The multilateral system is failing

The multilateral order is not doomed by design; it is dying of neglect. Reviving it will require courage from both insiders and outsiders to modernize governance, demand results, and embrace new voices.

- DANIEL WAGNER

The multilateral system designed to manage the world’s common challenges is no longer fit for purpose.

What was once the crowning achievement of postwar cooperation has ossified into a bureaucracy so sclerotic and politicized that it often serves itself more than the people it was created to help.

The grand institutions forged at Bretton Woods after 1945 were intended to prevent another global catastrophe. And for a time, they succeeded. The UN provided a forum for diplomacy; the World Bank and IMF rebuilt economies and stabilized currencies; the GATT and its successor the WTO expanded trade and prosperity. But the world that gave birth to these bodies has vanished. Power is now multipolar, capital moves at digital speed, and the biggest threats we face—climate change, pandemics, cyber warfare, AI—are immune to national borders. The institutions meant to confront them remain anchored in a mid-twentieth-century design. AI and cyberwarfare did not even exist when they were created.