Govenance Wars II: Nina Hachigian Writes Back!!

In response to my post about her TNR article, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Nina Hachigian has e-mailed me the following reply: 

It was actually through researching US policy toward big powers that I have come to my belief in the importance of international institutions.  [The Next American Century: How the US Can Thrive As Other Powers Rise, co-authored with incoming White House deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen–DD]. While I like a free pony as much as the next guy, I also like even more not being the victim of a nuclear terrorist attack, the avian flu (which is back) or catastrophic weather events–or a global financial meltdown-but too late for that.  To fight these common enemies,  China, India, Russia, Japan and Europe HAVE to work together-it’s not optional.  Of course, clashes, tensions, disagreements, etc will continue in all of these relationships.  But the evidence is mounting from events like 9-11, SARS, the Mumbai attacks, and freakish weather that if we don’t work together, we sink together.  And in order to work together most effectively, we need institutions.  Yes, the current ones are flawed, sometimes deeply flawed.  But they already carry our water on a regular basis and nearly zero political credit for doing so.  Want to prevent an epidemic of drug resistant TB in the US?  Need the WHO.   Want to share the costs of bailing out a whole bunch of countries?  The IMF is taking that on.  Want to run schools in Gaza or elections in Iraq?  Call the UN.  You see my point.  It’s not that these institutions are a panacea.  It’s that they are necessary because we haven’t figured out a better way to coordinate actions between governments (and I am going to read your 2007 book on regulatory coordination) and they do deliver.  If we invest in them modest amounts of time and money, they will pay further dividends in our security and prosperity.

I have three thoughts on Nina’s response:

1. Hachigian is certainly correct about the potential utility of international institutions.  The geopolitical effects of the current financial crisis, for example,  would have been much greater had the IMF not provided loans and guarantees to Pakistan, Iceland, etc. 
2. That said, Hachigian’s primary thesis boils down to "failure is not an option" — i.e., global problems are so serious that countries have no choice to cooperate.  Wrong.  Failure is not an option, it’s an outcome.  When the divergence of preferences on, say, global warming is as sharp as it is right now, no degree of multilateralism short of world government is going to solve the problem.  Even action to combat SARS, which should be a no-brainer when it comes to international cooperation, can generate cross-border-frictions.
3. There’s another problem — even if preferences are close enough for there to be multilateral coordination, that doesn’t mean that there will be coordination on a good idea.  One could make the arguement — hey, come to think of it, I have — that the issue area with with the greatest depth of multilateral coodination to date has been in high finance.  Oops. 

I hope Nina is right, and that a bargaining core exists for all of these problems.  I am wary, however, of stacking too many resources and too much diplomatic capital on hope.