The creation of multilateral institutions was the natural response to the horrific destruction wrought during World War II. As global attention swings to New York with the UN General Assembly leaders’ week kicking off on Monday, it’s worth remembering the principled protection that multilateral institutions have for generations offered against malign behaviour by rogue states and bullies that want to bend the international system to suit themselves at the expense of others.
Yet today, these institutions are failing to protect free and fair trade, dignified labour, human rights, orderly migration, non-proliferation of indiscriminate weapons and other shared goals. The multilateral system, in short, is failing right at the time we need it to respond to a world in which major state conflict is back and nations are testing international rules and the institutions themselves.
The answer is not to give up and let the multilateral system, including the United Nations and the many organisations that sit under it, be taken over and weaponised by authoritarian powers like China and Russia. Some form of global co-operation will continue to exist. If rule-abiding states vacate the field, it will be left to those who want to bend and distort these institutions so that they unilaterally suit these powerful players’ narrow causes and ultimately prop up their illiberal systems of government.
The answer, rather, is to do the hard work to reform these institutions, to make them legitimate and relevant so that they serve the majority of nations that want a functioning international system that respects the rights and interests of all states, large and small. As the institutions re-energise, they can compel the attention of capitals that multilateralism is worth the investment of time and resources, creating a virtuous cycle that serves all our interests.
Yet what we are seeing is that nations and industries are prioritising unilateral policies and minilateral groupings that are proving more agile in adapting to modern day realities over engagement in New York and Geneva.
We are in this miserable situation because liberal democracies have been complacent about the infallibility of institutional power, failing to recognise that institutions are only as strong as the determination of their most active members. Meanwhile, authoritarian nations led by China and Russia, and supported by the likes of Iran, have identified and exploited structural weaknesses, reshaping the institutions, bending the rules and co-opting or coercing smaller and more vulnerable member states. Some of these smaller states, it is true, have historically felt they weren’t being heard—again a problem that engagement by rule-abiding countries could help rectify by putting greater effort into inclusive reform.
Beijing has been especially adept at constructive sabotage from within. After being allowed to join institutions without being required to meet appropriate standards—as an optimistic world hoped a growing China would also be a liberalising China—it then proceeded to weaken key institutions from within.
It has offered unprecedented numbers of what are known as Junior Professional Officers to UN secretariats while also vying to put Chinese nationals in senior roles, effectively stacking the organisations. This has meant that discussions on Beijing’s malign activities are shut down, often before they begin. And when recommendations are made, their implementation is blocked.
It’s worth pointing out a distinction here from the way the United States has acted as a permanent member of the Security Council, such as vetoing resolutions supporting full UN membership for a state of Palestine. The US does not seek to quash the drafting and discussion of resolutions before they ever see the light of day. It votes against measures that it cannot support—and if its P5 power status is a matter of frustration for other nations, that’s a question of the need for long term reform.
Tough love will be needed to fix these institutions, starting with acknowledgement of the problem. Unlike the US, Beijing is breaching just about every international rule it has signed onto, including in space, cyberspace, the maritime domain—below and above water—through covert foreign interference in democratic institutions, transnational repression and most recently in the supply of dual-use goods and manufacturing equipment to support Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine.
Human rights abuses in Xinjiang are a case in point. In 2022, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a report on her last day in office that found human rights violations were being committed against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities, which might constitute crimes against humanity. But discussion of the report has been voted down and there seems an unwillingness even to try to act.
Despite the OHCHR’s findings about human slavery, China was allowed to ratify two International Labour Organization conventions on Forced Labour and the Abolition of Forced Labour that said China was committed to ending the practice but, incredibly, required no actions from Beijing.
Then there’s the World Trade Organization, which is supposed to stand for free and fair trade. Yet the body and its member states seem to work harder to explain why such unfair practices as economic coercion and intellectual property theft fall outside its remit than it does trying to adapt to capture these trade-related abuses. Every serious strategic thinker now accepts we can no longer treat economics and security separately, and yet our global institutions are failing to catch up.
This helps explain why countries are losing faith in the WTO’s mechanisms. The European Union launched a case against China for clear economic coercion of Lithuania. But it has suspended its action, apparently fearing that it would lose the case because China’s conduct is beyond the WTO’s remit.
Countries that believe in multilateralism need to back the key organisations by demonstrating their faith in them. Australia missed a chance to do this when it withdrew its two WTO cases against China—on barley and wine—as a misguided gesture to Beijing to help ‘stabilise’ the relationship. Likewise, Brussels could have seen its Lithuania case through and, if it ended in a technical dismissal, pointed to the failure as a demonstration of the need for WTO reform.
Rebuilding trust in international institutions also means member countries posting representatives to Geneva and New York who firmly believe in their missions and purpose—not people who are cynical about multilateralism or who maintain a quixotic and antiquated view of multilateralism.
Institutions need staff with expertise in both foreign affairs and security. Having such staff defending these institutions from within, and pushing the tough but necessary reform, would be the most effective way to ensure they are fit for purpose. These believers need to be our megaphones on the importance of the rules, the need to defend them, and the importance of holding states to account for non-compliance.
In parallel, we should continue to strengthen minilateral groupings to demonstrate that collective action is possible, and to achieve outcomes that might remain simply out of reach of much bigger global institutions.
For NATO, it took the crisis of Russia’s war on Ukraine to revive its sense of purpose and unity.
Having China and Russia working together and constantly breaching international norms, rules and laws ought to be enough to encourage other countries to put some elbow grease into resourcing and reforming multilateral institutions in the name of global security and prosperity.
