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In its fundamental essence, bilateral relations outline a mechanism through which two countries seek to actualize their individual national interests through collaboration on select issues. Such conceptualizations often obscure the relevance of issues and narratives at local levels, which constitute the sites of its practicalization. The predominance of national interest-focused approaches in negotiating bilateral relations, particularly in the sphere of conflict management, often casts aside local narratives underlying the issues and conflicts it seeks to address. The resultant gap between the advocated and actual necessities of resolution at the ground may lead to the persistence and emergence of local tensions subsequent to its ‘settlement’ at the national and bilateral levels. The bilateral resolution of the India–Bangladesh enclave issue presents an interesting case to engage with the conceptual and practical facets of this mechanism of state action and its impacts at the local level. Based on an ethnographic survey of local perceptions of residents of three enclaves in Cooch Behar district, West Bengal, this article will examine the impacts of national interest-based mediation in localized conflicts, to engage the problematic of the ‘local’s absence from bilateralism’s conceptualization in international relations.

Given the essential positive history of China’s relations with India, China’s world view and the fact of geographical contiguity, the essential approach that China follows vis-à-vis India post 1949 is based on bilateralism. The bilateral approach has defined China’s negotiations over the border as well as economic relations between the two. In the past bilateralism has allowed China to consolidate its control over Tibet and follow a mercantilist economic policy vis- a- vis India. But the change in the geopolitical status of both nations indicates that bilateral relations, after Wuhan, have been reset to represent those between two ‘major powers’ who have broader regional and global interests as well. Although bilateralism will continue to underline their policies towards each other in matters of common development, regional development or the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, China will need to redefine its approach to bilateralism by broadening and deepening it to create a truly mutual relationship.

Negotiations between neighbours over river disputes are not only about water, they come embedded with other bilateral concerns. Thus, the solution of a river dispute depends on comparative bargaining capabilities of riparians on their many other contentious matters. This assumption has been applied in investigating and analysing the Ganges River negotiation between India and Bangladesh. The literature on the Ganges has focussed on integrated river development perspectives. The present analysis underlines the convergence of water with other bilateral concerns. The examination of a quarter-century negotiation on the Ganges confirms the correlation between positive outcomes and better linkages between multiple issues.

A recent study in the area of international trade networks found that global free trade (GFT) is pairwise stable. This finding has led to the conclusion that bilateralism is a building block for GFT. The current article uses an alternative stability concept to show that international networks other than GFT are the only stable networks when governments are politically biased. The main implication of this finding is that the use of bilateral agreements as a political tool to reach GFT can in fact lead to inefficient stable networks.

What are the Chinese views on Asian multilateralism? To answer this question, this article uses a fresh perspective—social evolution—to look at China’s engagement with ASEAN. It aims to identify the mechanisms of change that trigger the major shifts in the bilateral relationship between China and ASEAN. It examines the nature of these mechanisms of change, traces their origins and assesses their impact. The article argues in favour of adopting a social evolutionary approach to study the China–ASEAN relationship along with the existing theoretical approaches of realism, liberalism and constructivism. Hopefully the article helps to shed some light on the puzzling dilemma of multilateralism versus bilateralism that China faces in dealing with ASEAN over trade and investments, political balancing and territorial disputes.

Much current scholarship on ‘Chinese–African relations’ focuses on the monumental projects, the built walls, which are visibly transforming African landscapes, and on the increasing Chinese physical presence on the continent. Instead, this article argues that a focus on the material traces of consumer goods circulating in colonial and post-colonial markets, and in expert knowledge that shaped bodily practices, domestic habits, and rural landscapes over time, yields a more nuanced picture of Chinese–African entanglements. We examine elements of “Chineseness” that inform Sierra Leonean ways of dwelling – particularly of farming rice, and of intervening therapeutically on bodies – but often through intermediaries whose imprints mask Asian origins. Contemporary China-Africa friendship rhetoric stresses bilateralism and palimpsestic reinscriptions of earlier relations, but belies a history in which multiple Chinas struggled for global recognition through partnerships with African countries that articulated with colonial mediations and Cold War alliances.

Although the concept of valence figures in many studies of voting behavior, very few have investigated its sources. In this article, we address this deficiency by assessing the extent to which individual valence assessments are affected by the left–right policy distance between parties and respondents as well as by their locations relative to the center of the left-right spectrum. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we find very widespread support for both hypotheses. Correcting for differential item functioning (DIF) reveals that, although respondents tend to over-estimate the distance to ‘opposite-side’ parties, these misperceptions do not account for our findings. Indeed, with DIF corrected, most surveys reveal tendencies not only for opposite-side parties to be given lower valence scores in general, but also for policy distance to be counted more heavily against them. The article concludes with a discussion of possible sources of this bilateral structuring of valence assessments.

For India, her ‘beneficial bilateralism’ with Bhutan cannot be taken for granted on the assumption of Bhutan’s perpetual dependence on India. Taking into consideration Bhutan’s strategic location, its local level economic viability along the borders, trade potentials, counter-terrorism in the northeast corridor, and the new balance of power that has been created with China trying to be the dominant economic and military power in the Asia-Pacific, India’s prudent foreign policy needs to assess her relationship with Bhutan more on a realistic paradigm instead of pre-conceived idealism. Though both are powerful, the fundamental contradictions between India and China in South Asia are too apparent to permit any ‘strategic partnership’. A buffer state like Bhutan, by its sheer existence might prevent conflict between two rival powers, but their manipulation is an element of diplomatic game played between the giant neighbors. Moreover, in balance of power model, states try to secure own safety, to reach an equilibrium for self-preservation. Trying to avoid the dominance of one particular state, they may ally with other states until equilibrium is reached. Hence India’s inappropriate assessment of Bhutan’s strategic importance might induce the Himalayan country to seek for new equilibrium by shifting its alliance, jeopardizing the Indian interest. Hence India’s Bhutan policy must be far more nuanced from now on.

In the globalizing society, it is inevitable to have good relations with neighboring countries. After WW II, global areas have been formed differently by America. In other words, America had set multilateralism system in Europe, in contrast to bilateralism system in East Asia. So, East Asian countries couldn't communicate and exchange without America for a long time. However, in the Post-Cold War, though this mood was dissolved, it is still difficult to say East Asian countries have good relationship one another. In this paper, I argue that the reason is unsolved problems, the emotional matters among the nations. Unlike Europe, it occurred past problems in East Asia repeatedly and continuously. Then, it makes hard to cooperate the nations. On the basis of Constructivism perspective, this paper takes an example, Korea-Japan relations, which has some unsolved past problems. In Korea-Japan relations, there are many tries and efforts to have a good relation politically and socially. Yet, it comes to nothing whenever past problems happened between two nations. In the political part, we can find it by examining the change of policies toward the nation before and after occurring past problems. Likewise, in the social part, as one of evidences, the change rate of number of tourists coming and going to the countries proves it. Irrational factors can affect relations between nations.

Why do states cooperate bilaterally or multilaterally? This article addresses the issue using the example of international double tax avoidance. It is argued that double tax avoidance exhibits the strategic structure of a coordination game with a distributive conflict. The distribution of tax revenues depends on the asymmetry of investment flows between treaty partners. Since investment flows are defined dyadically, bilateral bargaining can best accommodate countries’ concerns for the distribution of tax revenues and other economic benefits connected to the tax base. Moreover, because there are no serious externality problems with bilateral agreement, this solution is also viable. At the same time, there is a need for a multilateral organization to disseminate information and shared practices in the form of a model convention that provides a focal point for bilateral negotiations. This solution minimizes transaction costs. Since agreements are self-enforcing in coordination games there is no need for third-party enforcement. Instead, the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) is a device to address problems of incomplete contracting.

This article investigates the ways in which parties stake out left—right positions that deviate from the mean positions of their supporters. Previous research has shown that parties tend to adopt positions that are more extreme than those of their supporters, but there are at least two arguments that also imply the presence of relative moderation—a tendency for moderate parties to be more moderate than their supporters. Using surveys covering 34 countries compiled by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this investigation shows that parties in coalitional systems display both phenomena.

North Korea became an urgent problem for Japan as a result of the 1994 nuclear crisis in North Korea, the 1998 missile launch over Japan and the 2003—4 nuclear crisis. At the historic Tokyo—Pyongyang summit in September 2002, both sides acknowledged the need to solve the security issues surrounding the Korean Peninsula through peaceful, multilateral efforts. However, the issue of North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens in earlier decades intensified Japanese sentiment against the North and this issue halted bilateral normalization talks. Japan has participated in six-party talks on the nuclear issue since 2004, but its distinct bilateral interests vis-à-vis North Korea, South Korea and the United States limit its influence in the multiparty engagement.

In many parts of the world we see recurrent attempts to talk regions into existence even when material realities undercut the possibilities of viable regionalism and militate against effective regional cooperation.1 In North America the opposite is the case. There seems to be a persistent discomfort with the very idea of North America as a region, a persistent refusal to accept the very high levels of regionalization that have developed over the past 20 years, and a persistent unwillingness to consider the implications of that regionalization. Patterns of regionalization have intensified dramatically-in terms of trade, investment, energy, environment, migration, and security.2 But regional awareness and regional cohesion remain very low. Theorists of governance tell us that intensified regionalization creates increasing demand for new forms of governance. But formal interstate regional institutions in North America remain weak and continue to be characterized by bilateralism (US/Canada on the one hand; US/Mexico on the other). There is serious disagreement as to how the governance that does exist within the region should be understood and evaluated. And there is a painful absence of serious debate on the forms of regional governance that will be required to meet the challenges of the future.The reasons for this discomfort and dissonance are not hard to find. They lie in the combination of dense integration and stark inequality (both of interstate power and of material conditions) and in the very different historical trajectories and self-understandings of the polities and societies that make up North America and its increasingly important but unstable southern periphery. On almost every account US hegemony is central to the story, and to the problem of how to understand that story. Contending views of how to deal with the United States in a particular part of the world or on a specific set of issues are bound up with perceptions of US power and of where it is heading. The first section of this article therefore considers the broad trajectory of US power in the world and questions the arguments of those who talk glibly of a new imperial age or of the viability of a hegemonic global order. My basic point is to stress the limits of US power and the instability of that power and the possible implications of these limits for the region.There is a powerful sense in much recent political and academic writing that the sheer extent of US power and the character of its foreign policy over the past three years have recreated a strong global logic to international politics that will inevitably colour and cloud the nature of regional politics in all parts of the world. Thus it was widely argued in the 1990s that the end of the Cold War was opening or reopening regional spaces and specifically regional security logics. The Cold War "overlay" had been removed and regional security needed to be understood much more in terms of the patterns of amity and enmity and in terms of security threats that are internal to the region.3 This contrasted not only with the Cold War, but also with the powerful systemic forces of the classical era of European imperialism and arguably also with the powerful transregional and transnational ideological forces that characterized the interwar period. Now, for many, this trend has been clearly reversed in the period since 11 September and the issue of how the global and the regional relate to each other has once more become of central importance. The second section highlights four ways in which the changing US global security agenda has had an impact on North America as a region. The final part of the article considers some of the ways in which the specific conditions of deep and increasing integration within North America may have modified or altered our understanding of US power and hegemony. Here again I join with those who stress the limits of US power. But if regionalization complicates the exercise of power, it does not lead easily or smoothly to the creation of the mechanisms necessary for its effective governance. …

INTRODUCTIONThe consolidation of multistate regions is one of the most interesting features of globalization's recent past. The European Union may be by far the most advanced example of this phenomenon, but North America, including as it does the global hegemon, is surely no less important.Linguistic markersThis special issue takes as its premise the notion that North America comprises not just the United States and Canada, as it used to, but also Mexico. This is not obvious because, at first glance, the word hardly seems to describe a political entity. Historically, "norte americano" in Mexico designated the other, foreign, threatening but also alluring space to the north from which Mexico was excluded, and to which Mexican obreres were attracted. This phrase's usage in Mexican discourse began to become self-referential after the signature of the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, which bound together the United States of Mexico, the United States of America, and Canada in an accord aimed at formalizing and deepening the already considerable economic integration that had occurred between the global hegemon and its two neighbours.1Notwithstanding this linguistic difficulty, "North America" does designate much more than a triad of contiguous countries to the north of Guatemala. Geographically and ecologically, it has long existed as a continental entity. More recently, increasing economic, demographic, and cultural flows have caused some perhaps overenthusiastic scholars to talk about the emergence of a North American community.Accepting this premise of a regional reality, we must take care not to project onto it the notions that have emerged from the past 50 years of integration on the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike the much more deeply institutionalized European Union with its Schengen-mandated disappearing frontiers, North America's borders remain largely intact and, since the tragedy at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, have been raised considerably higher. Furthermore, we must keep in mind two of the continent's continuing realities:Asymmetry identifies the enormous difference in capacity between the USA and its two neighbours. For example, while dealing with Uncle Sam has to be the overwhelming concern of Canada's and Mexico's foreign services, the opposite is not true. Dealing with Canada and Mexico only involves Washington's peripheral vision as it pursues its interests abroad.Skewedness describes the colossal cultural and historical differences between Mexico's relationships with the United States on the one hand and Canada's relations with the USA on the other. This makes it somewhat risky to lump Canada together with Mexico in a common category as the United States' "periphery" since differences often vastly outweigh the similarities between these two countries both in their domestic realities and in the way that they connect with their American neighbour.Conceptual modelFor analytical purposes, this article will posit a simplified dynamic model, presenting the complex processes of North American integration and disintegration as the product of four often conflicting forces operating within the continent:US expansionism, which is driven by competitive industries within the American market and is managed by the US state, and which pushes its neighbours to lower their border barriers.US protectionism, which is activated by uncompetitive industries and is also managed by the US state, and tends to strengthen US border barriers against foreign competition.Integrative efforts by the two peripheral governments to enhance their relationship with Uncle Sam and increase their access to his market, which, when successful, reduce US border barriers.Defensive efforts by the two peripheral governments to guard their autonomy from Uncle Sam and to deal with their own internal struggles, which, when successful, raise the peripheries' border barriers. …

I INTRODUCTIONDoes US strategy as a hegemon, epitomized in the eyes of many by its war versus Iraq, represent a significant and lasting change in the structure of global politics? Are analysts like Robert Kagan right that contemporary US strategy is more the inevitable product of hegemony and less the choice of a particular administration? Getting this question right is of paramount importance for foreign ministries around the world in ascertaining how to avoid, on the one hand, over-reacting to the transient aberrations of an extreme administration, or failing to face up to longer-term changes, on the other. Do recent events demonstrate that strategies for security as pursued by many countries other than the US are in peril, such that decisions to go ahead with multilateral initiatives like the landmines convention and International Criminal Court (ICC) without the US are mistaken?Without claiming there is a perfectly clean revolutionary break from previous US foreign policy strategy, there has been a distinctive change in US strategy under the Bush administration. This change includes an explicit embrace of an agenda of hegemonic superiority as the end, a rejection of multilateralism as a presumptive approach to security in favour of unilateralism (and bilateralism), and an avowed embrace of preemptive (better termed preventive) military action as means. There are many implications of the Bush administration's strategy for world politics, though here I confine myself to an examination of two interrelated developments that are front and centre: 1) what are the implications of US strategy with regard to the control and prevention of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); and 2) what conclusions can we draw about the viability of multilateral international security institutions like the UN, ICC, or landmines convention? These concerns follow from what are arguably the most revolutionary planks of the Bush administration's strategy; namely 1) the contention that the Cold War strategy of deterrence is outmoded in an era of WMD and terrorism; and 2) the administration's frequent and blunt recourse to unilateralism, epitomized by Bush's challenge at the UN in September of 2003 that the UN would become an irrelevant talk-shop and go the way of the League of Nations if it did not enforce its own security council resolutions by approving war against Iraq.This article proceeds by first examining the extent to which key features of US strategy under the Bush administration are policy proclivities of a particular administration or structural features of a hegemon. I then examine the implications of US hegemony for design strategies for multilateral institutions. This sets up an examination of what the evidence so far suggests regarding the success of US strategy with regard to WMD, and the success of coalitions of states to proceed with initiatives like the landmines convention and ICC without the hegemon. I conclude by addressing the significance of US domestic politics and threat perceptions for these issues, since they provide a potential avenue for productive responses to the Bush administration's strategy that are often overlooked by analyses that are focused at the international level.II US STRATEGY: INEVITABLE UNILATERALISM?Which elements of contemporary US strategy are proclivities (or, for critics, pathologies) of the Bush administration, and which are more enduring features likely to outlast any one particular administration? Are these tendencies inevitable features of a hegemonic power? Robert Kagan, in his essay "Power and weakness," has suggested just this, that US tendencies and differences with others are the inevitable product of power differences:Today's transatlantic problem, in short, is not a George Bush problem. It is a power problem. American military strength has produced a propensity to use that strength. Europe's military weakness has produced a perfectly understandable aversion to the exercise of military power. …

The article begins with an examination of the many weaknesses of SAARC, such as its restrictive agenda and its weak Secretariat. The lack of a dispute settlement mechanism within SAARC has impacted adversely on regional peace, security and development. The asymmetrical configuration of the region, with India both dominant and centrally located, has resulted in the Indian regional policy of bilateralism instead of a regional approach. Several important SAARC initiatives in the past have met with a lack of enthusiasm about making them operational. Thus, the major decisions taken at the 12th SAARC Summit in Islamabad were remarkable, and reflected a refreshing combination of realism about current feasibility and ambitiousness about future aims. The article makes several recommendations: giving SAARC an effective institutional support base; broadening the SAARC agenda to facilitate discussions on all issues that create tension and mistrust among the regional countries; and involving non-governmental groups in promoting regional cooperation.

This article examines the interaction of country pairs who have historically been and are potentially hostile. Hostility is described as a function of arms stocks versus bilateral trade. Armament intensifies the current level of hostility whereas trade reduces the possibility of militarized disputes. We argue that welfare-maximizing decisionmakers have to seek methods other than accumulation of arms to increase the security of their nations, and we highlight the strategic nature of trade in overcoming enmity. Rational governments, who consider bilateral trade as a factor that reduces the level of enmity, allocate resources more efficiently between arms imports and consumer goods. The model predicts that understanding the use of trade as a diplomatic tool will lead the economy to grow significantly. The model is designed as a non-cooperative dynamic game and solved numerically using an adaptive learning algorithm called a genetic algorithm.

ALTHOUGH IT BECAME APPARENT in the autumn of 1964 that Canadian and American negotiators had averted a potentially damaging trade war with the creation of the Automotive Products Trade Agreement (auto pact), the agreement faced a number of major obstacles before it could be fully realized. Prominent among them was the reception the agreement would face at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In seeking a continental solution to the difficulties of the Canadian auto industry, the auto pact was clearly in violation of the multilateral General Agreement, and Canada and the United States were sorely trying the patience of the other contracting parties in pressing for an exemption to the most-favoured-nation (MFN) rule. An exemption was no sure thing, and in the months between the creation of the auto pact and its eventual passage by GATT in December 1965, the trials and tribulations of the agreement at the international trade body tell us much about the nature of the agreement and the state of trade in Canada, the United States, and the international community at this sensitive moment in trade history.The passage of the automotive agreement at GATT illustrates three important themes. First, it underscores the long-standing tensions between bilateralism and multilateralism that faced Canadian policymakers. Under the auto pact, Canada would reap the benefits of the close bilateral relationship with the United States, but in so doing its standing with other members of the multilateral GATT might be threatened. The Canadians diffused this tension by cannily avoiding the need for a waiver at the GATT by claiming that they could institute the agreement on an MFN basis. Because of the nature of the agreement, the United States, on the other hand, would have to request a waiver. In the long run, this strategy would have implications for the fate of the agreement. Second, the issue illustrates the willingness of the United States to go to great lengths to solve the Canadian auto problem, even at the risk of exposing itself to further difficulties at GATT. The United States waiver request complicated matters greatly for the American delegates; they pursued it nevertheless because the auto agreement did not seem overly onerous to the American multinationals that would be most affected by it and because the plan fit nicely into the larger long-term United States goals for both Canada and general trade policy.(1) Finally, the passage of the agreement at GATT laid bare many of the core tensions within that organization, namely, the constant strain between regionalism and multilateralism and the ongoing battle between protectionism and freer trade. The auto pact gave adversaries of both trading blocs and preferential treatment an opportunity to flex their muscles on these sensitive issues. While these pressures almost scuttled the United States waiver request, in the end it was granted because the United States employed its considerable influence at GATT and because the competing interests found the waiver useful for their own purposes.Building on Michael Hart's impressive work, this article complements more general histories of Canada's activities at the GATT by providing a case study that illustrates an aspect of the Canadian trade reality in the period.(2) Although a number of economics, political science, and historical works have addressed the auto pact, few of them explore the historic role of the agreement in the international trade forum.(3) Those works that have considered the auto pact's passage at GATT have downplayed the difficulties the agreement faced.(4) Most of the studies have instead examined the economic impact of the agreement and whether North American rationalization boosted productivity or have focused on the impact of the agreement on Canada-United States trade and political relations.(5) In light of the February 2000 World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling, which nullified the remaining aspects of the auto agreement,(6) it is important to consider more carefully the context of Canada's international trade commitments, both past and present. …

When the 23 original signatories to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) concluded negotiations on 30 October 1947, they were confident that within a year or two the agreements reached would be subsumed into a new International Trade Organization (ITO). They were wrong, The ITO charter, concluded in 1948 in Havana, never entered into force. Instead, GATT was subsumed into a somewhat different international body, the World Trade Organization (WTO), only in January 1995. No country expected more of GATT than Canada, and no delegation was more enthusiastic about the prospect of a sound basis for international trade co-operation than that of Canada.(f.1) It was fitting that it was Canada which proposed during the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations that members finally screw up their courage to do what they had failed to do in 1948 and set up a world trade body. In the intervening five decades, Canada proved an active, if not always happy, participant in trying to make multilateral trade co-operation work. Particularly during the formative first two decades, Canada was often disappointed with GATT.Trade policy, trade relations, and trade negotiations are less about grand ideas and ideologies than about the pragmatic working out of very specific problems within the contours of existing political and economic realities, informed by the decisions and experiences of the past. Only as new patterns emerge are grand ideas hatched to provide intellectual coherence to changing behaviour. American historiography and Canadian romanticism have produced the myth that a multilateral trade and payments system anchored in the Bretton Woods monetary institutions and GATT paved the way for economic expansion and prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s. The reality was somewhat different. In 1947, multilateralism was new and unproven; the rules and institutions established in the 1940s led a precarious life throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. The multilateral payments system established in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) never worked and was finally abandoned in the 1970s. The multilateral trade system gradually expanded in the 1950s because the overly ambitious ITO was allowed to die and the demands placed on GATT were kept small and sustainable. GATT did not achieve the kind of success that became the basis for the fond memories of the 1980s and 1990s until the conclusion of the Kennedy Round of negotiations in 1967. By that time, patterns had been set and habits formed that would cast a long shadow.Canada found these two decades trying. By the end of the 1950s, Canadian officials were pessimistic about GATT's continuing capacity to meet Canadian objectives. The strong faith in multilateralism exhibited by Canadian negotiators at GATT's birth did not translate into results until well into the 1960s, by which time Canada had adapted to the new circumstances and proved more reluctant than others to make GATT work. In trade negotiations, timing is critical. For Canada, GATT delivered too little when Canada was ready and asked too much when it was not. This article reviews Canadian participation in the early evolution of GATT and considers GATT's not always helpful influence over the development of Canada as a trading nation.(f.2)ESTABLISHMENT OF GATTFrom the beginning, Canada was a staunch supporter of the idea of a multilateral trade agreement. Canadian officials believed that in a world of strong multilateral institutions the risks of protectionism and isolationism could be significantly reduced. Together with their American colleagues, they were convinced that the bilateralism and unilateralism expressed in the beggar-your-neighbour policies of the 1930s had contributed directly to war. With officials from Britain, they believed that multilateral co-operation based on American leadership would deter postwar United States isolationism and help to avoid the adjustment problems of the 1920s and 1930s. Canadian leaders also thought that multilateralism provided opportunities for Canada to influence directly the policies of the major powers in ways favourable to Canada's development as a nation. …

U.S. trade policy has four sometimes incompatible strands: multilateralism; preferential bilateralism; preferential regionalism; and unilateral imposition of import restrictions outside the framework of the multilateral structure. President Bush's proposal for free trade in the Western Hemisphere represents one of these elements, but it comes as the other strands are also being pursued in multilateral and North American trade negotiations. President Bush's free trade initiative was warmly received in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is because the region now looks outward toward exports more than at any time since the Great Depression. The feasibility of hemispheric free trade will depend on the extent to which the United States is prepared to discard unilateralism in its protective measures, how far other countries in the region are prepared to open their markets, and how committed they are to cooperating in formulating product and environmental standards and in protecting intellectual property.

This article examines the interaction of country pairs who have historically been and are potentially hostile. Hostility is described as a function of arms stocks versus bilateral trade. Armament intensifies the current level of hostility whereas trade reduces the possibility of militarized disputes. We argue that welfare-maximizing decisionmakers have to seek methods other than accumulation of arms to increase the security of their nations, and we highlight the strategic nature of trade in overcoming enmity. Rational governments, who consider bilateral trade as a factor that reduces the level of enmity, allocate resources more efficiently between arms imports and consumer goods. The model predicts that understanding the use of trade as a diplomatic tool will lead the economy to grow significantly. The model is designed as a non-cooperative dynamic game and solved numerically using an adaptive learning algorithm called a genetic algorithm.

Director, Centre for International Relations, Queen's University. An earlier draft of this article was presented to the conference on national missile defence sponsored by the Canadian National Committee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Toronto, 10-11 May 2001. I am grateful for research support provided through the Security and Defence Forum (SDF) of the Department of National Defence, Ottawa.INTRODUCTIONDifficult as it may be in the wake of the historic developments of and subsequent to 11 September 2001, it is useful to recall that, not so very long ago, we were all making a fuss about the 'turning' of the millennium. Part of the fuss concerned the timing of this transition, with purists insisting it took place on 1 January 2001 and not the year before, as the vast majority thought. But nearly all agreed that, whenever the last century expired and the new one began, the passage of time was well worth marking. For those of a geostrategic bent, it was doubly worth marking because it appeared as if one arms initiative in particular, the American proposal to build a national missile defence (NMD) system, loomed as the issue of the new age, something that proponents and critics alike understood had the potential to be the seminal marker in the twenty-first century's balance of power.For the critics, NMD's defining trait resided in the harm it was thought capable of inflicting upon global arms control, especially given the critics' worries about an arms control regime that was seen to be tottering ever more on the brink of obsolescence and whose fall must usher in a new and sinister phase of 'arms-racing.' Nor did it help the critics' mood when they contemplated NMD's symbolic portent - the onset of a new age of isolationism in American foreign policy, with all that this must entail for the interests of the country's allies, Canada among them. The supporters, for their part, were equally convinced that the world was becoming ever more menacing because of the prospect of 'asymmetric warfare' - a menace against which NMD appeared as a plausible first, though hardly the only, line of defence.So much has changed as a result of 11 September 2001 that we need to ask whether events and perceptions redolent of the 'new strategic millennialism' can possibly be of any relevance today. In a word, has NMD become yesterday's issue? Before 11 September, such a question would have provoked indignation on the part of any number of analysts and policy-makers, in Canada as elsewhere, whether they opposed or supported NMD: the question would have been taken, at best, as testimony of the flippancy of its poser and at worst as a signal of malice.At the risk of being thought flippant, or even worse, I am going to suggest in this brief article that NMD has become yesterday's issue. Indeed, as a simple descriptive, NMD no longer makes any sense, and we should rather be thinking and talking in terms of another arrangement, known more generically as 'missile defence.' And while missile defence itself will very much continue to be of strategic significance, for Canadian consumption it is going to be subsumed into the broader and more important concept of 'homeland security.' The latter, in turn, will have important bearing both on the future of 'bilateralism' within the North American security community and on that of 'multilateralism' itself.I develop the argument in a comparative manner by offering a contextual, historical, parallel drawn from another era of strategic millennialism; by encasing missile defence within the context of recent Canadian defence strategy; and by asking what missile defence has to do with the inquiry into the future of bilateralism and multilateralism as these terms apply to American foreign policy.A HISTORICAL PARALLEL FROM THE SAGA OF ARMS CONTROL?For Canadians with a sense of history, the story I tell in this section will have a familiar ring.(1) At the dawn of a new century, their American neighbour proposed to pursue, unilaterally if need be, a strategic initiative portending a fundamental alteration in the balance of power in America's favour. …

WHAT EFFECTS HAVE THE RECENT EVENTS in the Palestine territories and Israel had on the future stability of the Middle East? Despite murmurs of heightened regional antagonism and domestic social mobilization in response to the apparent setback to the peace process, we argue that the Middle East region is now underpinned by new strategic and political realities that will prevent a return to the patterns of conflict in the past. First, Middle East regionalism has been effectively counteracted by the consolidation of American influence in the region, seen most clearly in the dominant role in the Arab-Israeli peace process and the sanctions policy against Iraq. Second, the coherence of regimes in the region, even in sanction-beleaguered Iraq, remains strong or is strengthening, as seems to be the case in Algeria. Successions were smooth in both Jordan and Morocco. There are points of uncertainty, however, that include - in increasing order of concern - Arafat's Palestine, Khatami's Iran, Hussein's Iraq, and Bashar al-Assad's Syria. Third, challenges to regimes from below are less threatening because Islamic 'fundamentalism,' in its more destabilizing and violent form, has subsided and is being replaced by greater social and legal activism - a trend that can be interpreted in very positive ways in both the short and the long term. This is despite the widening socio-economic disparities in the region - particularly acute in the rural areas of the 'Fertile Crescent' region where drought has prevailed. Rising oil prices, however, should help to offset some of the hardships.CONTINUED AMERICAN PREDOMINANCEThe United States has successfully constructed a series of bilateral relationships in the region that continue to overshadow, if not militate against, the emergence of strong regional alliances. Hints of the rise of pan-Arab sentiment should not overshadow the fact that the Arab-Israel conflict has been successfully splintered into an irreversible series of bilateral peace negotiations. This has acted as a moderating influence on Arab regional politics - a moderation that is enforced by Egypt and Jordan, the two front line states that have signed peace accords with Israel. This bilateralism in Middle East diplomacy has also facilitated on-going American military action in Iraq and the maintenance of sanctions whose social effects are from more debilitating than their political effects. Although there have been sporadic Arab attempts to oppose the sanctions regime, most pressure for change has come from either the Europeans, who are beginning to play a more dynamic role in the region, or humanitarian organizations outraged by the devasting socio-economics effects of sanctions. It remains an open question as to whether these diplomatic efforts will result in any fundamental shifts in American policy towards Iraq, especially given the recent American preoccupation with electoral politics.The two countries that have resisted strong bilateral relations with the Americans are Syria and Lebanon. Recent developments, namely, the Israeli withdrawal from their self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon in May 2000, however, open up significant opportunities for the Americans to begin to drive a wedge between the two countries. We expect, for example, that the international community, having hitherto ignored the issue of Syria's 'occupation' of Lebanon, will begin to question Syria's presence, if not to apply pressure for the withdrawal of its 30,000 troops. The timing of such a campaign will depend upon the degree to which the Lebanese themselves begin openly to question Syria's dominant position in the country that also includes countless guest workers. There are signs, particularly on the campuses of Christian universities and in the press, that voices of dissent are beginning to make themselves heard.However, there are two complicating fractors. The first is the question of whether Hizbullah, in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal, has transformed itself from a regional to a Lebanese political actor. …

Contemporary Western literature on international relations has focussed on the importance of economics in the explanation of post-Cold War world order. While some scholars who study international political economy have argued that the international system constitutes a 'web of interdependencies' which is substantively defined in the political linkages among actors,1 others go so far as to suggest that in the post-nuclear world of economic interdependence, 'geoeconomics will replace geopolitics.'2 Analysis of economic co-operation in internationalized production, the related vulnerability of state economies to international pressures, and the realities of capital flows have substantive relevance to the understanding of current RussoChinese relations, but the importance of economic interdependence has been qualified in the response to the political

Multilateralism can be defined as the practice of co-ordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions. Since the end of World War II, multilateralism has become increasingly important in world politics, as manifested in the proliferation of multinational conferences on a bewildering variety of themes and an increase in the number of multilateral intergovernmental organizations from fewer than 100 in 1945 to about 200 by i960 and over 600 by 1980.1 Bilateralism has been revived on some issues in the 1980s, particularly with regard to trade, yet the number and variety of multilateral arrangements continue to increase. In the international relations literature, multilateralism has served as a label for a variety of activities more than as a concept defining a research programme. When a scholar refers to multilateralism, it is not immediately clear what phenomena are to be described and explained. Before we can understand multilateralism, we need to think about how we should conceive of it and