Qahir Dhanani

It serves itself up as the guinea pig.

It proves the model.

It makes it easy for others to join in, and it pushes the snowball down the mountain.

This is how we've done diplomacy for decades.

We've just forgotten.

I love this example from the 1950s when banks started issuing credit cards.

There was one problem.

Some cards were small, some cards were large, some were made of paper, some of plastic.

There was no interoperability.

So a few of them came together, American Express, Diners Club, and a few others.

They came together and they adopted a uniform standard for a credit card.

So what you have in your wallet today is standard.

It has your name and a number on the front and a metallic strip on the back.

And then they worked with countries to enshrine this in the International Standards Organization.

So today, when you go to a restaurant and you tap your card, or you go to an ATM machine and you take out some cash, if people still do that, you trust that it's going to work.

But you don't attribute that to multilateralism or to the ISO or to a coalition of the willing.

But that's how it started.

Imagine we had to renegotiate or start afresh negotiating what a standard credit card looks like today.

What would that look like, insisting on inviting everybody to the meeting?

Well, the idea would be put to a committee.