Good afternoon/ ladies and
gentlemen. Shout out first to the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations for hosting its first international webinar.
To the distinguished speaker Mr
Miguel Bautista and esteemed reactors Ambassador Vidal Querol and Mr Johnny
Chotrani, I deem that you have already shed with us your wisdom and
experiences when it comes to Philippine multilateralism.
And for me, as the last speaker in
the pool of experts, what more can I add to this continuing narratives on
multilateralism?
So, I’d rather try to synthesize
the discussion and spell out own analysis from the thesis and
anti-thesis of multilateralism in the post-covid crisis narratives.
There’s this quote from Dutch
Philosopher Baruch Spinoza that says, “States should practice
multilateralism and abandon unilateral actions that adversely affect a
democratic and equitable international order, refraining from the threat or use of force
However, we're essentially in the
beginning of another Cold War between China and the United States. And the
Philippines, now dwarfed between the two competing powers, is nonetheless
indisposed of the grave consequences of its choice.
As Spinoza calls it again, “nature
abhors a vacuum”.
Yes indeed, there’s a leadership
vacuum posited by the coronavirus pandemic, and the consequences of the
breakdown of the US-China relations at the moment which can be construed as a grave competition of unpopularity/ for the world while the global
economy tries to recover and work together to achieve the keystone / of
the whole arch/ of globalization and global trade.
With that pulled out, there's
going to be a tremendous amount of disturbance and disruption with the
rise of populist leaders that signals the fall of liberalism and considers
the brink of multilateralism.
And this Cold War analogy is
"not perfect, but there are elements, including/ the hardening of
system-type competition, racketing up of military competition, and pressure
to delink economically, that were not as evident a few years ago," described
by the Philippine counterpart in the US, the Council on Foreign Relations.
The ideological struggle between
the Communist and Capitalist systems as espoused by Moscow and Washington can
be translated nowadays to the standoff between Washington and Beijing which
can now be compared to the foothills of the new Cold War as articulated by
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
So far, we heard in-depth
insider’s notes and experiential comparative analysis of the European Union
and ASEAN, of India and ASEAN, and of China and the US from our main
speaker and two distinguished reactors before me.
But synthesizing everything and
weaving it from using theoretical frameworks on International Political
Economy, there’s this nomenclature called, Economic Nationalism or sometimes
referred to as Neo-Mercantilism.
The global economic recession and
depression have contracted nations-states to finally own its economic and
financial protectionism caused by the havoc interests of health insecurity caused by the COVID-19. It is still unresolved as the world transitions to
the new normal, but it remains indefinite to resolving the economic impact of the killer virus.
Now, economic nationalism developed
theoretically, to criticize economic liberalism model with the following
tenets.
First, that states compete
economically. A good examples would be the entry of trade war between the
US and China which we will see more of 2.0 and 3.0 of this economic slash
technological warfare in the near future. / It debunks the thesis of liberalism where it believes that companies compete economically, but never the
states. But we saw in the covid pandemic that only states failed, so do big companies.
Secondly, free trade only benefits
the wealthiest, most advanced nations. But during the COVID -19 pandemic, the contagion became an
equalizer. It crippled many sophisticated public health systems and bug
down economies of first-world and developed countries from Europe to the
United States, Japan and South Korea / including emerging economies of Brazil
and Nigeria.
The assumption embodies that only
the advanced or “mature” industries / will defeat less advanced or “infant”
industries. But the pandemic has reversed the tide. We saw how start-ups and
other innovative companies / survived the pandemic, seeing respected
companies fell at the mercy of the COVID-19.
Thirdly for the less advanced
nations there needs to be alternative way of getting rich. Free trade won’t lead to riches. It
wasn’t true again / as we saw how the pandemic levelled off the playing
field. We saw how illiberal economies like Vietnam, China, Cuba and Russia were unscathed by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 and even became
crusaders for helping bigger and developed nations combat the unforgiving
virus.
Talking about the Political
Economy of Pandemics, the COVID-19 policy responses have had attempted to
represent the unprecedented challenge Policy- makers worldwide, have to
react fast to a totally new type of crisis under enhanced public scrutiny, as these policies are immediately compared across countries.
Then what are the lessons gained
and learned:
·
History shows COVID-19’s economic
fallout may be with us for decades.
·
In large-scale pandemics, effects
will be felt by the global economy, or across wider regions for two reasons/
(1) the infection itself is widespread which we saw in the COVD 19, and (2)
because trade and market integration / eventually it propagates the economic
shock across the map.
What are the Staggering Findings:
· The effects are staggering when we
speak of large scale economy affecting pandemics based from the experience in past pandemics. Economic depression / can take from 5 to 10 years.
· This
neoclassical mechanism considers the labour-to-capital ratio of declines of
the Loss of labour without parallel destruction of capital leading to a
rebalancing of the relative returns to labour and capital.
· In the past wars occur before pandemics, but now we
see the reverse where a pandemic affects conflicts by major powers.
So what will be the next Liberal
Order
· The liberal world order is
collapsing because its leading patrons,starting with the United States with 75 years of American leadership/ is now being questioned.
Washington is settling in for a
protracted struggle for dominance with China, Russia, and other rival
powers.
· The United States may no longer be
the world’s sole superpower, but its influence has never been premised on
power alone. It also depends / on an ability to offer others a set of
ideas and institutional frameworks / for mutual gain.
· A return to great-power competition would destroy what is left of the global institutions that governments rely
on for tackling common problems. Liberal democracies would further
descend into disunion and thereby lose their ability to shape global
rules and norms.
Then how do we counter this
scenario by fostering multilateralism?
The political economy of global
multilateralism can be justified. Its criteria for justification are
three.
First, multilateral agreements ideally
should offer mutual gains for all the nations that are parties to them. If
the gains are not contingent on being part of the multilateral agreement, principles
of subsidiarity militate against joining.
Second, ideally multilateral
treaties should help nations be governed as an encompassing interest their
diffuse citizenry rather than special interests. One important way of
achieving this goal is to increase jurisdictional competition among nations which is the defining virtue of sovereignty.
Finally, multilateral agreements should not require a complex and intrusive international enforcement
apparatus, because distant international bureaucracies are likely to be
captured by special interests and thus reduce the power of encompassing
interests in national governance.
All in all, what will happen to
the Philippines?
As the world offers a view on the
multiplexity of coalition, Europe sees a repolarization of alliances, Latin
America / cries for non-polarity of union/ in its region, Asia adheres to a
staggering kind of multilateralism, Africa speaks of its continent's protectionaism of resources, while North America vies for the splintering of regional order. With all the fluidity of frameworks of the community of nations in
post-pandemic, in the end what I wanted to see more / is on how our country
will cope up from changes of the multilateral world.
The incentives underpinning a
country's decision/ to enter a regional trade agreement is when a multilateral free trade agreement is available, and of how entering a
regional trade agreement affects the incentives to pursue multilateral
trade liberalization.
But with the heavy burden on
COVID-19 pandemic the Philippines must enter into regional trade and
security agreementsthat will not undermine / the incentives towards
multilateral liberalization.
But in moments of global recession
and depression, et’s be open to a solid
framework of sound political economy that justifies these divergent
intuitions and shows that the Philippines is rooted in more than just a
reflexive liking for trade combined with a disdain for the environment, human rights, criminal justice, and world
peace.
It must champion global
multilateralism for practical politics where compromise is frequently
necessary to present a sketch of what we would call "a regulatory
ideal" - a model by which we should inform the concrete practices of
global multilateralism.
Thank you very much and looking
forward during the open forum.
