integration of integrations” domain as well – the creation of additional venues for economic diplomacy through “region-to-region” or “hemisphere-to-hemisphere” agreements increases optionality and boosts the diplomatic/political capital of countries that are members of these blocs/formations.
[3] https://training.itcilo.org/actrav_cdrom1/english/global/blokit/ftaa.htm
[4] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3993252
[5] https://brics-plus-analytics.org/the-southern-five-a-platform-to-balance-the-global-economy/
Yaroslav Lissovolik, Founder, BRICS+ Analytics
Image by VIVIANE6276 via Pixabay