Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 76

er states meet the American-set standards. As Krisch notes, “the extensive use of the certi-
fication mechanism provides a tool for the United States to create law for other States and
to monitor its observance, while the United States itself remains unbound and unmonitored.
It thereby provides a convenient substitute for treaties and other monitoring bodies.” 57 The
United States can also impose unilateral sanctions. It can do this to uphold agreed-upon inter-
national rules, such as multilateral trade agreements, but sanctions can also be used against
specific states—third parties—who do not pursue similar policies toward target states. 58
Finally, dominant states will find themselves making trade-offs between rule through rules
and rule through relationships. The attraction of rule through rules is that a system of multi-
lateral rules and institutions creates a wider space of predictable and efficient state relations.
A system of negotiated multilateral rules gives weaker and secondary states greater influence
on outcomes than bilateral negotiations do, but it also creates incentives for them to abide by
the agreements. The costs to the dominant state of enforcing order are reduced. The legitim-
acy of the order that is engendered by its multilateral rule-based character reduces opposition
and resistance to the leading state's dominant position in it. But there are costs to the leading
state in such an order—in the form of lost autonomy and the ability to directly manipulate
other states.
It is here that bilateral, patron-client relations offer attractions. Bilateral agreements tend
to make it easier for dominant states to translate their power into favorable agreements than
multilateral rules and institutions do. Krisch explains: “Bilateral negotiations are far more
likely to be influenced by the superior power of one party than are multilateral negotiations,
in which other states can unite and counterbalance the dominant party— divide et impera , as
reflected in the forms of international law. The bilateral form is also more receptive to excep-
tional rules for powerful states. In multilateral instruments, especially traites-lois , exceptions
for powerful parties are always suspicious and in need of justification, as manifest in, for ex-
ample, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the failed attempts of the US with respect
to the ICC Statute. . . . Bilateral treaties are thus a much easier tool to reflect and translate
dominance than multilateral ones.” 59
Thus, bilateral agreements will be attractive to the leading state when it determines that
multilateral agreements will not be as effective at asserting control over other states in the
desired way—or that the costs of doing so is too high relative to the gains. The first consid-
eration is really a functional one: what precisely does the leading state want to influence or
control? If the outcome it wants is quite specific, bilateral deals are likely. If the other state is
very weak, the leading state may be less likely to pay the price of tying itself to multilateral
rules and institutions to get what it wants. As I suggested earlier, the United States was more
willing to negotiated binding multilateral agreements with Europe than with East Asia after
World War II in part because it wanted more from Europe and was willing to make more
costly concessions to get the desired outcomes. In East Asia, the United States was much