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The competing visions of Multilateralism
- Montse DomínguezMunllonch
- 11 hours ago
- 5 min read
The competing visions of Multilateralism
A CRITICAL READING OF THE GLOBAL DEBATE.
We present the following analysis based on a video broadcast by Al Jazeera, on the programme Inside Story, hosted by James Bays. The debate addresses one of the defining issues of the present moment : The United States “ retrenchment from the multilateral system and its implications for the global order. Under the title “ Three competing visions of the “multilateralism”, the programme offers a rigorous framework of examining a phenomenon that goes far beyond an administrative foreign. policy decision. Current US policy, which has announced the withdrawal from of suspension of support for more than 60 international agencies and bodies, many of them linked to the United Nations, exposes a structural fracture in how global governance is conceived who sets the rules, how they are legitimised, and who ultimately benefits from them.This is not a simple technical dispute about institutional efficiency. What is at stake is the coexistence, and collision of three antagonistic visions of contemporary multilateralism, with direct consequences for international cooperation, global governance, and the collective capacity to address shared challenges that no state resolves on its own.
1.- Pragmatic multilateralism ; imperfect but necessary.
This vision acknowledges, without ambiguity, the limitations of the system created after the Second World War, with the United Nations at its core. Far from idealising it, multilateralism is understood as an imperfect yet historically effective political instrument for building minimum consensus in key areas such as human rights, humanitarian action, global health, disarmament, and conflict management. From this perspective, multilateralism does not arise from altruism, but from shared interest:
Preventing total war.
Structuring competition among major powers.
Proviving negotiating spaces for states with less relative power.
The key question is not whether the system is perfect, it is not, but what happens when it is weakened or abandoned without a legitimate and functional replacement. Historical experience shows that normative vacuums rarely generate stability, instead they tend to amplify conflict and power asymmetries.
2.- The Unilateralist Vision, absolute sovereignty and immediate utility .
The second position, now influential within decision-making circles in Washington, argues that many international organizations are obsolete, inefficient or financially unjustifiable. Under this logic, states, especially major powers, should act according to their immediate national interest, unconstrained by collective frameworks that limit their freedom of action. The decision to withdraw support from more than 60 international agencies challenges not only the effectiveness of specific institutions, but the very idea of shared rules.
The implicit message is clear.
cooperation is only valid if it delivers direct and visible economic benefits.
Legitimacy does not derive from multilateral consensus, but from power.
International law is subordinated to economic and geopolitical force.
The implicit message is clear:
Cooperation is only valid if it delivers direct and visible economic benefits
Legitimacy does not derive from multilateral consensus, but from power.
International law is subordinated to economic and geopolitical force.
The central problem is that this vision offers no alternative architecture for global governance, It dismantles without replacing, creating a normative vacuum that benefits the strongest rather than the most just.
3.- The Global South’s Critical perspective : asymmetry and lost negotiating power.
The third vision, often marginalised in international debate, warns that multilateralism, despite its shortcomings, has been one of the few arenas in which Africa, Asia, and Latin America could negotiate under relatively less unequal conditions.
As shared rules weaken :
International relations become increasingly bilateral and asymmetrical.
Countries rich in natural resources lose bargaining power vis-à-vis major powers and corporations.
Decision-making shifts from the realm of law to the logic of markets and geopolitics.
Here the risk is not theoretical. It is deeply concrete, less multilateralism means greater exposure, weaker institutional protection and increasing dependence on actors that unilaterally define what is legal, legitimate or acceptable.
INSTITUTIONAL CRISIS OR LACK OF POLITICAL WILL?
The debate is not primarily about whether multilateral institutions function poorly, many require profound reform, but about who decides how they are reformed and for what purpose.
International cooperation did not emerge from moral idealism, but as a rational response to a world devastated by war, extreme inequality, and rules-less rivalry.
Abandoning it without redesigning it is not a neutral act, it is a political decision with systemic consequences, particularly in a context of unprecedented global interdependence.
WHAT IS AT STAKE.
If the multilateral framework continues to erode :
Legitimacy ceases to be collective and is redefined by power.
Share norms are replaced by the moral codes and interests of individual powers.
The global orders is organised around the capacity to impose, rather than to agree
The world that emerges from this scenario is not freer or more efficient. It is more unstable, more unequal and more vulnerable to systemic conflict.
CONCLUSION : A STRATEGIC CALL TO DEFEND COLLECTIVE COOPERATION.
The video analysed does not merely expose a disagreement among analysts or ideological currents. It clearly reveals a deep clash between models of organising the international system. At stake is not only the future of specific agencies or multilateral mechanisms, but the very logic that has sustained international cooperation for more than seven decades.
Multilateralism is not an abstract normative ideal ; it is a political infrastructure. It has enabled the management of conflict, the channeling of rivalries, the reduction of uncertainty and coordinated responses to crises that no state, however powerful, can address alone. When this infrastructure weakens the costs do not disappear; they are redistributed and they fall disproportionately on those with less capacity to influence outcomes.
Accepting a global order without shared rules means normalising:
Legitimacy derived from power rather than consensus.
International public policies driven by short term interests.
Cooperation is reduced to a transactional instrument rather than a global public good.
The scenario not only deepens international inequality, it also erodes predictability, an essential conditional for economic stability, investment, security and sustainable development. The absence of common rules does not generate greater freedom, but greater arbitrariness.
The real dilemma, therefore, is not whether multilateralism needs reform, it urgently does, but whether there is the political will to reform it so that it becomes more representative, more effective, and more equitable, or whether the choice is to weaken it and accept a world governed by power relations alone.
We invite readers to watch and analyse the full Inside Store debate not as an academic exercise, but as a strategic reflection on the kind of international order we are consolidating and the one we still have time to preserve. A global order that benefits only a few is not sustainable.
And , as histories show its consequences ultimately reach even those who believe they can remain unaffected.
Written out of curiosity, Munllonch
Video Of Inside Story
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