the promotion and degradation of bilateral relations highly depends on activities of an ambassador justify the statement with examples
Answers
Answer:
Bilateralism is the conduct of political, economic, or cultural relations between two sovereign states. It is in contrast to unilateralism or multilateralism, which is activity by a single state or jointly by multiple states, respectively. When states recognize one another as sovereign states and agree to diplomatic relations, they create a bilateral relationship. States with bilateral ties will exchange diplomatic agents such as ambassadors to facilitate dialogues and cooperations.
Economic agreements, such as free trade agreements (FTA) or foreign direct investment (FDI), signed by two states, are a common example of bilateralism. Since most economic agreements are signed according to the specific characteristics of the contracting countries to give preferential treatment to each other, not a generalized principle but a situational differentiation is needed. Thus through bilateralism, states can obtain more tailored agreements and obligations that only apply to particular contracting states. However, the states will face a trade-off because it is more wasteful in transaction costs than the multilateral strategy. In a bilateral strategy, a new contract has to be negotiated for each participant. So it tends to be preferred when transaction costs are low and the member surplus, which corresponds to “producer surplus” in economic terms, is high. Moreover, this will be effective if an influential state wants control over small states from a liberalism perspective, because building a series of bilateral arrangements with small states can increase a state's influences
EXAMPLE
The United States has bilateral relationships with several East Asian countries, particularly South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The United States formed a bilateral alliance with Japan during the Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan. The U.S. also formed a bilateral alliance with Korea during the 1953 U.S.-South Korea Status of Forces Agreement and one with the Republic of China during the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty. Unlike its relationship with European nations which takes multilateral alliances centered in NATO, the U.S. prefers a direct relationship with each of the East Asian countries. Rather than establishing a security alliance or hosting a summit, the U.S. tends to make a direct connection with each nation. From both historical and political perspectives, every country in the East Asian region can be an opponent or a target to any other. Therefore, it is comparatively difficult to construct multilateral alliances, which depend upon mutual reliance. A main U.S. reason for choosing a bilateral treaty was to avoid conflict, as might have been the case with multilateral treaties (e.g. risk of multilateral treaty defects). An example is the "hub and spokes" reference, where the U.S. is the "hub" and the East Asian countries are the "spokes"; they each have a connection with the U.S. but not with each other.[4][5]