In a highly interdependent globalised economy, industrialised states have increasingly invoked economic security rationales to justify exceptional measures, even if they violate international trade rules. Over the past decade, governments have announced new economic security strategies that embed this logic in a range of trade issues, such as export controls, screening investment flows, or building resilient supply chains. Economic security is thus deeply embedded in modern policy frameworks. The conventional position among commentators is that these economic security strategies present novel threats to multilateral trade governance. But this Article demonstrates that the conventional position is short-sighted. Rich, detailed archival research reveals how ‘economic security’ claims are not dramatically new. The historical record provides evidence for why security has never been exceptional to the foundations of global economic institutions but is a structural feature that helped organise the competitive conditions among strategic resources and goods. The Article reconstructs the arguments for multilateral coordination on trade while pursuing economic security strategies in the early Cold War, helping commentators and governments assess each as constituting elements of an overarching plan for leadership in economic growth and military preparedness.
This Article comprises an in-depth archival investigation into two case studies where the United States (US) used trade to fulfil its foreign economic policies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. First, the US adopted unilateral trade controls to bar exports of technology and materials to Eastern Europe. While US businesses and Congress approved this strategy, the nascent international community brought together by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) offered targeted support to the US without confirming the legality, morality, or longevity of US plans. Second, the US established a conference of ‘free world’ economies to allocate the short supply of selective critical minerals and commodities after the invasion of Korea in 1950 – in what one US congressperson called a ‘super-government’ cartel.
Both case studies detail how the US carefully engineered legal principles, used different techniques to regulate trade among allies, and simultaneously relied on discriminatory practices against rivals. As history demonstrates, US trade policy never separated economics and security. A central lesson from this Article is that trade and multilateral coordination were vital to US economic statecraft. The Article depicts how governments underwent complex bargaining to dictate the breadth and depth of security interests for global economic governance at the dawn of the Cold War. Furthermore, it gives life to our understanding of the birth of global trade governance, addressing the trade-offs that every policymaker must make in weighing the future functions of law. Accordingly, by learning from history, states can reposition legal debates on pursuing multi-dimensional security imperatives while fostering strategies sensitive to how multilateral coordination can help sustain trade and alliances.
Friday, March 8, 2024
Paulsen: The Past, Present, and Potential of Economic Security
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Call for Papers: From Protection to Coercion: the Limits of Positive Obligations in Human Rights Law
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Kulick & Waibel: General International Law in International Investment Law: A Commentary
General international law is part and parcel of investor-state arbitration. This is the case not only regarding treaty law and state responsibility, but also with respect to matters such as state succession, the international minimum standard, and state immunity, all of which feature regularly in investor-state arbitration. Yet, although general international law issues arise in almost every investment case and often require extensive research, no systematic exploration of the relationship between the two exists. This Commentary is the first to fill this gap, providing a comprehensive treatment of the role of general international law in international investment law. It engages in detail with central matters of general international law, including in the practice of investment arbitration tribunals, moving beyond existing works which focus solely on procedural and institutional provisions.
The Commentary's forty-six chapters do not focus on a single source or subject. Instead, each concentrates on a specific, relevant article from a particular source of public law - such as the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) or the International Law Commission's Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001), among others. The entries combine detailed analysis with an examination of procedural and substantive aspects - such as nationality and unjust enrichment - and respond to the following questions: how have investment tribunals interpreted and applied the specific rule of general international law? To what extent and why does such interpretation and application align with or deviate from the practice by other international courts or tribunals? How could and should investment tribunals interpret and apply rules that have yet to feature in investment arbitration? This unique format means this commentary will serve as a central guide for all relevant case law and scholarship on international investment law.
2024 Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures
Monday, March 4, 2024
New Issue: International Theory
- Nancy Bertoldi, Property and international relations: lessons from Locke on anarchy and sovereignty
- Mitja Sienknecht & Antje Vetterlein, Conceptualizing responsibility in world politics
- Guillaume Beaumier, Marielle Papin, & Jean-Frédéric Morin, A combinatorial theory of institutional invention
- Itamar Mann, Law and politics from the sea
- Sebastian Schindler, Post-truth politics and neoliberal competition: the social sources of dogmatic cynicism
- Marina Vulović & Filip Ejdus, Object-cause of desire and ontological security: evidence from Serbia's opposition to Kosovo's membership in UNESCO
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Cavari, Efrat, & Yair: Do International Rankings Affect Public Opinion?
International rankings push governments to adopt better policies by providing comparative information on states’ performance. How do citizens respond to this information? We answer this question through a preregistered survey experiment in Israel, testing the effect of rankings in the fields of human rights and the environment. We find that citizens respond to international rankings selectively. Informed about a high ranking given to their country, citizens tend to express a more positive assessment of the country’s performance. By contrast, they seem to dismiss poor rankings of their country. We further find that poor rankings on a polarising issue, such as human rights, might face a particularly strong resistance from citizens. Overall, our results engage with and support recent scholarship sceptical of the impact of international shaming on public opinion. Even gentle shaming – expressed through a low numerical grade – might not be well received by the public.
