(continued from Part 1): https://brics-plus-analytics.org/a-different-global-perspective-hemispheric-alliances-part-1/
Hemispheric alliances: what are the options?
Perhaps the one area where a system of hemispheric alliances could be most useful is in environmental diplomacy – the scale of spillover effects and the global nature of vulnerabilities such as climate change necessitate formats that allow for sizeable scaling of policy initiatives. With each hemisphere having its idiosyncratic set of ecological challenges and priorities, it may be possible then to imagine the following set of environmental inter-hemispheric accords:
- Southern-Western Hemisphere: targeting ocean preservation (largest segment of the world economy in terms of ocean mass) – one of the possible platforms for such efforts being the Oceans 20 (O20) engagement group within the G20; biodiversity
- Northern-Eastern Hemisphere: reversing land degradation (largest segment of the world economy by land mass); addressing natural resource depletion, industrial pollution, technogenic risks to the environment; mitigating the risks of rising sea levels caused by climate change;
- Northern-Western Hemisphere: addressing the environmental effects of urbanization (highest levels of urbanization globally) via building networks of smart-cities endowed with environmental monitoring and environmental damage mitigation capabilities;
- Southern-Eastern Hemisphere: safeguarding global marine circulation; coral reef preservation
Looking beyond environmental priorities, other possible themes of hemispheric economic cooperation to address global challenges may include:
- Southern-Western Hemisphere: maritime connectivity, alternative links beyond the chokepoints and traditional routes; resilient supply chain networks
- Northern-Eastern Hemisphere: inland connectivity (largest segment of the world economy by land-mass), providing connectivity to inland/hinterland regions of the global economy
- Northern-Western Hemisphere: technological advancements in digital economy, pharma, aerospace; R&D synergies; developing mechanisms to propagate technological advances across the rest of the world economy
- Southern-Eastern Hemisphere: bridging the digital and infrastructure gaps; South-South connectivity and economic cooperation; labor migration networks and human capital development
Apart from the Hemisphere-to-Hemisphere (H2H) alliances per se, the introduction of hemispheres into the economic diplomacy playing field expands the optionality of international accords to include hybrid alliances between hemispheres and regional integration groups as well as possibly with individual countries. At this stage, we are already witnessing not only the emergence of region-to-region (R2R) trade deals between the likes of EFTA and Mercosur, but also between countries and regional blocs – India and EFTA or Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union being among such hybrid “country-to-region” examples. The creation of a hemispheric layer in the global economy creates further possibilities for delineating customized alliance formations that allow for expanded scaling of economic policy initiatives.
The operationalization and the integration of hemispheric alliances into the existing institutional framework of the world economy has been explored in our previous publications[1] – in our view the trends of the discussions and possible institutional reforms favor a greater role for hemispheric platforms. In particular, we see scope for the creation of hemispheric platforms/alliances in the G20, COP, APEC, UN and the WTO. But for the hemispheric alliances to deliver a tangible contribution to global economic governance, the system of multilateral institutions such as the WTO or platforms like COP would need to allow for plurilateral agreements to be concluded, something that has been extensively discussed in the context of the reform of the WTO. In such a plurilateral setting, the benefits of allowing the hemispheric platforms to participate in reaching the accords/agreements include lower fragmentation in decision-making/discussions and the corresponding reduction in transactions costs – it becomes easier within international organizations to track possible outcomes and to form sizeable enough platforms supporting the adoption of initiatives in the sphere of trade liberalization or emission reductions.
In game-theoretic terms, the inclusion of regional and hemispheric platforms into the alliance formation on key global issues affects the payoff matrix in a way that raises the costs to single country constituencies that block the attainment of consensus. In a plurilateral setting, despite their opposition, the agreement may still be formed by the majority of the international community, but without the participation of the holdout country. There may also be peer pressure from the regional and hemispheric constituencies of the holdout country due to perceived risks of being sidelined or left out from sharing the benefits of the prospective agreement. There may also be longer term costs to holdout countries in case plurilateral agreements gravitate towards those constituencies that are seen as being more cooperative, stable and predictable – regional and hemispheric constituencies may well be considered as reliable partners, whose consolidated decisions is governed by clear and transparent rules.
Conclusions
Overall, a hemispheric set up of international alliances attenuates the excesses of Realpolitik at the national/country level and serves to overcome the fragmentation of the existing cob-web or spaghetti bowl of regional and bilateral alliances. It provides more optionality to economic diplomacy and endows countries with additional diplomatic capital to reach accords on the most pressing of global economic challenges – from climate change to resource/food/energy security. As is the case with the accords between regional integration arrangements, hemispheric alliances expand the field of collaborative economic agendas in the global economy and a sense of commonality among the wide strata of the population – it is precisely our inability to ideate new areas and formats of common effort that drags us into the cauldron of geopolitical strife. For our ability to achieve progress in economic development is about the race between new visions of future cooperation and the old fears of past antagonisms.
The main weakness in the above hemispheric construct is that is not institutionalized (the sole institutional expression of hemispheric governance at this stage is the Organization of American States (OAS)), without much past history and conceptualization. But perhaps a “tabula rasa”/de novo approach to forging global alliances may be a way to re-boot the international economic system and rejuvenate it with additional lines of communication in economic diplomacy, this time at the hemispheric level. In this vein, the way for the global community to overcome the geopolitical gridlocks and the super-complexity of the myriads of alliances concluded between countries is to explore the available options and possibilities at higher levels of regions, regional integration arrangements as well as possibly even hemispheres. Learning to live together on the same planet, will inevitably have to involve the ideation of ever new formats of commonality and economic cooperation.
[1] https://brics-plus-analytics.org/hemispheric-governance-an-exercise-in-semi-globalism/
Yaroslav Lissovolik, Founder, BRICS+ Analytics
Image by uroburos via Pixabay