Growing Pains of Internationalism

In December 2023, I completed my time as an assistant in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. For a nerd all things UN/multilateralism-related, this was an incredible experience for countless reasons. However, I left New York with a grave concern over the state of multilateralism and its future. Throughout the 78th session of the General Assembly and several Security Council sessions, I witnessed some of the issues that plague the institution today, such as crippling hyper-gridlock across member-states and the repeated abuse of the veto by permanent members. I fell in love with multilateralism in 2018 when I had the life-changing opportunity of working with a local NGO on post-conflict development. Since then I’ve marveled at the youth of the international system, where 78 years of unprecedented global collaboration, against the backdrop of 5,000 years of recorded human civilization, reflects a significant step forward in humanity’s dedication to solving global challenges. My studies and experiences have made me a strong believer in that humanity today possesses the greatest capacity for international peace we’ve ever had. 
But, lets emphasize the word capacity in that statement. While we have these newfound avenues for international dialogue on existential challenges, I left New York evermore curious about how we arrived at this point of global dysfunction and gridlocking. What explains the failures of multilateral institutions, and what direction should the world take to improve international cooperation? Lets dig into this question by starting first with the context of modern internationalism’s creation.

The end of World War II marked the conclusion of a half-century defined by profound demonstrations of political violence and global conflict, and the opportunity for the formation of a new world order. As this new order took shape, the War’s victors — in the preamble of the United Nations Charter — assigned the institution the utopian task of maintaining international peace and security. They enshrined the importance of human rights and conformity with international law, with international cooperation underpinning this lofty ambition. They shaped a new internationalism that centered on morality and the rights of individuals. In a matter of just decades, they created a powerful new forum for international cooperation on global challenges. 

However, the post-World War II system, like all creations, was a product of its time. While the United States—the creator and arbiter of this order—aimed to crystallize its vision through an array of multilateral institutions, the balance of power has since moved beneath these organizations’ feet. Today, they are antiquated and congested: a reflection of the power dynamics that have taken shape since the end of World War II—and especially over the past two decades. 

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, that internationalism flourished, taking shape across politics, economics, and security. The IMF and World Bank emerged as guarantors of the economic vision of the nascent liberal international order. International human rights covenants, guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, sought to revitalize the way multilateralism could protect and promote the rights of individuals across borders, and establish accountability for war crimes. In the wake of institutional failure prior to World War II, numerous non-governmental organizations began tackling the world’s problems, forming a powerful international civil society. Regardless of how other Allied victors such as China and Russia— whose disdain for Western democracy and upholding of human rights have only grown— felt, they lacked the relative capacity, gravity, and resources to oppose or balance the development of this new post-World War II order. They were powerless to challenge the primary architect and self-established leader of this new order: the United States.

In the design of this new global order, the United States made one critical error: they attempted to crystallize and maintain the post-World War II power structure into this new array of multilateral institutions that has since become outdated. Its framers erroneously mistook avenues for global cooperation as a new form of indispensable power. While this may have worked for several decades and served U.S. interests quite well in projects such as decolonizing the world and advancing its economic goals, multilateralism by design has become a victim of its success. Spearheaded by American vision, liberal internationalism enabled states to develop and grow under a sustained international peace. But now that states have risen in power—growing rich, armed, and emboldened by the successes of the U.S.-led system— U.S. hegemony has itself become their target. Great power competition is resurgent, challenging this liberal order. 

The reasons for the initial success of the liberal order reveals its current dysfunction. Liberal internationalism was largely designed and guided by the United States because it was the only country powerful enough to do so. But now that Russia and China have grown to rival the U.S. with newfound economic and political prowess, they have the power and the intent to balance American hegemony. Thus, these revisionist states end up affecting international cooperation through the use of multilateral institutions as forums for balancing the U.S. This has created the gridlock from which international institutions suffer. 

To address the global challenges of the 21st century, leading powers of the international community must reimagine the manner in which global power is reflected throughout multilateral institutions. We must allow space for a more perfect internationalism that balances power more equitably between countries which participate. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed quite plainly to the world the necessity of flexibility in meeting the world’s greatest challenges. Issues like climate change, nuclear conflict, and artificial intelligence will continue to challenge the resilience and efficacy of internationalism as a viable means for maintaining international peace. We must recognize that other states will rise, and that U.S. primacy diminishes as a result. 

If the U.S. attempts to maintain the original structure of power which it held to found the international community, it risks undermining its success in maintaining peace. States will further become antagonistic and have incentives to continually thwart it and find ulterior avenues of exercising and gaining power. If multilateral institutions are to address the major challenges of today, they must evolve to become fluid and responsive to changing power dynamics that center not on unipolarity or hegemony, but on cooperation and multipolarity. At UNGA 2022, President Biden remarked that we are not passive witnesses to history; we are the authors of it. If we are to author a new century of peace, we must recognize that it will not come as it once did in the form of hegemony. Today, it will come on the basis of inclusivity. 

photo credits: CNN, David Dee Delgado/Reuters/FILE