M A Hossain,
As the calendar edges toward 2026, gloom has become the default mood of international affairs. Wars burn across dozens of countries. Trade, once the lingua franca of cooperation, has turned into a blunt weapon of tariffs and counter-tariffs. Economic growth limps along at rates that would have shocked policymakers a generation ago. Climate disasters feel less like rare calamities and more like seasonal rituals. Pandemics, supply-chain breakdowns, and financial tremors have blended into a kind of permanent global background noise.
From this vantage point, it is tempting to declare multilateralism dead—another noble postwar idea crushed under the weight of nationalism, geopolitics, and distrust. That conclusion is understandable. It is also wrong.
The truth is more uncomfortable and more interesting: multilateralism is not finished, but it is no longer automatic. Cooperation still matters, but it must now justify itself in a harsher, more skeptical age. The real crisis is not global interdependence—people experience that daily—but confidence that cooperation can still work.
To understand why the world feels so unstable, one must look beyond headlines to the deeper shifts reshaping the global order. The first is the end of unipolarity. The brief post–Cold War moment, when American power seemed unrivaled and liberal norms appeared destined for universal adoption, has faded. Power today is dispersed among major states, rising regional players, and non-aligned actors who resist choosing sides. Multipolarity does not automatically mean chaos, but it does mean that coordination is harder and consensus rarer.
The second shift is the erosion of the rules-based order. International law, arms-control regimes, and multilateral agreements increasingly yield to raw power and transactional diplomacy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not just a regional war; it was a declaration that force can still redraw borders. The slow collapse of arms-control frameworks sends a similar signal: restraint is optional.
The third transformation is economic. Politics now drives economics, not the other way around. Hyper-globalization has given way to protectionism, industrial policy, and strategic decoupling. Governments prize resilience over efficiency, control over openness. Trade is securitized, technology restricted, and interdependence rebranded as vulnerability.
Together, these trends have produced a fractured world—one where old assumptions no longer apply, but no coherent replacement has emerged.
The institutions built after 1945 are feeling the strain. Democratic norms have weakened; autocracies now outnumber democracies. Humanitarian systems are underfunded, climate pledges routinely missed, and global bodies paralyzed by rivalry among major powers. Environmental stewardship is sacrificed to short-term politics even as climate shocks intensify.
This unraveling has coincided with the rise of a muscular, authoritarian nationalism that has displaced neoliberalism as the dominant global mood. Zero-sum thinking has returned with a vengeance. Borders are securitized, identities hardened, and compromise treated as weakness. The consequences are visible not only in Ukraine, but in brutal internal conflicts from Sudan to Ethiopia, where humanitarian norms are casually violated.
Seen from late 2025, the decade already feels cursed: a pandemic, Europe’s first major interstate war since 1945, devastating violence in the Middle East, and accelerating climate breakdown. It is a grim ledger.
History, however, warns against despair masquerading as realism.
In 1941, the world looked far darker than it does today. Fascism was ascendant. Democracies were on the defensive. The outcome of the Second World War was uncertain. Yet in that bleak moment, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill articulated the Atlantic Charter—a document that spoke of self-determination, economic cooperation, and freedom from fear and want. It seemed wildly aspirational at the time. It became the foundation for the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Marshall Plan.
None of this was inevitable. It required imagination, leadership, and the recognition that cooperation was not charity but enlightened self-interest. The question now is whether such imagination is still possible in an age of fragmentation. The answer depends less on institutions than on people.
Contrary to fashionable narratives of a world split between globalists and nationalists, public attitudes are more pragmatic. Large-scale global polling suggests most people are neither starry-eyed cosmopolitans nor hardened isolationists. They are realists.
Majorities understand that decisions made abroad shape their lives at home. COVID-19 taught that viruses ignore borders. Climate change links distant emissions to local disasters. Food prices, energy costs, and job security are all shaped by global forces. This awareness is not ideological; it is experiential.
Support for cooperation, however, is conditional. People ask a simple question: does it work?
Broadly speaking, three groups form a potential majority for multilateral action. Moral multilateralists support cooperation to alleviate suffering, even when national gains are indirect. Pragmatic multilateralists demand results, accountability, and transparency; they will back cooperation only if it delivers measurable outcomes. Self-interested multilateralists support engagement when it clearly benefits their own communities—by stabilizing prices, preventing conflict, or ensuring access to food and energy.
What unites these groups is not altruism, but practicality. Cooperation is acceptable if it produces tangible benefits.
Hardline nationalists—those who see global politics as a zero-sum struggle—remain a minority, even if they punch above their weight in the media and elections. In regions most exposed to insecurity and inequality, support for cooperation is strongest. Even in societies skeptical of globalization, few genuinely believe isolation is a viable strategy.
Trust in multilateral institutions, while battered, is more resilient than critics assume. Global bodies often command more confidence than national governments. No major power enjoys widespread trust, a reflection of deep suspicion toward unilateral dominance. Legitimacy today flows not from power, but from performance.
That is the central lesson of this moment.
If multilateralism is to survive, it must be rebuilt from the ground up. Grand declarations are no longer enough. People judge cooperation by whether it improves daily life—by preventing pandemics, stabilizing food supplies, reducing energy volatility, and mitigating climate risks. Framed as enlightened self-interest rather than moral abstraction, cooperation has a fighting chance.
The danger lies in failure. If multilateral efforts are seen as wasteful, ineffective, or detached from ordinary struggles, public support will evaporate. But success—even modest, visible success—can restore confidence.
What the world ultimately needs is not blind faith in institutions, but a renewed global vision—a modern counterpart to the Atlantic Charter. One that articulates shared principles without demanding uniform ideology. Human rights, rule of law, democratic accountability, environmental sustainability, and peace are not Western luxuries; they are universal necessities.
Polling suggests people are not asking their leaders to retreat from the world. They are asking for directions. Vision, not dominance, is increasingly seen as the mark of effective leadership.
Multilateralism today is wounded, contested, and unfashionable. But it is not obsolete. In an era defined by uncertainty and rivalry, cooperation remains not a sentimental ideal, but a practical necessity. The choice is not between globalism and nationalism. It is between managed interdependence and unmanaged chaos. History suggests that the former, however difficult, is still worth fighting for.
M A Hossain, political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: writetomahossain@gmail.com
This article published at :
1. The Nation, Pak : 05 Jan, 26
2. Asian Age, BD : 07 Jan, 26
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