It is a threat that is direct, i.e. not needing an intermediate vehicle or mechanism.

Efforts to support multilateralism must be increased. This will not be easy, as the United States, under President Donald Trump, has been pursuing policies that go against multilateralism. For the US, unilateralism, as evident in its “America First”, has been the main policy in recent years.

We are always perplexed when the US opposes good policies, but nonetheless we should proceed with what we have agreed upon, such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change case, if necessary without the US.

If the US would like to leave the World Health Organization, it has the right to do so. Other countries cannot prevent that, so we need to take it in our stride and move on together without the US, but with stronger intentions and actions from our side.

Existing multilateral institutions should be used despite challenges from the US. United Nations bodies, including special agencies like the WHO, must remain as avenues for helping humanity.

In addition to the multilateral institutions, mega regional institutions working on economic cooperation such as the European Union, Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)-11 and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are alternatives through which we can push for multilateral efforts.

In East Asia we also have ASEAN Plus Three (10 ASEAN countries plus China, Japan and South Korea) as the driving force. ASEAN alone cannot do the heavy lifting.

We also need to improve the work of the Group of 20. Although it was first designed as a more representative economic entity to replace the Group of Seven, the G20 should now be the most representative global institution for many issues in addition to economic matters.

I suggest the G20 focus on the following issues:

Promoting new measures to fight COVID-19, mainly in the form of confidence-building purposes, including setting up a special task force such as the one proposed by former British prime minister Gordon Brown;

Ensuring essential supply chains and preventing new disruptive barriers for medical equipment;

Going beyond the current debt-relief effort, including debt cancellation;

Continuing its role of maintaining global financial stability, especially the monitoring, supervisory and regulatory functions of the Financial Stability Board;

Reforming the International Monetary Fund governance, including its quota system, and improving coordination among development-finance institutions;

Promoting the stability of global commodity prices, which is critical for developing countries;

Serving as a forum to discuss issues at the center of the US-China disputes, such as trade, finance and technological competition.

East Asia has done relatively better in responding to the pandemic, and the countries in the region have shown willingness to cooperate with each other. ASEAN Plus Three should take the lead, both for the region and at the G20, taking into account the experience it has in organizing the RCEP and TPP-11.

Regionalism might be the strategic response of Asian countries to the rising nationalism in the West. From this perspective, if President Trump is not willing to support the World Trade Organization, TPP or any multilateral institution, we should continue what we have been doing by pursuing regionalism and inter-regionalism.

We should negotiate high-quality regional trade agreements (RTAs) with other regions such as Pacific Alliances and Mercosur. Next, we should push for resumption of the stalled EU-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.

Also, we need to encourage India and other countries to join the RCEP when they are ready and ultimately merge the RCEP with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to create a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, a long-term vision of Asian integration. Asia is providing a vote of confidence in the rules-based multilateral system when many are turning to unilateral actions.

At one time, we were concerned that RTAs went against globalism. On the contrary, the establishment of RTAs is neither good nor bad, as it depends on how the institutions work with others. If there is “functional complementarity” between global and regional institutions rather than “unhealthy competition”, then the benefits could outweigh the risks, as in the case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, World Bank and Asia Development Bank.

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Vice chair, board of trustees, CSIS Foundation

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