By wrecking the multilateral system for the sake of a few short-term, corporate interests, the UnitedStates is, paradoxically, threatening its own tyrannical control of other nations. The existing internationalagencies, fashioned by means of brutal power politics at the end of the Second World War, have permitted theUS to develop its international commercial and political interests more effectively than it could have donealone. The institutions through which it has worked - the Security Council, the World Trade Organisation, theInternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank - have provided a semblance of legitimacy for what has become,in all but name, the construction of empire. The end of multilateralism would force the US, as it is alreadybeginning to do, to drop this pretence and frankly admit to its imperial designs on the rest of the world.This admission, in turn, forces other nations to seek to resist it. Effective resistance would create thepolitical space in which their citizens could begin to press for a new, more equitable multilateralism.