What's next for multilateralism?

As Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently wrote, “the world that America created will end.” Nevertheless, multilateral governance will continue. Patrick describes a global and regional system of governance composed of “thousands of intergovernmental organizations, treaties, consultative arrangements, regional and subregional organizations, multilateral groupings, international courts and tribunals, global standard-setting bodies, and transnational corporate networks, nongovernmental organizations, experts, and substate authorities.” Whether, and under whose leadership, all these actors will be able to produce clear decisions and effective global action remains to be seen. But the game has begun.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly last week, US President Donald Trump claimed to have “ended seven unending wars” – a clear exaggeration, although his administration has helped bring peace to several regional conflicts. Trump then lambasted the UN for its lack of action.

"All they seem to do is write a really strong letter and then never follow up on that letter," he said. "They're empty words – empty words don't solve the war."

It pains me to admit that he is largely right about the current role of the UN in peace and security. As the war in Ukraine and the devastation of Gaza and its people illustrate, the UN is impotent when the five permanent members of the Security Council are at odds with each other. Russia and China use their veto power in any attempt to hold Russia accountable for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while the United States blocks collective global action to protect the Palestinians and create lasting security for Israel and a fledgling Palestine.

Trump also spoke of the “tremendous potential” of the UN. But make no mistake: his foreign policy clearly contradicts the letter and spirit of the UN Charter. He is an old-fashioned realist who, like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, values ​​national sovereignty and self-interest above all else. If he wants to invade or economically pressure other countries, or destroy ships in international waters for allegedly transporting illegal drugs, then he will do it.

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Surprisingly, during Trump's speech, many world leaders laughed at appropriate moments and applauded at appropriate times, flattering the American president publicly to improve their own chances of reaching an agreement with him privately.

To be sure, the US has flouted the UN Charter before, engaging in proxy wars around the world during the Cold War and, most notably, invading Iraq in 2003. Yet the international security and economic order, defined by rules, institutions, and processes, existed to address global crises and continues to do so with great success. Despite the UN’s shortcomings, a return to the balance-of-power politics of the nineteenth century, with no restraint on the use of force, would be a much worse scenario.

So what's next? On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, dozens of business leaders and representatives of religious groups, think tanks, educational and scientific institutions, and philanthropic organizations met to discuss their versions of this question. In dozens of meetings across the city, ideas about what a new international order might look like were discussed.

One way to think about this chaotic and decentralized activity is to compare it to the various meetings that took place during World War II, in the run-up to the San Francisco Conference in 1945, which laid the foundations of the UN. Today’s world is far more complex: the number of UN member states has almost quadrupled, and the scope of non-state actors capable of effective global action has expanded dramatically. Nevertheless, the impetus remains relevant.

Long-time advocates of UN reform see two broad options for change. One is an international order organized and led by middle powers—currently, any country that is neither a superpower nor a small state. The second option, which can coexist with the middle-power order, is a flexible, informal arrangement, created by intertwined coalitions of states and non-state actors focused on countering threats and delivering positive change at the subregional, regional, and global levels. Think of this as a set of overlapping scales on an armadillo.

In the immediate term, as diplomats initiate follow-up actions after the UN General Assembly, I propose two waves of meetings between key countries to determine how the world can conduct diplomacy without, or in parallel with, the United States.

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The first meetings are expected to be between China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada and South Korea, which together provide almost 50 percent of the UN’s overall budget. The United States has long been the UN’s largest funder; its share of the 2025 budget is estimated at 22 percent, or about $820 million. But the organization is likely to receive only a fraction of that amount, as a result of Trump’s executive order mandating a review of US funding and involvement in the UN.

These eight countries should therefore consider hosting the UN General Assembly elsewhere for the next few years, which would reduce US diplomatic influence and ensure that all delegates can attend the annual session. It would also underline that, unlike Trump, who has expressed his disdain for “globalism,” most world governments still believe in rules that limit national sovereignty in the service of a collective response to existential threats.

As the second largest funder of the UN, China could try to host the UN General Assembly in Beijing. But a more likely scenario would be to hold meetings on a rotating basis between the cities where the various UN headquarters and regional organizations are located: Geneva (the UN's European headquarters), Brussels (the European Union), Jakarta (the ASEAN), Addis Ababa (the African Union), Riyadh (the Gulf Cooperation Council), and Montevideo (Mercosur).

The leaders of the G20, without China, Russia, and the United States, should also meet. This group of middle powers—the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, the EU, and the African Union—could take steps, as Daniel D. Bradlow and Robert H. Wade have outlined, to make the G20 more representative. The 170 or so countries that are not members of the G20 may not be willing to agree to expanding their scope, but the group could increase its accountability to the global community.

As Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently wrote, “the world that America created will end.” Nevertheless, multilateral governance will continue. Patrick describes a global and regional system of governance composed of “thousands of intergovernmental organizations, treaties, consultative arrangements, regional and subregional organizations, multilateral groupings, international courts and tribunals, global standard-setting bodies, and transnational networks of corporations, nongovernmental organizations, experts, and substate authorities.” 

Whether, and under whose leadership, all these actors will be able to produce clear decisions and effective global actions remains to be seen. But the game has begun.

(Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning at the US Department of State, is executive director of the public opinion measurement organization “New America”, is professor emeritus of Politics and International Relations at Princeton University and author of the book “Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics”. This view was written exclusively for the global journalism network “Project Syndicate”, of which “Koha Ditore” is also a part.)).