What’s Next for Multilateralism and the Liberal International Order?

The United Nations’ ability to carry out its mission has been severely constrained in recent years by its member states. And many of its agencies are now facing funding shortages that could severely curtail their work. In fact, multilateralism of all stripes is under strain, from the International Criminal Court to the World Trade Organization—to the World Health Organization.

The United Nations is perhaps the most prominent manifestation of an international order built on balancing sovereign equality with great-power politics in a bid to maintain international peace. But its capacity to do that—and to meet its other objectives, which include protecting human rights and delivering aid—have been severely constrained in recent years by its member states.

The real power in the U.N. lies with the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council—the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France. And they have used their positions to limit the institution’s involvement in major recent conflicts, including civil wars in Syria and Yemen. But perhaps no global crisis has underscored the Security Council’s limitations more than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Because of its veto, Moscow has been able to block all efforts at the council to condemn or intervene against a war of aggression that clearly violates the United Nations Charter.

Beyond the Security Council, the U.N. has sprouted additional specialized agencies to address specific issues—health, women’s rights and refugees, among others—that have met with varied degrees of success. In some instances, they have been able to galvanize global action around urgent goals, like UNAIDS’ work curbing the international AIDS crisis. But many of those agencies are now also facing funding shortages that could severely curtail their work, not least the World Health Organization, which is leading the global coronavirus response.

In addition to the U.N. and its agencies, multilateralism of all stripes is under strain, in part because of the Trump administration’s hostility during its four years in office toward these organizations over the perceived constraints that multilateralism places on Washington’s freedom of action. In the absence of U.S. leadership and at times in the face of U.S. obstructionism, many multilateral efforts floundered. Heightened tensions and strategic competition among the U.S., Russia and China have also blocked efforts to address crises, even where their interests converge, as in Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden promised to adopt a more conventional U.S. approach to multilateralism and America’s global role, and his administration has already followed through with efforts to correct course on both scores in its first year and a half in office. But whether that will be enough to shore up the international order remains to be seen. It is unclear whether the WTO will be able to reassert itself as global trade revives after the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance. The International Criminal Court, which could play a vital role in pursuing charges of war crimes emerging from the war in Ukraine, is under pressure from all sides—including the U.S. And the WHO has emerged from the coronavirus pandemic with its reputation severely damaged by its perceived inability to hold countries—particularly China—accountable for failing to meet their responsibilities under the global health governance system.

Other multilateral bodies, including the G-20 and G-7, are finding themselves ill-equipped to exercise any influence, as global powers are increasingly interested in competition rather than cooperation. While Moscow, Beijing and, increasingly, Washington were already looking to shake up the status quo, the pandemic has encouraged other countries to try to take advantage of the situation for their own political, economic and strategic gain. Bodies like the G-20 and the G-7 were designed to leverage the economic power of rich countries around a unified response to international crises, but there is little unity to be found at the moment.

WPR has covered the U.N. and multilateral institutions in detail and continues to examine key questions about their future. Will veto-wielding Security Council members continue to curtail U.N. involvement in key geopolitical hotspots, and what will that mean for the legitimacy of the institution? Will the U.N. and its specialized agencies be undone by threatened funding cuts? Will the world be able to formulate a multilateral approach to addressing the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and now the war in Ukraine? Below are some of the highlights of WPR’s coverage.

Our Most Recent Coverage

The Decline of Security Transparency Is Making the World Less Safe

International security is inherently a secretive business. Yet in the post-Cold War years, states began to become more transparent about their military postures, aiming to create a new sense of international openness. This process has now gone into reverse, with post-Cold War transparency arrangements in sharp decline.

U.N. Politics and Security Council Diplomacy

The Security Council’s activities have always been constrained by the five veto-wielding members, known as the permanent five, or P5. There have been regular calls to rethink the composition of the permanent members to reflect contemporary geopolitics, but those efforts have made little progress. Meanwhile, as gridlock in the Security Council hampers many diplomatic efforts, the U.N. General Assembly has taken on added significance as a sounding board for multilateral initiatives that lack great-power sponsors.

• Why, despite all its shortcomings, the U.N. is still worth saving, in The U.N. Doesn’t Have to Be a Casualty of the War in Ukraine
• What states are trying to say when they abstain from a vote at the U.N., in When It Comes to U.N. Diplomacy, Not All Abstentions Are Equal
• How the U.N. is failing the test presented by the war in Ukraine, in The U.N. Is in Danger of Becoming Irrelevant
• What’s blocking a Security Council resolution on the security implications of climate change—and why it matters, in The U.N. Security Council Finally Considers Weighing In on Climate Security

The Liberal International Order

The creation of the U.N. heralded the rise of an international order based on collective security, liberalized trade and political self-determination. That is now beginning to recede as powerful states like China, Russia and, increasingly, the United States prefer to oversee spheres of influence and disregard the principles of sovereign independence and nonintervention.

• Why it’s a mistake to try to ban Russia from international organizations, in Expelling Russia from Multilateral Forums Is Tempting but Unwise
• What’s at stake for the nation-state system in the war in Ukraine, in The Russia-Ukraine Crisis Could Determine the Future of Sovereignty
• Why Africa must be front and center in any effort to jumpstart multilateralism, in To Remake Multilateralism, Start With the Role of Africa
•  How the G-20 can play a major role in addressing the world’s pressing global crises, in The G-20 Was Made for Moments Like This

Crisis Management

One of the strengths of the U.N. and its specialized agencies is their ability to organize relief in the aftermath of a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis. The U.N. and its agencies led efforts to end the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and are helping to rebuild key infrastructure following the massive explosion in Beirut’s port in 2020, which killed 178 people. They are also scrambling to bring down rising global hunger levels, even as the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine threaten to create skyrocketing rates of malnutrition and food insecurity. But those and the many other roles the U.N. and other multilateral actors have to play in responding to global crises are all being complicated by geopolitical rivalries between the great powers.

• How the war in Ukraine will complicate multilateral efforts to manage crises elsewhere, in The War in Ukraine Will Make It Harder to Manage the World’s Other Crises
• Why it’s premature to count the U.N. out when it comes to intervening in global crises, in The U.N. Still Has a Role to Play on Crisis Management
• Why the EU can’t afford to wash its hands of international crisis intervention, in After Afghanistan, EU Crisis Intervention Should Go Big, Not Go Home
• Why a U.N. peacekeeping operation is still Afghanistan’s best bet for stability, in It’s Not Too Late for the United Nations to Act in Afghanistan

The U.S. Approach to Multilateralism

Former President Donald Trump consistently criticized multilateral institutions during his four years in office, threatening to cut funding to the U.N. and waging a largely victorious campaign to sideline the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement and the WHO, while bringing the WTO to a virtual standstill. Biden has already reversed some of these moves and is expected to do the same on others. But he will have a harder time repairing the damage done to U.S. leadership by four years of Trump’s presidency.

• How Biden approached his first U.N. General Assembly as president, in A Beleaguered Biden Aims for a Reset at the U.N.
• What it will take to follow up words with action on the “New Atlantic Charter,” in Biden and Johnson’s ‘New Atlantic Charter’ Has Big Shoes to Fill
• How the Israel-Hamas war ended Biden’s “honeymoon” period at the U.N., in Biden’s Honeymoon at the U.N. and the Conflict That Ended It
• Why Biden’s commitment to the trans-Atlantic partnership is a necessary but insufficient step to restoring the West’s influence, in America’s ‘Return’ Might Not Be Enough to Revive the West

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in June 2019 and is regularly updated.