The end of multilateralism?

No, but it's decaying. The current crisis will have lasting consequences.

Trump’s America-worst policies have destabilised several international organisations and violated international treaties, upending world order.

He withdrew from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. He pulled out of the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030.

He’s opposed United Nations resolutions on issues like sustainable development and education. He’s violated US commitments at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

US officials wrote to UN organisations asking them stupid questions like whether they have "anti-American" beliefs or affiliations or if they receive money from China, Russia, Cuba or Iran. These countries fund the UN, like all 193 member states.

Washington supplies more than a fifth of the UN budget, and its cuts will chop off at least a tenth of the funds available.

The US has ditched other global pacts too, like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development global tax treaty. It’s even questioned the NATO mutual defence principle.

Although Trump’s short-termist selfishness catches the headlines, the truth is that the system of rules governing world order long had problems, and Trump may be bringing the crisis to a head.

Words and laws, not force

Trump’s actions are a deliberate rejection of the principle of multilateralism, or mutual cooperation between all parties.

The UN defines multilateralism as:

“adherence to a common political project based on the respect of a shared system of norms and values. In particular, multilateralism is based on founding principles such as consultation, inclusion and solidarity. Its operation is determined by collectively developed rules that ensure sustainable and effective cooperation. In particular, they guarantee all actors the same rights and obligations by applying themselves continuously (and not on a case-by-case basis, depending on the issue handled).”

Multilateralism is central to the global liberal project, whereby powerful states agreed after the second world war to follow a certain set of common values which they believed extended to all people.

In the UN charter, states commit to settling quarrels using words and laws, not force, resulting in collective decisions. A state can’t just do what it wants - if there’s an agreement, everyone has to abide by it because it’s supposed to be in the common interest.

International cooperation is a major reason why the post-war world has seen fewer conflicts than in human history. Thrash things out at the UN and you don’t need to shoot or bomb each other.

Multilateral agreements exist in a huge range of areas including nuclear non-proliferation; arms control; health; peace and human rights; international development; trade and the environment. Every UN member abides by them, with some carve-outs and caveats.

The global south, particularly small, less powerful countries, saw multilateral rules as a bulwark against arbitrary behaviour by the dominant and rich nations.

A global sprawl

But many of these agreements aren’t working. Many parts of multilateralism are underperforming, outdated, or increasingly under threat.

Leadership is only a small part of the issue. Secretary General Antonio Guterres seems like a good chap but he’s clearly overwhelmed. His vast range of duties are irreconcilable, and he’s attacked by the likes of the US and Israel.

No, the wider problems are bureaucracy, bloat, and power imbalances. Many countries from the global south feel that they don’t get a proper say in setting the rules, and that they don’t benefit enough. Often, in fact, the status quo serves the rich and powerful. Implementation is bogged down in internecine conflict and red tape.

The UN Security Council is one of the worst causes of this power imbalance: it's simply ridiculous that the five countries that won the second world war nearly 80 years ago are the only permanent members.

The tectonic shift signified by the US siding with Russia on Ukraine at the end of February was bad enough; but it only served to underline the influence wielded by the permanent five: Russia, China, the United Kingdom, the United States and France.

What about Latin America and Africa, or non-China Asia? Countries from some these regions sometimes get a say via revolving membership. But real influence comes from veto power. The permanent five shape the entire UN system.

And the UN is far more than the Security Council. It’s a sprawling and over-extended behemoth with a web of contradictory and overlapping institutions and entities. Over 37,000 people work in more than 30 specialised agencies, funds and programmes, offices and departments.

At about $67.5 billion, the total expenditure of the UN system isn’t particularly high. That’s about the same budget as the pre-woodchipper USAID.

But the sprawl has become so broad that overlaps can be found everywhere, reducing accountability. For example the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme (WFP) both cover food security, though their mandates differ slightly.

The UN Environment Programme and the Development Programme each work on sustainable development and the environment.

The High Commissioner for Refugees and International Organization for Migration both deal with migration and displacement, stepping on each others’ toes.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO), UN Conference on Trade and Development and the International Trade Centre are supposed to coordinate closely on trade but in reality don’t, and they overlap.

The sponge theory of international relations

Even within organisations, departments often compete for funding and attention, losing focus on their mandates. The reason that some member states don’t feel represented is not only that they’re not at the heart of power; it’s that accountability disappears in a forest of paperwork and competition.

According to scholar and former diplomat Thomas Weiss :

“The overlapping jurisdictions of various UN bodies, the lack of coordination among their activities, and the absence of centralized financing for the system as a whole make bureaucratic struggles more attractive than sensible cooperation. The UN’s various moving parts work at cross purposes instead of in a more integrated, mutually reinforcing, and collaborative fashion.

Not to put too fine a point on it, agencies relentlessly pursue cut-throat fundraising to finance their expanding mandates, stake out territory, and pursue mission creep. Fundamental change and collaboration are not in the bureaucracy’s interest; turf battles and a scramble for resources are.”

Some departments or agencies are run by politically-appointed bigwigs parachuted in from a favoured member state, who know little about the subject and can’t manage people. Their politicking cascades down the system.

Most UN staff below the top levels are committed and highly-qualified. But they’re often squashed by these diplomats or former politicians.

As the well-intentioned and high quality staff becomes demotivated and disorganised, the whole becomes less than the sum of its parts.

This duplication and misallocation of effort can in some cases undermine the very causes that the system claims to support.

Many UN entities amount to a sponge which absorbs all the good intentions from dynamic and well-intentioned governments and non-government organisations, which have the impression that achieving a UN resolution or gaining an audience in Geneva or New York is the end-goal. After raising their voice on the world stage they go home, satisfied.

Then…. tumbleweed.

The reality is that a statement at, say, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) may achieve precisely nothing.

“An increase in membership and agenda items… have turned ECOSOC into the UN’s most unwieldy and least significant deliberative body,” says Weiss.

All that positive energy and dynamism dissipates in layers of convoluted bureaucracy. It’s not just ECOSOC - the same applies to other parts of the UN.

For the UN isn’t ‘free’. It incurs an opportunity cost. If states didn’t negotiate there they’d do so bilaterally, regionally or ‘plurilaterally’ (meaning among several interested voluntary parties — such initiatives are increasing).

Often a weak multilateral statement or resolution precludes a good bilateral or regional one. And instead of going to the UN, states could otherwise even do something about the issue themselves. Thinking that the UN has ‘dealt’ with the problem, they don’t.

Added to this opportunity cost is the sheer time and cost invested in UN processes by cash-strapped poor countries. Travel and policy budgets exhausted, they can’t afford to take further action.

So because the UN plays a unique role that no other entity can perform, it’d damn well better be excellent, because anything less than superb results in mediocrity — or, worse, regress.

Not excellent

The problem is, it isn’t excellent. These structural problems mean that most of the big and important functions of multilateralism are falling short of expectations.

A few examples:

Global economic governance is pivotally important because the world economy is mind-bendingly intertwined and the institutions that govern it should underpin our common prosperity.

But the international system is so big, over-blown, complicated and overlapping, and it has so many legacy features, that it is unlikely to deliver the change that the world needs. ECOSOC, for example, is powerless.

The fact that a European always runs the International Monetary Fund and an American the World Bank is a kind of feudalism which locks out the majority world from economic decision-making.

The international financial system underpins not prosperity but radical inequality. Any notion of reform is either immediately shot or watered down.

The Conference of the Parties (COPs) on the environment are ineffective talking shops where commitments can be, and are, reneged upon - often quite quickly.

They're now compromised by fossil fuel interests. Putting Abu Dhabi and Azerbaijan in charge of COP 28 and 29 was liking putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank. Brazil is chopping down tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest to host the next talking shop.

The track record of multilateralism on the climate is disappointing, to say the least, and we are — catastrophically — heading toward at least 2 degrees of global heating. The SDGs look likely to be a failure.

The WTO is severely wounded, if not on life-support. There's no dispute settlement procedure. The US has basically abrogated all of its commitments and Trump’s 'reciprocal' tariffs violate its most basic principle - most-favoured nation treatment. The last ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi manifestly failed. The system’s design precludes agreement.

Multilateral action on international development continues to disappoint. Action on the least developed countries (LDCs) continually falls far below what’s needed. Nobody seems as outraged as they should be that only six countries out of 50 (at peak size) have ever left the category, or that some LDCs are going backwards (contradicting the well-worn notion that they are 'developing').

The group contains a quarter of the world's countries and about 1.1 billion people, more of whom are extremely poor than before Covid-19.

The Paris Principles on aid coordination, Busan declaration on development cooperation, Addis Ababa Action Agenda on investment - you name it, they're all basically fig leaves. If multilateralism amounts to a succession of big conferences where politicians sign well-meaning pledges on development that are later broken, then it isn't working.

UN humanitarianism and peacekeeping are among the most important achievements in the history of the entire system. The UN has saved countless lives through humanitarian intervention.

The WFP literally puts food in mouths - about 80 million a year. The UN vaccinates 45% of the world’s kids and shelters nearly 70 million displaced people. But these agencies are woefully short of cash, overlap in some areas and increasingly fail to meet their mandates.

In Cambodia, Namibia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire the UN helped smooth the path from war to peace.

But peacekeeping missions are repeatedly accused of sexual abuse.

They also aren’t allowed to actively intervene. Infamously UN peacekeepers failed to prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide, resulting in nearly a million deaths. In 1995 UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica failed to stop Bosnian Serb forces from massacring over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.

What’s next?

In place of multilateralism, countries and regions will take things into their own hands. Regionalism and bilateral action by large powers is increasing. Unsurprisingly, up-and-coming powers fill the void left by the old hegemon.

China is in many ways more enlightened than the US. It’s more advanced in renewable energy, electrification and emissions reductions. And as a permanent member of the Security Council and an active UN state it it can play things both ways.

Instead of wars, China has spent a trillion dollars on building roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructure in more than 140 countries via its Belt and Road initiative.

In economic governance, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) are growing. Since its establishment in 2016, the AIIB expanded its membership from 57 to 110 countries, representing over 80% of the global population and 65% of the world's GDP.

The NDB, established by the BRICS nations, has financed over $30 billion in infrastructure and sustainable development projects since its launch in 2014. The bank has also expanded its membership beyond BRICS, signalling its global ambitions.

Regionalism and bilateralism increasingly dominate trade. China has struck bilateral deals with 28 countries covering 40% of its exports. It exports more to Southeast Asia than it does to the US.

Africa is taking a more regional approach, with the African Continental Free Trade Area. Asian trade agreements like RCEP are a sign of the region's growing power.

Asia now trades more with itself than the rest of the world. To some extent there's a sense of Latin American solidarity.

These financial and trade deals, often dominated by China, will increasingly come to influence broader international relations. Regionalism and bilateralism may increasingly challenge or replace existing multilateralism, led by the global south and emerging nations but strongly influenced by the most powerful.

African Union peacekeepers are playing an increasing role although they’re short of cash and often have to rely on the UN. Some regional bodies, even the notoriously fence-sitting Association of Southeast Asian Nations, are being forced to tread a more political line.

Perhaps regionalism is a source of hope in that it can better serve the variety and complexity of states and their contexts. The old universalism was biased toward the interests of a few rich countries, and it looks increasingly jaded.

But replacing an old hegemon with authoritarian non-democracies charts a risky course. There’s no reason for China to listen to the poor and less powerful countries or to act in their interests unless they want their resources.

The rules-based multilateral order should indeed be the last defence of the weak and poor against arbitrary behaviour by the powerful. But multilateralism doesn't, in fact, seem to have been much of a bulwark for the dispossessed in recent years, especially when the US breaks the rules when it feels like it.

Parts of multilateralism as it currently operates doesn't seem to be working in the interests of those whom it claims to serve. In some cases the UN has been part of the very problem it seeks to solve.

Many countries may have little choice but to go along with the new fragmentation as it comes to replace the existing system. The new crisis brought about by Trump is only bringing deeper problems into sharper focus. One thing seems clear - Trump’s antics will only fuel multilateralism’s long decline.