I normally only read The Economist when I am waiting at the airport. I got to read it front-to-back tonight; United Airlines lost my wife's luggage. There were two articles [behind paywall] on the laziness of trade talks in Doha. I think both articles misjudged neo-conservatism and the national conservatism that is being practiced in world trade now.

Institutions like the World Trade Organisation stem from the foreign policy of international liberalism. This is the philosophy of meta-national consensus through open communication and a forum for all to voice their concerns without the worry of violence or power imbalances.

Neo-conservatism, and its roots in seeking a permanent American hegemony, is based on power politics. One of the concerns of neo-conservatism was the erosion of the nation-state's sovereignty to meta and supra-national entities such as the United Nations, World Trade Organisation and International Court.

Neo-conservatism seeks to remove those influences and re-establish the nation-state as the primary source of power and sovereignty. In trade terms this has seen the rise of the bi-lateral trade agreement.

This enables power imbalances to in trade to manifest themselves in trade agreements between two countries. This is beneficial for the United States as they are such a powerful country. As The Economist notes;

Lawmakers (Congressmen) appear keener on bilateral trade agreements, in which America can dictate terms more easily than on multilateral compromises.

The US-Au FTA is a good example of this. A bilateral trade agreement is easy to get with the US as long as the other nation agrees to US intellectual property laws and agricultural quotas. Rather than free trade, they are managed trade in the more powerful government's interest.

The Howard Government has followed an Australian form of conservative nationalism. Through its policies it has tried to re-establish the authority and sovereignty of the nation-state as much as is possible. The Howard Government has also conducted a couple of neo-conservative nation-building operations independently - East Timor and the Solomons - as well part of a coalition.

As a consequence bilateral agreements are Australian policy, rather than ratifying trade liberalisation through WTO agreements. The Economist warns;

If the Doha talks go nowhere, the future of the multilateral trade system itself will be at risk. The efforts of trade officials are already shifting from the multilateralism that Doha represents to regionalism.

There are now more than 350 bilateral and regional trade talk deals, double the number of a decade ago, and many more are being negotiated.

If the Doha round collapses, regionalism, despite its unarguable economic inferiority, will replace multilateralism as the organising principle of global trade.

The Economist misses by calling it regionalism; its correct name is neo-conservatism in the US and conservative nationalism in Australia.

International liberalism is dead in the water as foreign policy or philosophy. Nation-states no longer support it. The increasing irrelevance of the WTO is a symptom of the change to neo-conservatist foreign and trade policies.

cam