On a Dying Multilateralism : Shared by Fouad Kronfol

More on the demise of multilateralism and what will or can replace it. It is not too optimistic but at least analyzes the causes and actors that are important players. It does not say much about the UN, except for the Bretton Woods agencies.
Fouad

On a Dying Multilateralism

Walden Bello
July 1, 2025
Click here for the article: On a Dying Multilateralism

Summary
Walden Bello, a Filipino academic and activist who is a professor at the University of the Philippines in Manila, argues that the postwar U.S.-led multilateral system is collapsing, with institutions like the WTO, IMF, and World Bank sidelined or paralyzed. He cites the U.S. boycott of the Finance and Development Summit in Seville and the Bonn Climate Summit as emblematic of this retreat. The WTO never recovered from the 2003 Cancun collapse, and IMF/World Bank reforms remain blocked by U.S. veto power. Meanwhile, climate finance efforts are woefully inadequate compared to the scale of loss and damage facing the Global South.

Bello highlights the Trump administration’s decisive role: abandoning liberal internationalism, dismantling collective action on climate, erecting tariff walls, tightening migration controls, and favoring unilateral over multilateral approaches. He calls this a defensive imperialism—reactionary, nationalist, and inward-looking.

The rise of BRICS is presented as an alternative, with expanded membership, new financial mechanisms, and increasing appeal to the Global South. Yet Bello warns that BRICS remains underdeveloped institutionally and constrained by the authoritarian tendencies of its leading members. He concludes that while the decline of Northern hegemony creates space for change, achieving equitable multilateralism will require confronting not just Western dominance but also internal inequality and elite rule in the Global South.

Quotes

• “The key institutions of Western-led globalization are no longer functioning or are in sleep mode.”

• “Trump … is simply recognizing what his predecessors refused to see—that the empire is overextended and no longer has the resources to sustain its multiple engagements.”

• “What is emerging is an imperialism that is on the defensive … divorced the United States completely from collective efforts to address the climate crisis.”

• “The BRICS … now boast a total population covering over 40 percent of the world … [and] a substantial 28 percent share of the global economy.”

• “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”