Globalization and Governance:
The Challenge for the United States and All of Us
Georges Berthoin
The following remarks were made by Georges Berthoin to the
2001 annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission in London. Georges Berthoin is Honorary European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission.
With all the transformations we are witnessing and implementing, we need a genetically modified form of governance. We cannot go on having international negotiations based on the old traditional diplomatic techniques. This challenge is facing everybody, from Lichtenstein to China to the United States. The politicians who don’t want to see that challenge are not going to be true to the national interests of their own country and to the welfare of their citizens. Yes, the world is being Americanized; but America is being globalized. And America, like Europe, has to recognize that dual movement. The new Administration in Washington and the new leadership in the European Union will have to provide practical answers to that challenge within a matter of a very few years.
In the military field, the United States will not be able to implement a national missile defense system without addressing the problem of military governance of space. In the trade field, we are already on the right road, thanks to the creation of the World Trade Organization. If the present President of the United States favors the creation of a North—South American Free Trade Area, there is no doubt at all that it will be a big incentive for our Asian colleagues to do the same. The blocs that are going to be created will face the United States with a very important dilemma: Do they accept the creation of more regional blocs or do they want to strengthen the global institutions within which everybody will feel at home because they will be recognized as legitimate and fair by everybody? This is the challenge facing all of us.
In the early post-war years, like now, we had a new president in Washington with a very good team trained by previous Administrations and a State Department headed by a general respected because of the glorious way he conducted the war. Nobody was sure of the mastery of the president because he was very new and in some ways an unknown quantity. The general was a victorious leader, but nobody knew what he was going to do in the field of international politics. I suggest that what Harry Truman and General George Marshall did can be repeated.
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