The danger of Global South mobilization ­after the end of empire was that the ­will of the majority could become a new norm, even against the desires of the entrenched powers. The NIEO presented the prospect of a continuation and perhaps a completion of the pro­cess that dissolution of Eu­ro­pean overseas empires had begun: the fear was of the scandalous prospect of a decolonization of international law. The lack of "order" in the NIEO was a prob­lem to be corrected by beating back the encroachment of the UN on international ­legal practice and the establishment of binding arbitration and adjudication, including the dispute settlement mechanisms that Roessler and Petersmann would help design for the WTO. Against the attempt of the G-77 to use law for their own purposes, the Geneva School fought to reclaim law as an enforcer of private property and competition. The neoliberal program in the 1970s was not about growth, equilibrium, optimum, equality, social justice, or prosperity. It was about the reproduction of an interdependent complex system—­the defense of the totality of the world economy against an assault from nationalists that threatened to be as much of a catastrophe as the 1930s.

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 846