Elizabeth Borgwardt offers a lively read on the national and international context within which the Bretton Woods, which marked the shift from isolationism to internationalism in the US as well as abroad, attempted at reshaping the world. She rightly calls it “A New Deal for the World” considering the impact that it had in strengthening post-war efforts of rebuilding, relief and rehabilitation, the 3Rs that the original New Deal was based upon.
Gathering hundreds of delegates and clerical staff from 44 countries of the world for over four weeks and achieving a consensus on issues of common concern was a major challenge. However, since the Bretton Woods was followed by somewhat similar international conferences on food and agriculture and on relief and rehabilitation, it could build on lessons learned and on the pre-existing understanding that arriving at implementation plans based on general principles is not easy. One of the major lessons emphasized on learning through practice as FDR is quoted saying in the signing ceremony of the UNRRA agreement: “Nations will learn to work together only by actually working together.”
One of the interesting points made by Borgwardt is her analysis of leadership method of Harry White on the issue of quotas, where he successfully makes everyone “feel better” by making them believe that they carried out a successful negotiation. It is also important how he manages to strike a balance between national and international interests by coming up with a figure which is “limited enough” for American bankers and “large enough” for foreign states’ perception of recovery fund. Another interesting tactical move on the part of White was his decision of putting Keynes in charge of the negotiations on World Bank charter, a not so favorite topic. We read case studies of successful management and leadership patterns, of which some, I believe, should be based on management skills of Harry White.
Arriving at a workable and useful consensus was one challenge, convincing opposition elements was another. Isolationists in the US perceived it as a threat to national sovereignty; American Bankers Association questioned the soundness of its terms while private sector thought US was losing control of its money by giving it into the hands of an international body. What they missed to see was that the Bretton Woods system was in fact the international model of Keynesian approach to economic crisis, which basically emphasized on investing for and in poor countries in order to save the whole system from an absolute collapse, i.e. giving now for gains in future. The argument made by White during the congressional committee hearings for UN charter was the final nail in the coffin of opposition to the Bretton Woods system, where he presented the failure to approve the system in comparison to the failure in joining efforts for an international organization aimed at preventing wars, at a time when, as rightly put by Borgwardt, “no one wanted to go back to the world of the 1930s.”
The vision of the Bretton Woods system was based on the achievability of human dignity and human rights through “economic security.” It had very strong national as well as international dynamics. It not only meant to improve conditions, but also and more importantly was offering an alternative to the Nazi world order. This point again laid emphasis on how international conditions have shaped and most probably, will continue to shape US policies at national level. Though internal opposition may slow down such processes, as in the case of southern opposition, it may not block it absolutely; the dynamics of interplay between national US policies and international policies and ways of affecting each other proves this over time.