THE PAST, PRESENT, AND POTENTIAL OF ECONOMIC SECURITY

Abstract

Some WTO members have increasingly invoked economic security considerations to justify measures that violate international trade rules or threaten multilateral trade governance. Lacking a multilateral definition or common understanding, the logic of economic security appears to challenge the postwar institutional architecture of liberal trade and market capitalism. This Article revisits the early operation of the postwar economic order to unpack the ideas, interests and norms that form claims of economic security through detailed archival research into the practices of the order’s architect––the United States. It reconstructs U.S. planning for multilateral institutions designed to secure the global economy, with two case studies from 1947 to 1953, in which the U.S. experimented with trade as economic statecraft at the dawn of the Cold War.

The Article explains that U.S. trade policy never separated economics and security. Each case study details how the United States carefully engineered legal principles and used different techniques to secure trade among allies while simultaneously undertaking discriminatory trade practices to weaken Soviet economic and military capabilities. The case studies show how the United States operationalized trade in different ways as part of complementary forces. Western allies’ economies received liberal trade commitments for economic growth opportunities. In contrast, the Soviet bloc of states faced increased closure from the global economy, especially regarding capital and technology.

A critical insight from the Article is that, though it seems counter-intuitive to the language of the multilateral trading system, the U.S.-led economic order depended on integrating economics and security rationales, not compartmentalizing them. Multilateralism as an institutional form stabilized liberal trade relations, enabling the US and its allies to pursue mutual growth goals––albeit beneath the umbrella of US military preparedness. The case studies reconceptualize trade multilateralism as integrating trade benefits and security concerns within the economic order in the period studied.

The Article argues that by understanding the past, we can design better questions about economic security without defeating the multilateral trade architecture that continues to matter to many economies’ economic and sustainable progress. Unilateral actions need not disrupt the rules-based multilateral trading system. A vital first step is recognizing the integration of economics and security while developing processes that reconnect WTO Members to their long-term commitments to cooperate. The Article concludes by outlining future work concerning a multilateral mechanism for economic security that remains consistent with and supportive of economic globalization.

Keywords: WTO, GATT, Economic Security, Trade, History, Critical Materials, Commodities, Resilience, Export controls, Economic warfare, Statecraft

JEL Classification: K33, K20, F13, N10, F1, F5