Analysing Multilateralism

     One of the reasons for humans to survive and thrive longer is because of our ability to communicate, co-ordinate and work as a collective whole. Multilateralism is one such tool which came to the broad-light after the Second world war. It is not to say that multilateralism was non existent before. It indeed existed in a limited way, but the scope and horizons of multilateralism expanded when the United Nations Organisations (UNO) was created.

    After the war, an intense cold war started on the superiority of the form of governance and over a period of time almost all countries came to have a mixed economy with regional variations. Along with UNO, we began to have a number of international institutions like the World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Health Organisation (WHO), International Seabed Authority (ISA) and many more. The purpose of all these organisations was to integrate the the world into a whole, blend in with each other to avoid conflicts and to work towards the collective development while including almost all the nations of the world in this process. The idea of inclusivity and a global order came into the fore. Slowly as knowledge evolved, the collective whole realised that development alone cannot create balance with the environment and that they needed sustainable development. All this was cherished by most of the countries of the world.

    During that time, the West was more developed and had more weightage in its words when compared to other countries and the West became the brand ambassador of Globalisation. But because of Globalisation, some of the countries started to grow in terms of political, economic and diplomatic dimensions. When some of the countries grow, there needs to be a reshaping of the world order in order to preserve the harmony. When this did not happen, many countries realised the vested interests of the West and the weakness of the international world order being biased. This led them to form a series of regional groupings which lead to the formation of SARC, G20, G7, ASEAN, etc. Slowly the belief in universal multilateralism started declining.

    In recent years, the proponents of global order have started withdrawing from multilateralism. The USA has "USA first policy". It has withdrawn from Paris Agreement and United Nations human rights council (UNHRC). It wants to withdraw from WHO. The UK has strict emigration policies. China has no respect for multilateral institutions. And moreover the multilateral institutions have failed to keep a check on the separatist tendencies of both the developing and the developed world. This brings us to he question as to what will happen if the multilateral institutions fail? It will be very difficult to maintain global peace if each and every country wants to have its own way. It will lead to lack of coordination and ultimately end up in conflict. When all the stakeholders realise this, then at-least there might be some reforms in the multilateral institutions to represent the changing geo-political and economic circumstances and work towards the harmony of all. After all, one of the reasons we have evolved is because of superior communication and co-ordination skills when compared to other forms of life !