The end of the ‘multilateral' world

Don't think that new U.S. president Donald Trump has only caused and will only cause political earthquakes. The election and inauguration of Trump will deeply shake the positions of international institutions that form the trivets of the international political economy environment mainly created after World War II as well as the alliances that emerged thereof through those institutions. Beyond the United Nations, NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, and regional cooperation agreements, countries are taking critical steps to replace the existing corrupt global order that has been in place for the past 65 years with new synergies that will focus on bilateral ties. Over the next five to 10 years, we will witness a period where multilateral organizations and agreements, including the European Union project, will struggle to survive; namely, they will either manage to restructure themselves or come to an end with the disintegration of countries one by one as they show symptoms of a "black hole" or a "vortex."

Until the 2008 financial crisis, and even until developed economies were exposed to a deepening unequal distribution of income, asymmetrical threats rooted in global poverty, unemployment, and deepening socioeconomic problems had not been taken seriously. The last global financial crisis, while profoundly impacting social life in developed countries, disrupted the processes of development and democratization, leading to a distress where global terror has incrementally gained strength. The economic destruction of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developed economies, along with the rising inflow of refugees, has accelerated the radical right-wing movements and post-modern fascism in countries where it was believed that their democracy was deeply rooted. This entire chaotic scheme has made international institutions with obsolete organizational structures incapable of creating solutions, which incites the global conscience to rebel.

An era of bilateral agreements

It is necessary to re-examine Britain's "Brexit" decision according to this perspective. Even though in the first weeks of the decision a certain regret and dispute arose, it seems that the new quests in the global political economy and the despair toward international institutions has brought Britain closer to a point of conviction that the decision coming out of the referendum was beneficial as the months went by. Thus, we may witness Britain spending the next few years intensifying its efforts to establish bilateral relationships with various countries beyond the EU and NATO. Indeed, the fact that Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is the first world leader to visit U.S. President Donald Trump and her visit to Turkey immediately after the U.S. visit indicates that Britain has expedited its preparations for post-Brexit.

Ted Malloch, who was called for an interview by President Trump's team regarding the possibility of being appointed the new EU Ambassador of the U.S. in the near future and who is currently in Britain working at Henley Finance School, suggested a short position, namely sales, for the EU's common currency "euro," and pointed out that the common currency is dying and another critical problem of the euro is that the eurozone could collapse in the next 18 months in an interview for the BBC's economy department. Malloch said that he is not the only economist who holds this view and respected American economic Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize laureate in economics, who wrote an extensive book on the issue, also holds the view. Ted Malloch believes that Britain can sign a trade agreement with the U.S. that favors both sides in the next 90 days and emphasizes that the best merger and acquisition agreements generally take place in 90 days.

Watch out for Turkey and India

It should not be surprising that the U.S. has moved to a "bilateral" perspective from a "multilateral" perspective with the new president, when one considers that President Trump has terminated the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), brought the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the table, and has been talking about forgetting the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) altogether in his first 15 days in action. Trump questions the existence and functions of NATO in this sense, and Turkey is one of the countries playing a key role in this period of "axis shift" at the international political economy arena. Another country is India. At this point where multilateral institutions and partnerships will pass an examination on both the global and regional level, economies such as Turkey that want to focus more on bilateral economic and political relations can grasp very important opportunities. Thus, it is beneficial to closely monitor the new era of bilateral relations.