When Craig Van Grasstek accepted the commission to write a history of the WTO, he must have surely been aware of the magnitude of the task he was undertaking. He rightly chose also to discuss the previous GATT period – without which a proper understanding of the WTO could not be reached – and therefore had to delve into archives covering some 60 years of trade policy as it has been carried out since the end of World War II. This is an immense amount of documentation, extending over countless pages, encompassing minutes of meetings, reports, public pronouncements, books, inter-governmental negotiations of all kinds, as well as the results of highly intricate multilateral negotiations, among many other subjects.

However, not only did Van Grasstek have to consult such vast amounts of material; lest he should risk misinterpreting past events and the opinions expressed, he had to understand it in all its complexity, separate the wheat from the chaff, and consult the memory of many participants so as to bring together views that would shed light on these ancient printed words. Only then would he be able to provide us with a history of what is, in the event, the course of world trade over half a century.

All this, in and of itself, would have been a formidable accomplishment, going very far beyond the books that both GATT and the WTO have inspired in a number of authors. Yet, Van Grasstek has done even more. He has provided his own personal contribution to a better understanding of what the world trading system is all about. The reader is surprised to discover that the book is even more valuable than expected, thanks to these insights and comments made by one who has – as it were – carefully sifted all the evidence and come to logical and valid conclusions.

We might ask: How has the author approached his subject matter? Given that the book deals with so many controversial questions, the reader is entitled to enquire about the author's mentality and background, and how they may have coloured his interpretation of events.

In his Foreword, Van Grasstek tells us that he is a political scientist first and foremost, and that he has sought to avoid partisanship, all the while recognizing that true objectivity is illusory, given that we all suffer from biases of which we are often not even aware. I have kept this statement in mind when reading the book, looking for passages in which the author may have strayed from his proclaimed intention. However, I have not found any such passage, not even in those cases where he discusses events and people that I knew intimately.

Van Grasstek is very frank and straightforward. He reveals exactly how he has approached his task, explaining his preference for emphasizing change over time and quantifying trends whenever possible. At the very outset, when laying out the theory and practice of the multilateral trading system, the author presents a table of events dating back to the Greek historian Thucydides. All these events have shaped the system over a period of some two thousand years. This type of analysis is not common in current literature on world trade.

In the first chapter, we find a reference to a dilemma that continues to bedevil the WTO to this date; to wit, achieving the right balance between the legislative and judicial functions. This issue, dealt with unsatisfactorily in the GATT period, acquired even greater prominence with the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding and the creation of the Appellate Body, which was undoubtedly a major step in the direction of bringing trade under the rule of law. What has happened in the WTO so far is that the membership has refrained from having recourse to voting in order to interpret ambiguous texts or to amend treaty provisions. This highly conservative policy reflects three principal facts: namely, that significant majorities have to be attained to make these changes, that the rule of consensus remains very much in force, and that there is now a great imbalance in membership between developed and developing countries. Furthermore, we must remember that the European Union, whose members always vote unanimously, has a vote for each of its countries, whereas China, the United States, or Japan have only one single vote each. We find here another cause for imbalance.

In Chapter 3, when Van Grasstek comments on the WTO Members' frequent practice of forming coalitions, he very rightly addresses the pressures that are implicit on these occasions. One such coalition was the Group of 20 Developing Countries (who later grew to more than 40 members), which negotiated with the developed countries the basic draft of the Punta del Este Ministerial Declaration that launched the Uruguay Round.

Chapter 3 also contains a lucid explanation of how countries join forces, often in a somewhat puzzling manner to the outsider, to pursue their shared interests. This is a most instructive part, because the WTO – as well as the GATT before it – is a place where everything is negotiated, to the point that many assert that there is no such thing as a free lunch – the guest does not err in anticipating that, during the meal, his host will raise an issue on which he is seeking support or information.

Accessions are discussed at length in Chapter 4, as are their potential pitfalls – some trade-related and others political. Accessions have become increasingly costly in terms of the concessions that candidate countries need to grant in the course of negotiations. In cases like China and the Russian Federation, for example, the way to membership has been extremely lengthy as a result.

Van Grasstek also properly analyses the changes that have occurred between the GATT and the WTO period, in particular in recent years. Specifically, he addresses the speedy rise in the number of developing countries and their consequently greater influence that has diminished the old US–EU predominance. Moreover, he analyses how China has been projected into a leading role in world trade. More countries and different philosophies as to the proper role and scope of activities of the WTO have created a complex scenario that did not exist in the past and that explains to a considerable degree the present Doha Round stalemate. In essence, developing countries see trade as a composite part of their economic advance, while developed countries have traditionally followed a more mercantilist approach.

The discussion of the vexing question of voting in the WTO centres on two extremes: weighted voting or one vote per country, and everything in between. There is really no satisfactory answer to this dilemma, since the arguments for and against the differing formulas are both logical and powerful. It is hard to deny the virtues of weighted voting, given that it responds to the realities of actual trade flows, or of a system that respects the sovereign equality of nations, whatever their size may be.

In the end, as Von Grasstek points out, a weighted vote decision, pushed through by big countries, could very well not find favour in dissatisfied governments, and – worse still – in their parliaments. ‘Victories’ of this sort would lead to an institutional weakening of the WTO. At the same time, the one-vote-per-country system risks creating scenarios in which developing countries, now a great majority in the WTO, could approve reforms unacceptable to other members. As a consequence, recourse has been had to GATT experience, as witnessed by Article IX of the Marrakech Agreement, which establishes that the WTO shall continue the practice of decision-making by consensus followed throughout the GATT period. Thus, consensus qualified by some specifically defined exceptions has been the means to apply a procedure that certainly has its critics and its weaknesses, but has the virtue of being workable.

The provisions on voting were the hardest to agree upon in the negotiations for the establishment of the WTO, so perhaps it is proper to conclude that an unobtainable ‘best’ was set aside in favour of a reasonable ‘good’, maintaining stability and balance among the membership. However, we can expect this issue to exercise governments and experts for years to come.

In Chapter 7, Van Grasstek provides a thorough commentary on the evolution and performance of the dispute settlement system, so greatly strengthened during the Uruguay Round. He concentrates a good deal on a question that continues to be the subject of discussion among diplomats and observers; i.e., the balance between the legislative and judicial functions of the WTO.

In essence, it is sometimes claimed that findings of the Appellate Body are such as to impinge upon the right of Members to determine the precise nature of WTO obligations. However, this school of thought does not fully appreciate the fact that, as explicitly mandated by the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), the Appellate Body has no choice but to interpret the contents and the significance of the provisions raised in a dispute before it. Moreover, as I believe, the most controversial decisions arise principally with regard to those clauses that were either deliberately or intentionally left ambiguous by negotiators during the Uruguay Round.

The work already done in the Doha Round points to a significant effort by participants to reformulate texts for greater clarity, and this is all to the good. Since the membership has done little or nothing to interpret or amend provisions, most likely because of the high majorities required for adopting such interpretations or amendments, the Appellate Body has had no choice but to do its duty as established in the DSU.

We will probably have to wait for the conclusion of the Doha Round for the amended and improved texts that will solve this problem. Speaking of the Doha Round and the proposals being presented on dispute settlement, allow me to come out strongly with a personal opinion that any weakening of the authority of the Appellate Body would have dire institutional consequences, since any loosening of the rules would simply encourage all Members to find ways and means to comply less and less with their obligations.

In the complex world of international trade and its attendant WTO commitments, there needs to exist a sufficient degree of transparency, such that Members may be aware of the way in which others are fulfilling their obligations. For this purpose, the WTO applies three procedures: notifications, trade policy reviews, and monitoring. Each procedure, in its own way, keeps track of performance by governments and, when properly utilized, becomes a valid means of determining whether commitments are, in fact, being observed. Further, these ‘watch-dogs’ procedures facilitate the formulation of policy by individual countries, and open the road for pressure to be brought to bear on governments perceived as slacking in carrying out their obligations.

In Chapter 8, Van Grasstek provides a very clear picture of this situation, and does not hesitate to state that, in a number of cases, commitments are being imperfectly complied with. There are, of course, so many of those requirements that they necessarily pose a real administrative challenge to many governments. Nevertheless, imposing this burden is worthwhile, given that transparency is the name of the game when ensuring that each Member enjoys in practice the benefits that it has negotiated.

In Chapters 9 through 13, Van Grasstek addresses issues surrounding negotiations. The history of negotiations under the GATT and WTO is both complex and controversial. For many years, experts have continued to debate the respective merits of the ‘single undertaking’ (i.e., the procedure under which all participants agree on all aspects of the final result) and of the ‘plurilateral approach’, consisting of agreements entered into by whatever number of Members are ready to accept them. The GATT/WTO system has oscillated between these extremes. In recent years, however, the concept of the single undertaking has been predominant.

Many considerations are at play when determining the relative value of these competing formulas. One of the key aspects is that, given the increasing membership of the WTO, the single undertaking coupled with the rule of consensus has had the effect of making it much more difficult to reach agreement. Yet, one must also remember that under plurilateralism the way is open towards an organization in which different countries have different benefits and obligations. In other words, plurilateralism may produce a two-step (or perhaps a three-step) WTO. The picture is further confounded by the reluctance of many developing countries to sign up for these optional agreements in the WTO, in the same way they did not generally adhere in the past to the Tokyo Round Codes.

Van Grasstek's discussion of WTO negotiations is extremely illustrative and manages to boil down into a reasonably short text the essential aspects of what is in effect a singularly complex procedure. The lengthy run-up to the Doha Round and the conduct of the Round itself merit the very thorough analysis that they receive in Chapters 11 and 12. Once again, Van Grasstek painstakingly goes through the ever-controversial stages that have led to the present stalemate 13 years after the Doha Round was launched.

To recall, in April 2011, then Director-General Lamy circulated a document summarizing the state of the Round. It is difficult to imagine a text so richly filled with square brackets and alternative texts. The recent Bali Ministerial Conference made some headway in resolving some specific issues, but, all in all, the Doha Round has still to surmount the many obstacles that continue to baffle negotiators.

Trade agreements providing for preferential treatment among their signatories, as authorized by Article XXIV of the GATT, have proliferated enormously both during the Uruguay Round and as a consequence of the Doha Round deadlock. There is a clear contradiction between these agreements and the WTO's most-favoured nation (MFN) clause. Arrangements of this type are intended to increase trade, but they also tend to divert it, and it can reasonably be said that their preferential side often facilitates trade in non-competitive goods.

What is certain is that a great number of countries have resorted to free trade agreements increasingly over the last 20 years. Whatever one's view may be on their virtues or otherwise, they are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the recent trend for the biggest economies to negotiate preferential agreements among themselves, and to enlarge their scope beyond WTO commitments, is evidenced by the present US–EU talks, the regional arrangement among a number of Asian countries promoted by China, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership in which the US is participating.

There can be little question that the MFN clause is in retreat, as preferential treatment becomes more prevalent. This is an issue of major importance, both for the WTO and the world trading system as a whole. Van Grasstek provides a thorough and very well-reasoned analysis of these developments, the repercussions of which will probably be felt even more in the near future.

In Chapter 14, Van Grasstek also provides valuable insights into the institutional dynamics of the GATT and the WTO. In any inter-governmental institution, it is country representatives, the Director-General, and the Secretariat who make up the forces driving the organization forward. There is inevitably a permanent tension in the relationship among these players, a tension that needs to be positive in its effects, overcoming personal preferences, policy discrepancies, and conflicting interests. On this question, once again, Van Grasstek provides the reader with a thorough and complete analysis of how these factors have functioned in the GATT and WTO periods.

In the final chapter, Van Grasstek very properly does not resist the temptation of giving his views on the future of the WTO. However, he wisely tells us that his approach is limited to identifying issues that will likely arise and will need to be solved. He looks at the procedures used in successive negotiating rounds, the effects of free trade agreements and plurilateral agreements, new issues for negotiation, the redistribution of forces in the world as developing countries continue to rise in importance, and the great number of WTO Members with attendant obstacles to securing agreements. This final chapter has the virtue of tabling the basic questions that will certainly arise and that governments will need to address now and in the future. As to the end result, I am as cautious as Van Grasstek. Time will tell.

The Biographical Appendix merits a mention. It covers the great number of protagonists who are either quoted or mentioned in the book, and provides an insight into the background of so many people who have made GATT, and now the WTO, into what they were and what they are today.

On a personal note, I have to confess that I had thought more than once to fall back on my lengthy association with the world trading system to write a book somewhat similar to The History and Future of the World Trade Organization. However, even if I had had the temerity to do so, the result would not have been as good as Van Grasstek's splendid contribution to what the world trading system is all about, how it originated and where it is headed. If there is a single publication that is now required reading on the subject, this is it. Congratulations, Craig.