The United Nations is perhaps the most prominent manifestation of an international order built on balancing sovereign equality with great-power politics in a bid to maintain international peace. But its capacity to do that—and to meet its other objectives, which include protecting human rights and delivering aid—have been severely constrained in recent years by its member states.
The real power in the U.N. lies with the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council—the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France. And they have used their positions to limit the institution’s involvement in major recent conflicts, including civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Beyond the Security Council, the U.N. has sprouted additional specialized agencies to address specific issues—health, women’s rights and refugees, among others—that have met with varied degrees of success. In some instances, they have been able to galvanize global action around urgent goals, like UNAIDS’ work curbing the international AIDS crisis. But many of those agencies are now also facing funding shortages that could severely curtail their work, not least the World Health Organization, which is leading the global coronavirus response.
In addition to the U.N. and its agencies, multilateralism of all stripes is under strain, in large part because of the Trump administration’s hostility during the past four years toward these organizations over the perceived constraints that multilateralism places on Washington’s freedom of action. The World Trade Organization was already struggling in its efforts to regulate international trade before Trump took office, but his protectionist-minded administration further hobbled the organization, particularly its ability to resolve trade disputes.
President Joe Biden has promised to adopt a more conventional U.S. approach to multilateralism and America’s global role. But whether that will be enough to shore up the international order remains to be seen. It is unclear whether the WTO will be able to reassert itself as global trade revives after the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is under pressure from all sides. The Global South has denounced the Court’s lopsided focus on Africa—every defendant so far has come from the continent. And the Trump administration leveled sanctions against the ICC’s former top prosecutor for investigating American war crimes in Afghanistan—sanctions the Biden administration has so far refused to remove.
Other multilateral bodies, including the G-20 and G-7, are finding themselves ill-equipped to exercise any influence, as global powers are increasingly interested in competition rather than cooperation. While Moscow, Beijing and, increasingly, Washington were already looking to shake up the status quo, the pandemic has encouraged other countries to try to take advantage of the situation for their own political, economic and strategic gain. Bodies like the G-20 and the G-7 were designed to leverage the economic power of rich countries around a unified response to international crises, but there is little unity to be found at the moment.
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