THE OLD GLOBAL ORDER GIVING WAY TO THE NEW

With the UN looking out of date, countries are choosing to work through multiple mini-lateral or plurilateral networks. Can the G20 offer a new pathway to global governance?

- SHASHI THAROOR

THE birth of the United Nations in 1945, and its multiple agencies thereafter, gave rise to the postWorld War II notion of "world order" and the concept of "multilateralism". This meant multiple countries around the world engaging with each other under the aegis of global institutions, underpinned by consensus on global norms and the values underpinning those norms. The existence of an ordered world was intended to provide the space to identify threats, foster cooperation, and as far as possible, to prevent conflict and help contain it if it occurred. As Dag Hammarskjöld once put it, "The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell." That it can broadly be said to have done for many decades. After all, we have not had a Third World War.

However, today's world is one of polycrisis, where the very basic assumptions of this structure have been challenged. Neither have conflicts been averted before they become critical, nor has cooperation been properly fostered, with global institutions unable to transcend the disagreements among key member states. And the system itself has not evolved in step with the emergence of newer forces on the global scene.

Humanity is precariously close to the hell that Hammarskjöld wanted the UN to prevent. Geopolitics is bedevilled by major conflicts of global resonance, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the brutal conflict in Gaza both impacting countries around the world.