Are the UN, and the collaborative global governance it embodies, doomed to be less relevant in a world of great-power competition?
after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, Winston Churchill was a guest at the White House. President Franklin Roosevelt was so eager to tell him he had come up with a name for what would become a new world security organisation that, the story goes, he hurried into Churchill’s bedroom, to find the prime minister naked save for a bathrobe.
Yet no international order lasts for ever. Over time the balance of power shifts, systems fail to adapt and the rot sets in. The peace after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 eroded slowly; that after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 collapsed fast. A change from one dominant power to another has usually meant war .
America has long complained about the cost of propping up the multilateral system and fretted about “Gulliverisation”, being tied down by punier powers. Along with Britain it invaded Iraq in 2003 without a mandate from the Security Council. President Barack Obama, prioritising “nation-building at home”, began a semi-retreat from the burdens of global leadership. But the principal architect of the system now has a president who seems to delight in taking a wrecking ball to it.
These upheavals spill over into the diplomatic and security dimensions that are the focus of this special report. Are the, and the collaborative global governance it embodies, doomed to be less relevant in a world of great-power competition? It is surely too soon to give up on them. But to retain its clout and character the liberal order needs restored leadership and difficult reforms.
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