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randynnwm2004, I've posted a brief note on the way that the liberal-minded prosperity enjoyed by the League member-states is guaranteed, if inadequately, by France in Europe and by Brazil in South America.
One of the secondary goals of my alternate history, I suppose, was to illustrate the benefits and the failings of multilateral organizations. I admit forthrightly that I'm a big fan of the multilateral principle, not only because it provides small- and medium-sized states with a voice in international affairs, but because it allows for the consensual construction of durable institutions. Niall Ferguson might argue, bizarrely, that a German conquest of Europe in 1914 would have produced an outcome akin to that of the modern-day European Union (do you think he's a British Eurosceptic? do you need to speculate?); I'd argue that a German military hegemony would have been far less just and far less durable than the current entirely benevolent European Union, which most notably did not expand this year by sending the Royal Navy, the French Armée de l'Air, and the German Bundeswehr to seize Tallinn and conquer the Pannonian plains. Compare the longevities of NATO and the Warsaw Pact following the fall of the Berlin Wall if you don't believe me.
The problem with multilateral political structures, particularly when--like the European Union--they are headed by executive bodies which do not possess sovereign powers in their own right but must arrive at binding decisions through lengthy negotiations. Multilateral bodies tend to work best as regulatory bodies, as agencies which ensure the implementation of common standards. They tend not to be very capable of exerting sovereignty in their own right, not until the process of state formation begins and makes them actual confederal or federal states. This long decision-making process, along with what one might call a benevolent perspective on international relations incompatible with the actual behaviour of states uninterested in binding multilateralism, can leave the multilateral organizations unable to respond in time to aggressive states. The classic example of this, I suppose, is the breakdown of the League of Nations in the face of constant aggressions by the future Axis powers and the Soviet Union, thanks to the underlying inability of the liberal powers at the heart of the League to effectively control the situation.
I'd like to think I'm being pessimistic here. Am I?
randynnwm2004, I've posted a brief note on the way that the liberal-minded prosperity enjoyed by the League member-states is guaranteed, if inadequately, by France in Europe and by Brazil in South America.One of the secondary goals of my alternate history, I suppose, was to illustrate the benefits and the failings of multilateral organizations. I admit forthrightly that I'm a big fan of the multilateral principle, not only because it provides small- and medium-sized states with a voice in international affairs, but because it allows for the consensual construction of durable institutions. Niall Ferguson might argue, bizarrely, that a German conquest of Europe in 1914 would have produced an outcome akin to that of the modern-day European Union (do you think he's a British Eurosceptic? do you need to speculate?); I'd argue that a German military hegemony would have been far less just and far less durable than the current entirely benevolent European Union, which most notably did not expand this year by sending the Royal Navy, the French Armée de l'Air, and the German Bundeswehr to seize Tallinn and conquer the Pannonian plains. Compare the longevities of NATO and the Warsaw Pact following the fall of the Berlin Wall if you don't believe me.
The problem with multilateral political structures, particularly when--like the European Union--they are headed by executive bodies which do not possess sovereign powers in their own right but must arrive at binding decisions through lengthy negotiations. Multilateral bodies tend to work best as regulatory bodies, as agencies which ensure the implementation of common standards. They tend not to be very capable of exerting sovereignty in their own right, not until the process of state formation begins and makes them actual confederal or federal states. This long decision-making process, along with what one might call a benevolent perspective on international relations incompatible with the actual behaviour of states uninterested in binding multilateralism, can leave the multilateral organizations unable to respond in time to aggressive states. The classic example of this, I suppose, is the breakdown of the League of Nations in the face of constant aggressions by the future Axis powers and the Soviet Union, thanks to the underlying inability of the liberal powers at the heart of the League to effectively control the situation.
I'd like to think I'm being pessimistic here. Am I?
