Is multipolarity killing multilateralism?

Prof. Dr. Tarık Oğuzlu

The world is literally experiencing a crisis of ungovernability. Neither the United Nations, the most comprehensive and inclusive international organization of all times, nor the World Trade Organization, in charge of ensuring the sustainability of interdependent economic relations among states, nor the World Health Organization, which was created to provide leadership in coordinating international strategies aiming at defeating epidemic diseases, shows the performance expected from them. In addition, neither NATO nor the European Union, which constitute the building blocks of the rules-based western liberal world order, is capable of uniting their members around common norms and interests, let alone helping the global community navigate its way in today’s uncharted waters. We are living in a time when multilateral international and regional institutions are fast losing their ability to function properly. Despite dozens of summit meetings held and decades of anniversaries celebrated, international institutional mechanisms have increasingly turned into platforms that divide and polarize nations, instead of bringing them together on the basis of common interests and values.

Multilateral institutional platforms that aim to bring together a large number of countries around common interests and values ​​are being negatively affected by the emerging second cold and great power competitions all over the world. Multilateral cooperation mechanisms that embrace a large number of countries are increasingly being replaced by pragmatic and goal-oriented mini-lateral institutional initiatives including much less countries.

The weakness of the United Nations during the ongoing crises in Gaza and Ukraine; the inability of the World Health Organization to perform effectively in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic and the failure of the World Trade Organization in solving problems of global trade at a time of growing calls for protectionism, isolationism and self-sufficiency are just some of global governance problems to mention.

In today’s world, not only is the thought of zero-sum nationalism gaining momentum, but practices of looking at economic and other issues from a security and geopolitical perspective is also gaining strength. The growing sensitivity over national sovereignty and territorial integrity makes states suspicious of each other’s intentions. It is as if we live in a world where multipolarity is increasingly killing multilateralism.

One of the basic assumptions on which the liberal world order was constructed after the Second World War was that states would increasingly cooperate on the basis of economic interdependence, international law and membership in international organizations, and gradually develop common interests and values among them. The international environment would cease to be a jungle where the principle of ‘might makes right’ and brute force prevail, and gradually turn into a zoo where a rules-based order would arise sanctifying the principle of ‘right makes might’. The perception that we all sail in the same ship would strengthen in time and this would encourage and enable people of different nation-states to find global answers to global problems. As the possibility of great power competition recedes, humanity would gradually come together around universal values and interests.

Looking from this perspective, the benign American hegemony that strengthened in the post-Cold War unipolar era would play a facilitating role in the creation and sustainability of multilateral institutional mechanisms. The incorporation of Russia and China into the World Trade Organization, the expansion of the European Union and NATO towards Central and Eastern Europe and the establishment of multilateral free trade zones in different parts of the world were compatible with these expectations.

However, what we are experiencing now shows how unrealistic these assumptions were. Instead of coming together on the basis of durable common interests and common values, many states prefer small-sized informal platforms to solve the problems they face. Bilateral or mini-lateral settings have begun to replace multilateral ones. Thematic, pragmatic, transactional, mini-lateral, informal and loose cooperation platforms have become “in” and value-based, long-term oriented, visionary, strongly centralized, transformative, multi-lateral and formal institutional platforms have become “out”.

The mini-lateral cooperation mechanisms established in the Indo-Pacific region under the leadership of the United States with a view to preventing the rise of China and contain it to its borders provide the best examples of this understanding. The Quad initiative consisting of the USA, Japan, India and Australia; the trilateral cooperation mechanism consisting of the USA, Japan and South Korea; the tripartite platform consisting of the USA, Japan and the Philippines and the AUKUS initiative, which brings together USA, the UK and Australia with a view to helping Australia obtain nuclear-powered submarines, are some others examples to mention in this regard.

In addition, we have increasingly seen the G7 replace NATO and the EU in bringing the richest members of the Global West around common priorities. The G7 summit held in Italy recently is still in our minds. In today’s second cold war era, the G7 seems to act as the flagship of the Global West. This platform, which has begun to act as the standard bearer of the liberal democratic axis against the illiberal authoritarian axis, is an informal, mini-lateral and pragmatic institutional platform. Is the West, which aimed once to jump from the G7 to the G20 and then to the G50 in future, downshifting and reverting back to the G7? We cannot know whether the increasing efforts of the Global West to achieve its geopolitical, geoeconomic and ideological interests through the G7 means that no success has been achieved in multilateralization of international politics so far, yet what is certain is that today’s world is a world of institutional platforms that bring together fewer countries in narrower regions.

The Global East’s efforts to make its voice heard through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Global South’s efforts to increase its visibility through BRICS+ are developments consistent with general trends. Those who observe the summit meetings of these organizations try to understand what their members, which do not like the dominance of the Global West, have in mind. Mini-lateral, flexible, informal and loose international platforms that provide their members with the ability to move and maneuver freely in international politics are nowadays quite popular. This is a pattern of behavior that has increasingly emerged within the current multi-polar, multi-centered and multi-actor world order.

Platforms such as MIKTA, consisting of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia, and IBSA, consisting of India, Brazil and the South Africa, are other examples worth mentioning. The Astana platform, which brings together the Russian Federation, Turkey and Iran to end the civil war in Syria, and the Sochi process, which targets a similar goal, can also be seen through the glance. Even the Organization of Turkic States evinces strong doses of flexibility and pragmatism.

The Minsk Group, which was established within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe with a view to helping Azerbaijan and Armenia find a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, was also such a mini-lateral platform. The Normandy Quartet, formed with the participation of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine to help resolve the problems between Ukraine and Russia following the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, is another example to underline.

The Weimar Triangle, which has lately been mentioned frequently in the context of efforts to produce common foreign and defense policies among EU members is a similar formation. It remains to be seen, though, how effective the cooperation of three countries with different geographical locations, strategic cultures and historical experiences – France, Germany and Poland – can be in the European Union’s ability to act with a single voice in the fields of defense, security and foreign policy.

The question of how effective such mini-lateral cooperation mechanisms will be in solving global problems defies easy answers. Unfortunately, we cannot be too optimistic, considering that these formations are both byproducts and carriers of growing fragmentation and polarization in today’s world. We need more institutional cooperative platforms that unite rather than divide humanity. Oh if only it were possible.