Category Archives: Global Order

The Trouble with Today’s Multilateralism: An Intro

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So in this week’s Post I was all set to hone in on the struggles over reenergizing faltering multilateralism in the current global order. Today’s  troubles encompass the formal institutions – the Formals – from the UN, and many of its specialized agencies to the international financial ones – the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. And the troubles extend to the Informals, the G7, the G20 to the BRICS+ and more. The struggles over multilateralism are the flip side of the return, seemingly ever more strongly power politics – the wars in the Ukraine and Gaza, and geopolitics, especially the rise in bilateral tensions between China and the United States.

But before I could go there, I couldn’t ignore the just excellent article – recommended by my colleague, and China expert, John Gruetzner – in Foreign Affairs by Zongyuan Zoe Liu, titled, “China’s Real Economic Crisis: Why Beijing Won’t Give Up on a Failing Model”. This very good piece leaned strongly into the discussion I had raised in my previous Alan’s Newsletter Post, ‘China, Seemingly, Stays the Course’. The Post chronicled the disappointment expressed by analysts and experts in the West primarily but in a rather more modulated form in China as well. The disappointment according to these experts emerged over the failure in the Third Plenum to initiate significant economic reform in the Chinese domestic economy and a clear determination to tackle domestic consumption.

Liu gets it right:

The Chinese economy is stuck. … But there is a more enduring driver of the present stasis, one that runs deeper than Xi’s growing authoritarianism or the effects of a crashing property market: a decades-old economic strategy that privileges industrial production over all else, an approach that, over time, has resulted in enormous structural overcapacity.

 

Simply put, in many crucial economic sectors, China is producing far more output than it, or foreign markets, can sustainably absorb. As a result, the Chinese economy runs the risk of getting caught in a doom loop of falling prices, insolvency, factory closures, and, ultimately, job losses.

 

Since the mid-2010s, the problem has become a destabilizing force in international trade, as well. By creating a glut of supply in the global market for many goods, Chinese firms are pushing prices below the breakeven point for producers in other countries. In December 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned that excess Chinese production was causing “unsustainable” trade imbalances and accused Beijing of engaging in unfair trade practices by offloading ever-greater quantities of Chinese products onto the European market at cutthroat prices.

 

Despite vehement denials by Beijing, Chinese industrial policy has for decades led to recurring cycles of overcapacity. At home, factories in government-designated priority sectors of the economy routinely sell products below cost in order to satisfy local and national political goals.

Now there continues to be some contention over whether in fact production is below cost but I I was pleased by Liu’s ‘recommendation’ that the two – the West and China – consider options other than just piling on the tariffs. Liu correctly points out the negative consequences of such trade policy:

A China that is increasingly cut off from Western markets will have less to lose in a potential confrontation with the West—and, therefore, less motivation to de-escalate. As long as China is tightly bound to the United States and Europe through the trade of high-value goods that are not easily substitutable, the West will be far more effective in deterring the country from taking destabilizing actions. China and the United States are strategic competitors, not enemies; nonetheless, when it comes to U.S.-Chinese trade relations, there is wisdom in the old saying “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

That is why I have suggested negotiating – and one aspect in this case could be Voluntary Export Restraints or VERS. VERS are not super policy  actions – I get that  but they do encourage bilateral discussions rather than just unilateral penalties. As Liu suggest:

The U.S. government should discourage Beijing from building a wall that can sanction-proof the Chinese economy. To this end, the next administration should foster alliances, restore damaged multilateral institutions, and create new structures of interdependence that make isolation and self-sufficiency not only unattractive to China but also unattainable. A good place to start is by crafting more policies at the negotiation table, rather than merely imposing tariffs. … If the government [China] also implemented voluntary export controls, it could kill several birds with one stone: such a move would reduce trade and potentially even political tensions with the United States; it would force mature sectors to consolidate and become more sustainable; and it would help shift manufacturing capacity overseas, to serve target markets directly.

While working through the WTO might be preferable, and many analysts suggest such an approach for multilateral trade frictions, realistically that course of action is out of reach for the moment.

So there you are on the Third Plenum and global trade.  Let me at least turn to the original subject for this Post; let’s at least open the discussion on multilateralism and its problems. I was particularly attracted to a piece published recently by Pascal Lamy. Pascal Lamy (pascallamy.eu) is currently the Vice-President of the Paris Peace Forum, and coordinator of the Jacques Delors Institutes (Paris, Berlin, Brussels). Importantly, Pascal Lamy served two terms as Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from September 2005 to September 2013. He is someone that is very familiar with critical aspects of the multilateral system. Recently his piece, ‘Reshaping the Global Order’ was published in a large edited volume by colleagues from the Center for China & Globalization, CCG,  Henry Huiyao Wang and Mabel Lu Miao, Enhancing Global Governance in a Fragmented World: Prospects, Issues, and the Role of China. Now Lamy sets out the critical structural issues that impair today’s multilateralism efforts. As he says:

The main long-term, structural factors at play can be summarized by sovereignty as a founding principle of an international order, by the obsolescence of the previous order, and by the US-China rivalry.

It is not surprising that he identifies ‘sovereignty’ as the first key to multilateralism’s problems:

Sovereignty has been, is, and will remain the main obstacle to building a fully fledged international order as long as it is accepted as the core principle of international law.

So many analysts acknowledge the burst in new actors in the international system: substate actors, regions and cities and also non-state actors like NGOs, large public and private corporations but all struggle against dominant state actors. National sovereignty dominates international relations and often leads to unilateral actions that undermines wider cooperation.

Then there is ‘obsolescence’.  This focuses around the elements of the system, especially the Formals that were put in place at the end of World War Two at a time when the Global South that has had such a recent impact on international relations existed primarily as colonies of the West:

Obsolescence has to do with the origins of the current global system, the architecture of which dates from arrangements made after the Second World War. The ‘universal’ nature of these arrangements is increasingly seen as a product of a past pattern of Western dominance at a time when new nation states are now reshuffling the old power distribution …

Lamy then targets the impact of the evolving international order:

All in all, the previous international order is being shaken by increasing North-South and East-West tensions and frustrations, and by a change in the balance between geoeconomics and geopolitics, the former losing the force it had gathered in recent decades, and the latter regaining its past dominance over world affairs. We are thus moving toward less of a rules-based system, and more toward the use of force. This context obliges us to consider new paths, tentative as they may be.

And finally Lamy underlines the rise of geopolitical tensions, especially between China and the United States, and the impact that these tensions have had on the current multilateral order:

The intensification of the US-China rivalry is the third main factor shaping the demise of the international order, as this rivalry increasingly pits the two main world superpowers against each other. Indeed, they now believe they have become dangerously vulnerable to each other—hence a change of view on both sides about globalization. Whereas the US and China previously celebrated the benefits of increased economic interdependence in fostering development and reducing poverty, they are now trying to address what today they consider as overdependence and have embarked on a decoupling journey which challenges the rest of the world with hard binary choices and which permeates international life in the form a sort of ‘cold war 2.0.’

So what is to be done? How can a multilateral system be revivified and made effective – bringing greater stability to the global order and energizing transnational global governance efforts?

That’s where we will start in the next Post.

Image Credit: Geneva Interdisciplinary Centre for Economics and Law

This Blog originally appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter – https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/the-trouble-with-todays-multilateralism?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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Responding to Disorder

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I have to start with the Biden press conference last night, of course. I wish Biden’s performance could allay concerns about his competence but, unfortunately, it was not good enough to do that.  Biden was certainly less combative than what was on display earlier but the stubbornness has not abated. And the mistakes remain. So, the Democrats are stuck for the moment.

Let’s turn now to the focus of this Post: coping with the disorder in the current international system and the real fear for the electoral outcome.

My close colleague, Yves Tiberghien, Professor of Political Science and the Konwakai Chair in Japanese Research, and also the Director of the Center for Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia put his finger on the stability/instability tension in the current global order. As he wrote recently for the Asia-Pacific Foundation:

In the current moment we are witnessing a rapidly changing geopolitical environment, with several dangerous hot spots and an acceleration of tit-for-tat dynamics.

The prime movers in this situation are China and the U.S., each animated and constrained by their domestic politics that sometimes limit their ability to deeply understand each other and engage in strategic, long-term calculations. The moves that each of them makes – which are usually framed as being defensive and reactive – are feeding a cycle of interactions that is transforming the region.

The central tension between the two leading powers is not aided by the current fallout from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the war in Gaza but the macro disorder is driven in the first instance by difficult US-China interests. And, it is because of the knotty interactions and the prospect for even greater bilateral tensions that so many of us are kinda ‘quaking in our boots’ over the impending national US elections. I was caught by the insight and ‘unexpressed’ emotion of one of the NYT’s most well known Opinion Columnists, Tom Freidman. He just recently wrote in the NYT, a piece titled: “The Devil May Be Enjoying This Election Season, but I Am Not”:

Both men running for president right now are unfit for the job: One is a good man in obvious cognitive and physical decline, and the other is a bad man who lies as he breathes, whose main platform is revenge — and who is in his own cognitive tailspin.

It kinda chills one’s ‘political soul’ when contemplating current US politics and policy.  It leaves open the prospect of dangerous international politics that demands effective Presidential leadership – which is exactly what seems to be missing in the current presidential contest. As Friedman writes:

At the same time, we are in the middle of defining the post-post-Cold War order, now that the U.S.-dominated post-Cold War order has come unstuck since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Managing a hostile Russia — aligned with an increasingly hostile China, aligned with malign actors like Iran and North Korea, and super-empowered nonstate actors like Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah — will take not only incredibly wise U.S. leadership but also a U.S. leader able to forge multiple alliances. The post-post-Cold War world can’t be managed by a lonely American superpower telling all its allies to spend more on defense or we will leave you to the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin.

Turning back to Yves Tiberghien for a moment, Yves identifies 3 hotspots in the current international scene: The Philippines, North Korea and Taiwan. Let me look at just one, what Yves identifies as the number one hotspot, the Philippines:

This is the top hot spot right now, and one without good safeguards or guardians. Some view it as perhaps the closest example in the region to a 1914 scenario. There is an urgency for talks between high-ranking officials in the U.S. and China talks, but the Biden Administration is distracted.

Now I will avoid any comparative historical references, – you know, it is just like World War I, or just like the Iraq decision etc.  I am not attracted to this form of analysis. And you should be careful as well. For my part having examined, rather long ago, the dramatically complex interactions and unique diplomatic actions of long ago political figures, including especially those political decisions leading up to World War I – thank you James Joll, these comparisons fail to attract me. The primary reason is most analyses comparing historical crises focus on the similarities but almost never examine the often dramatic differences in these historical comparisons. There are not only similarities but differences as well. And both must be examined, though they seldom are.

So let’s leave historical comparisons aside and let’s turn to a recent analysis. I was very pleased to see a just released piece by Ryan Hass in Foreign Affairs, titled: “Avoiding War in the South China Sea”. Ryan is from Brookings and is currently the Director of the John L. Thornton China Center, Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center for Asia Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center and he is also the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. Ryan served from 2013 to 2017, as the director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council (NSC) staff. From what I know he retains links with many in the Biden Administration.

There are a number of valuable insights that Ryan conveys in the current problem. Let’s first start with the problem. The South China Sea (SCS) dispute arises over the Spratly Islands with ongoing territorial disputes among Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam concerning “ownership” of the Spratly Islands, a group of islands and associated “maritime features” (reefs, banks, and cays etc.) and strong positioning in the South China Sea. The central bully in this story is China that essentially claims all of the South China Sea.  Nevertheless, the others also maintain their individual country claims. In 1999 the Philippines ran an old vessel, the Sierra Madre aground on the Second Thomas Shoal. China initially demanded that the Philippines remove the vessel and has harassed the Philippine efforts to resupply the military personnel that remain on the vessel though to this point China has been unsuccessful in preventing Philippine resupply. As Ryan points out:

The risk remains high that an incident could result in the death of a Filipino soldier, potentially triggering the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty and bringing American and Chinese forces to the brink of conflict.

That is the heart of the problem for the US, China and the Philippines. Threading the needle is what it will take; and of course that is exactly what chills those of us looking at the current race for the presidency. But Ryan suggests a policy that enhances deterrence and limits what Yves described as ‘tit-for-tat’ actions.

For Washington, success is upholding the credibility of its alliance commitments, avoiding conflict with China, and preventing Chinese occupation of Second Thomas Shoal. Achieving these results will require Washington to weigh every policy decision against whether it does more to prevent or provoke a crisis. Second Thomas Shoal is a strategic challenge with a military dimension.

It is a touchy balance of maintaining commitment, and thereby deterring China and at the same time not giving full rein to the strategic – and not so strategic actions in the US and in fact in the Philippines,  to tip over into conflict. Reflecting this balance is Ryan’s positioning:

It is not a military problem with a military solution. Washington must resist pressure to frame this issue as a test of wills between the United States and China and instead leverage Beijing’s bullying at Second Thomas Shoal to strengthen its relationships in the region.

Given the conflicting imperatives of the three major participants, the United States will need to walk a tightrope. It cannot allow itself to beseen as passive in the face of Chinese pressure against its treaty ally. On the other hand, Washington must preserve its position as defender of the status quo, thereby sharpening the contrast with China’s revisionist attempts to alter the situation at Second Thomas Shoal.

It is, as Ryan points out, critically important to signal soundly to China, US commitment without creating reactive offense:

U.S. policymakers must resist the urge to turn Second Thomas Shoal into a contest of wills between the United States and China and urge Beijing to do the same. The more the standoff becomes publicly framed as a showdown between great powers, the more likely that nuclear-armed rivals could find themselves in a nose-to-nose confrontation over a rusting boat.

And I think sensibly Ryan urges the following:

Washington should enlist as many concerned countries as possible to privately counsel Beijing against further escalation. Greater engagement by more actors, especially the Southeast Asian states that Beijing seeks to pull closer, will make the current dispute seem less like a binary clash between the United States and China.

The United States’ best option for limiting risk is to chart a middle path between succumbing to a military test of wills and putting pressure on the Philippines to give in to Chinese pressure. Conflict is possible, but far from preordained.

All this examination underscores the complexity and careful steps required to contain tit-for-tat US-China actions that could lead to a security disaster. It is hard now not to contemplate the worst with either crazy Trump, for sure but now possibly a seriously diminished Biden. We can only hope that the presidential outcome is not as currently predicted.

Image Credit: Al Jazeera

 

Challenging Leadership and Stability in the Global Order

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There are some recent insights worth examining. These insights underscore the current difficulties of US leadership in the global order. There are at least three critical issues that challenge US foreign policy leadership today. These include: the ‘shadow of Trump’; the continuing primacy demand of US leadership; and the harm inflicted by current US economic policy making. All three and more undermine continuing US foreign policy leadership in a changing global order.

First there is the ‘shadow of a Trump return’ to the US presidency. As quixotic as the first Trump term was, it appears that this prior Trump term likely will be a pale shadow of how a second Trump presidency will conduct itself. There are strong indications that Trump will direct retribution on those such as the Justice Department that he believes undermined his first term as President. And there will be others. And his inconsistent nationalist-isolationist impulses will likely once again be on full display in his relations with NATO, Ukraine, Russia and China. Buckle up!  It could be very ugly. But meanwhile the shadow of his return has caused friend and foe alike to hedge their relations with the US allies, Global South and Middle Power players, and, of course, presumed foes.

So, that is one source of current harm to US leadership. Then there is the continuing determination by the Biden Administration to maintain the US sole superpower leadership role. This can also be read as the US hegemonic position in the global order. The dilemma of US leadership in a changing power order is all too evident. And it is likely to carry forward into the next administration whatever the political stripe it is.

We were alerted to this dilemma really some time ago and by none other than former National Security Advisor, H.R.McMaster. McMaster was appointed in 2017 by President Trump and after leaving office he wrote about his career in: “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World”. There he raised the notion of ‘strategic narcissism”. While there is some contention over whether this concept was first voiced by the great international relations theorist, Hans Morgenthau, and McMaster raises that possibility, the point is the concept itself. Morgenthau did write an essay in 1978 called, “The Roots of Narcissism,” but McMaster in his book carried the concept forward in his description of ‘strategic narcissism’. For McMaster, ‘strategic narcissism’ was:

the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States and to assume that the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans.

I believe this concept and its elaboration helps us with a central concept in US foreign policy making. This framing aids us in understanding US approaches to leadership in international relations. That view was underlined in the recent piece by Ben Rhodes. It is well worth reviewing the insights provided by Rhodes in this very recent Foreign Affairs (FA) article. Rhodes has been directly involved in US foreign policy where from 2009 to 2017, he served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting in the Obama administration. He has been close to Democratic policymaking for a long time including being close with many in the current Biden Administration. As he wrote recently in the FA piece outlining what he sees as a needed reassessment of Democratic foreign policy making:

An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored to a world that has moved on from American primacy and the eccentricities of American politics—is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities. … Meeting the moment requires abandoning a mindset of American primacy and recognizing that the world will be a turbulent place for years to come. Above all, it requires building a bridge to the future—not the past.

In particular Rhodes points to the Trump ability in current presidential competition to build on the negative reaction to Democratic policy making in the period after the end of Cold War and the ‘triumph’ of US leadership:

Trump has also harnessed a populist backlash to globalization from both the right and the left. Particularly since the 2008 financial crisis,

large swaths of the public in democracies have simmered with discontent over widening inequality, deindustrialization, and a perceived loss of control and lack of meaning. It is no wonder that the exemplars of post–Cold War globalization—free trade agreements, the U.S.-Chinese relationship, and the instruments of international economic cooperation itself—have become ripe targets for Trump.

And these insights also alert us to yet another weakness in the international system – the fading of multilateralism, at least formal institutions. As Rhodes points out:

Second, the old rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore. Sure, the laws, structures, and summits remain in place.

But core institutions such as the UN Security Council and the World Trade Organization are tied in knots by disagreements among their members. Russia is committed to disrupting U.S.-fortified norms. China is committed to building its own alternative order. On trade and industrial policy, even Washington is moving away from core tenets of post–Cold War globalization.

Even the high-water mark for multilateral action in the Biden years—support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia—remains a largely Western initiative. As the old order unravels, these overlapping blocs are competing over what will replace it.

Finally, and raised by Rhodes in his article is the Biden Administration’s turn away from free trade and access to the US market as others lower their barriers to freer trade. Protectionism has become rife under the Biden Administration guise of ‘industrial policy’ and such protectionism has been defended, I’d say promoted by Biden folks such as Jake Sullivan. As Sullivan argued early in the Administration, in fact before that in fact, he promoted quite loudly a policy for the middle class. As reported by Michigan State Representative Mari Manoogian, Sullivan urged:

In February 2021, national security advisor Jake Sullivan clearly defined the overarching theme of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy strategy as “foreign policy for the middle class.” The Chicago Council for Global Affairs contends that this Biden doctrine “recogniz[es] the linkages between American domestic strength and U.S. ability to maintain international competitiveness.” Under this new framework, foreign policy decisions, Sullivan indicated, would use the following simple rhetorical question as a basic metric for success: “Is it going to make life better, safer, and easier for working families?

But as FTs Martin Wolf has been loudly pointing out for some time in fact this is a strategy of trade protectionism cloaked within the frame of industrial policy all too frequently.  As Wolf recently wrote at his FT column:

Industrial policy works if it changes the structure of the economy in a beneficial direction. Unfortunately, there are well-known reasons why the attempt could fail. Lack of information is one. Capture by a range of special interests is another. Thus, governments may fail to pick winners, while losers may succeed in picking governments. The more money is on the table, the more the latter is likely to be true. … So, how should we assess this shift in US policy towards industrial policies, matched, on the Trumpian right, by a desire to return to the high tariffs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries?… The answer is that there are now at least three bipartisan positions: nostalgia for manufacturing; hostility to China; and indifference to the international rules that the US itself created. This, then, is a new world, one in which the international trading order could reach a breaking point quite quickly.

All of this is a dramatic threat to the stability and prosperity of the current global order.

Image Credit: E-International Relations

 

 

 

Growing Closer to the Summit of the Future

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So, we are closing in on the consequential “UN Summit of the Future” (SoTF). This UN gathering will occur this coming fall on September 22-23rd during the UN General Assembly’s high-level week. This Summit, as was the case with the earlier SDG Summit, will be attended by many Heads of State and Government. 

Now this is not the first occasion that I found myself raising the SoTF. I did so back in March in a Substack Post, entitled: “The Impact of the UN Summit of the Future (SOTF)”. At that time I noted the hope from the UN and the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres for this second of two major UN gatherings: 

The Summit of the Future (SoTF) is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm existing commitments including to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Charter, and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people’s lives. Building on the SDG Summit in 2023, Member States will consider ways to lay the foundations for more effective global cooperation that can deal with today’s challenges as well as new threats in the future.

If only to take the measure of this formal multilateral institution – the UN, it is useful that we closely examine the UN and the Secretary General’s effectiveness through the actions and conclusions of this second of the Two Summit. It has become evident to most, if not all commentators that this formal security institution and its many specialized agencies,  like the formal financial and trade institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO – have all become enfeebled with age, conflicting North-South objectives and rising geopolitical tensions between major powers including Russia, China, the US and Europe. In addition, the rules often require consensus that as pointed out recently by Frederic Menard and Jennifer Welsh and her colleagues, in a new volume on global governance,  Afterworlds: Long Covid and International Relations leads to the following conclusion: 

The second weakness of contemporary multilateralism—its reliance on particular representations of power and interests—means that it maintains a system whereby a consensus among sovereign governments is required to advance collective policy on global problems, even when that consensus effectively results in the lowest common denominator.

There is a strong sense that these institutions are no longer ‘fit for purpose’, yet there is little hope for renewal in the face of the ‘rising disorder and fragmentation in international relations’. 

But back to the UN and this critical Summit. The UN describes the path to the SoTF as follows: 

The 75th Anniversary of the United Nations was marked in June 2020 with a declaration by Member States that included 12 overarching commitments along with a request to the Secretary-General for recommendations to address both current and future challenges. In September 2021, the Secretary-General responded with his report, Our Common Agenda, a wake-up call to speed up the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and propel the commitments contained in the UN75 Declaration. In some cases, the proposals addressed gaps that emerged since 2015, requiring new intergovernmental agreements. The report, therefore, called for a Summit of the Future to forge a new global consensus on readying ourselves for a future that is rife with risks but also opportunities. The General Assembly welcomed the submission of the “rich and substantive” report and agreed to hold the Summit on 22-23 September 2024, preceded by a ministerial meeting in 2023. An action-oriented Pact for the Future is expected to be agreed by Member States through intergovernmental negotiations on issues they decide to take forward. 

This self-described pathway by the UN and its Secretary General highlights the key measure of success and renewal – the “Pact for the Future” (Pact).  Richard Ponzio, Director and Senior Fellow, Global Governance, Justice & Security at The Stimson Center, and a close watcher of the UN, raised that very same question with his opinion piece on the Pact with its title – “Summit of the Future: A Historical Pivot or Mere Footnote?” But after a reading of his opinion piece and then a review of both the zero draft and now what is called the compilation draft it leaves the answer difficult to discern. As Richard pointed out, however, this compilation draft is not yet an end point. As he describes: 

Time is running short, with the first revision of the Pact for the Future not expected until shortly after the UN Civil Society Conference, from May 9-10 in Nairobi, which is focusing on the Summit of the Future.

Now  the zero draft covered 20 pages. Additions and emendations and significant paragraph rewrites by member states left the compilation draft at 255 pages leaving much to accomplish for those about to hold the pen after Nairobi. Moreover, as Richard points out, there is a movement ‘afoot’ to leave final results – the final document, to sometime in the future: 

A more recent argument to gather steam that could further kick the can down the road and result in underwhelming outcomes by September is the notion that as a consensus-based world leaders document, the Pact for the Future is already pitched at an appropriate length, tone and level of ambition. Hence, the logic follows that the technical details could be fleshed out by diplomats and others after the summit.

But  the current document as I pointed out earlier remains fixed more on the ‘what’ but hardly anything on the ‘how. There is little in the current document on how can the UN, the Secretary-General, and others actually advance and implement reforms and changes agreed to by the Member States. Unfortunately, the ‘what’ is decidedly more easy to lay out than the ‘how’. Thus, for example, there is a call for UN Security Council reform – an issue that has dogged the UN system for years but the compilation draft, just as the earlier zero draft, still fails to actually provide suggested reforms in membership,how many countries will be permanent, how large will the the Security Council be, which countries will hold a veto, if any at all, etc., etc.

Now Richard does suggest there there are four major initiatives that appear to be coming together:

A biennial summit on the global economy to bring the G20 and the UN closer to expand development financing for the 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goals) and improve global economic governance. 

 

An emergency platform for better addressing complex global shocks, such as pandemics or large-scale environmental disasters (although influential countries, such as Pakistan and Cuba, question its purpose and cost). 

 

A Global Digital Compact with human rights-based principles to lay the foundations for broader governance of cybertech, including AI. 

 

A Declaration on Future Generations, which, if backed by an authoritative intergovernmental body, a special envoy and monitoring tool, could achieve the status and impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

If Richard is correct, and these are the most likely changes and reforms to be adopted by the UN and also likely to be adopted as a legacy for the current Secretary General as he comes to the end, and likely retirement in 2026 after his second term, well, I am concerned.  A biennial summit with the G20 is possible but then what is likely to be accomplished – I’m not sure. But an emergency platform – that seems to me to be a stretch and as for the other two other initiatives, they suggest a presence but likely in form but without substance. 

Look, reform of these formal institutions created decades ago is a struggle at the best of times. And, I’m afraid, the state of global governance reform is far from being at the best of times in this growing era of disorder in international relations.

But stay tuned.

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter’.

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/growing-closer-to-the-summit-of-the?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

 

Stumbling Over ‘Strategic Narcissism’

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“Advancing global governance and human security for a better future”: A Symposium hosted by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), America-China Public Affairs Institute (ACPAI) and the China-West Dialogue (CWD) 

I had the good fortune to attend a ‘closed’ symposium in Washington this past midweek hosted by the organizations identified above. The Symposium identified the attainment of human security and the advancement of global governance as the key subjects of discussion and debate for the two roundtable sessions. The advance notes for the symposium suggested focusing on: 

How, might 2024 turn out to be a year of opportunity for advancing global governance in addressing human security challenges? What role can the Middle Powers play in moving the global relations forward to address humanity’s quest for security and systemic sustainability?

And as the notes further suggested: 

This half-day event aims for a broad engagement of perspectives from China, the United States, and the Global South on the feasibility of revamping global governance in the current context. We seek to convene leading global policy researchers, practitioners, and advocates to debate and recommend specific global institutional, legal, normative, and operational mechanisms that could inform governments’ participation in the major multilateral events of this year. 

 

The first roundtable session on the attainment of human security was led by Henry Huiyao Wang the President of CCG. And as the notes suggested: 

This session seeks to explore the scope of the concept of human security as a useful tool of generating alternative narratives and dynamics of US-China relations that yield more productive relations in global governance policy.

 

Framing questions:

 

  1. How can the idea of human security [to] be articulated in a way to mediate differences between the United States and China, given the prospects of bilateral cooperation on climate change, health, and AI governance?

  2. Multilaterally, how can the scope of the notion be extended to include norms and principles, such as international humanitarian law, human rights, nuclear nonproliferation, and other dimensions in global governance?

  3. Are there specific institutional, legal, normative, and operational mechanisms that can be reformed to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 agenda? What are alternative coalitions that need to, should or can drive global governance leadership?

The second roundtable was led by Colin Bradford, the Lead Co-Chair of CWD and non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings. The session was designed to explore advancing global governance “in a new global dynamic of pluralism where middle power diplomacy, it was suggested, might play a key role in lowering the ‘temperature’ in great power relations and promoting greater global governance policymaking. As the notes identified: 

Middle Powers exist today with agency and influence to play a role in addressing global threats. Understanding Middle Power Diplomacy and its implications for the global order can generate transformative forces in fostering multilateral consensus on global governance. The Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies during 2024 and 2025, with the US to follow in 2026, could become pivotal focal points for transition to a new era in global relations in which MPD demonstrates the feasibility of advancing humanity’s quest for peace, security, equality, and sustainable development. This session aims for a broad engagement of diverse perspectives, cutting across disciplines, sectors and regions.

 

Framing questions:

 

  1. What is Middle Power Diplomacy and how [can] the concept factor in independent and cross-national policy space to address global governance challenges?
  2. Following the Bali Declaration in November 2022 and the pause in US-China tensions after the Biden-Xi summit in November 2023 in San Francisco, what are the prospects for MPD to play an active role in global governance leadership?
  3. What are specific issues on which greater potential for convergence and cooperation exist in a global governance dimension, not a geopolitical context for MPD to bridge divides and invigorate coordinated efforts between countries?”

There was a lively discussion throughout the two roundtables that revealed, as one participant put it, that there appears to be two trends in our thinking on the current geopolitics. One trend underscored how critical greater cooperation was called for to deal with the growing transnational problems and the second, and a countervailing trend – greater great power rivalry  and competition. With respect to the first trend, it was hoped that various Middle Powers – seen as countries that can and do punch above their weight – say a Sweden, or Singapore, or Braziland more – work to tackle global governance problems such as extreme poverty or climate change ‘green transition’ policy and financing.

While there was a strong sentiment expressed underscoring the agency of Middle Powers in the midst of great power rivalry, especially in the context of Middle Power leadership of the G20 – Indonesia, India, currently Brazil, and to be followed next year by South Africa, there was an equally strong sense of caution and a view that great power rivalry – Russia, China and the United States – appeared to cripple collective action and to undermine Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD). 

Much of our discussion in MIddle Powers and MPD – what was possible in the face of great power competition – was shadowed by what has been labelled in the recent past as ‘Strategic Narcissism’ and I recalled to the group. The term ‘Strategic Narcissism’ was used, if not created by H.R. McMaster in his book,  Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World published in 2020 at the end of the Trump years. McMaster In February 2017 succeeded Michael Flynn as President Donald Trump‘s National Security Advisor.  For McMaster the term was applied to the US role in shaping global order relations. He defined the term as: “the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States and to assume that the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans.” As he wrote (2020, 18): 

Across multiple administrations, U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy has suffered from what we might derive from Morgenthau’s essay “Strategic Narcissism”: the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States and to assume that the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans. The two mind-sets that result from strategic narcissism, overconfidence and resignation, share the conceit of attributing outcomes almost exclusively to U.S. decisions and undervaluing the degree to which others influence the future.

McMaster appears to have drawn the concept  from earlier work by the great international relations thinker, Hans Morgenthau. Morgenthau identifies the concept in his 1978 essay: “The Roots of Narcissism” with Ethel Person (The Partisan Review. 1978 vol 45(3): 337-347). McMaster, however, creates what is a new phrase and concept by adding “strategic.” How closely McMaster’s interpretation of narcissism represents Morgenthau’s position is debatable. The language of “alienation” and “aspirations exceeding the limits of ability” is drawn verbatim from Morgenthau, but Morgenthau presents them as human problems. The leap by McMaster to apply this analysis to a national level foreign policy is somewhat questionable. In Battlegrounds, however, McMaster writes that in “The Roots of Narcissism” Morgenthau lamented preoccupation with self in foreign policy because it led to alienation from other nations and aspirations that exceed the limits of ability.  America’s stature as the only superpower encouraged narcissism, according to McMaster with a preoccupation with self, and an associated neglect of the influence that others have over the future course of events. Americans began to define the world only in relation to their own aspirations and desires and there are many that continue to do so in current global order analysis.

While there was much caution, even pessimism expressed over the ability of MPD to successfully temper great power dominance and action, general support was expressed for a view acknowledged at the end of the symposium by one participant that it was necessary to try and ‘move the needle’ – to push back against blocs and their rigidity and to support and advance collective global governance policy and action.   

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter

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The Impact of the UN Summit of the Future (SOTF)

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The Global Summit Project (GSP), as I’ve written in the past, has targeted as one of its main research interests, the national and international actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  It is therefore not a big surprise that I was attracted to my good colleague, Stewart Patrick’s webinar initiative examining the Summit of the Future (SOTF) in the context of global governance. The SOTF, as much of the immediate UN efforts is concerned, in part, with achieving the SDGs. Stewart is the director of the Carnegie Endowment’s (CEIP)  Global Order and Institutions Program. Bravely he brought together for a CEIP webinar conversation – “Is This the Moment to Renew Global Governance? Prospects for the UN Summit of the Future” – Guy Ryder, UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy, Jake Sherman, Minister Counselor, U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and Minh-Thu Pham, Nonresident Scholar, CEIP. Stewart acted as moderator for this session.

This webinar is well worth listening to. We have folks who have real insights into UN reform and into achieving the SDGs. We will see, I suspect, over the coming months a growing number of presentations and events concerned with SOTF. The SOTF is the second UN summit and like the first will be held at the UNGA opening week in September. And also like the first, Heads of State and Government will be in attendance for this second of the ‘Two Summits’.

The first – the SDG Summit called member leaders to attend at the UN to review the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This first Summit, encouraged by the UN Secretary General,

… carried out a comprehensive review of the state of the SDGs, responded to the impact of multiple and interlocking crises facing the world, and provided high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions leading up to the 2030 deadline for achieving the SDGs.

The SDG Summit was chaired by the President of the General Assembly. The evidence to date reveals, unfortunately, that this most important of  global efforts is way off track and notwithstanding the urging from all to accelerate the effort to achieve the SDGs, it will be a very difficult uphill battle to achieve the goals.

The second of the Two Summits is the Summit of the Future. According to the UN and the Secretary General:

The Summit of the Future is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm existing commitments including to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Charter, and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people’s lives. Building on the SDG Summit in 2023, Member States will consider ways to lay the foundations for more effective global cooperation that can deal with today’s challenges as well as new threats in the future.

The Summit of the Future has already produced a draft – the zero draft – of the final Summit document – the “Pact for the Future”. An extensive document, the Pact for the Future covers five areas:

  • Sustainable development  and financing for development
  • International peace and security
  • Science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation
  • Youth and future generations
  • Transforming global governance

Indeed it is an extensive document and well worth spending some time on. But a review reveals somewhat oddly that the document covers not just UN areas of focus but extends beyond them. This includes, for instance, reforms to international financial architecture, institutions not part of the UN system including the World Bank, the IMF and the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs). The Document does not back away from calling for reform of these institutions as well as those in the UN system – most notably reforming the Security Council:

To enhance our cooperation, we need a multilateral system that is fit for the future, ready to address the political, economic, environmental and technological changes in the world, and with the agility to adapt to an uncertain future. We know that multilateral institutions – especially the Security Council and the international financial architecture – have struggled to address the scale of the challenges they face and live up to the world’s expectations of them. Too often, international commitments that are made, remain unfulfilled. …

 

We reaffirm our declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations [that was 2020], and we commit to accelerating our pursuit of the 12 commitments contained therein, including through the measures outlined in this Pact. We further re-affirm the importance of the multilateral system, with the United Nations at its centre. We recognize that the multilateral system must keep pace with a changing world. To that end, we commit to concrete steps to reinvigorate this system, fill critical gaps in global governance, and accelerate efforts to keep our past promises and agreements. Through this Pact for the Future, we commit to build a multilateral system that delivers for everyone, everywhere. We commit to concrete action in five broad areas, as follows.

The discussion with Stewart in this webinar over the Summit of the Future is animated by very knowledgeable folk from the UN and near it. But a review of the Document reveals, it seems to me, and not so obviously discussed in the webinar, that the SOTF zero draft focuses on the ‘What’.  What needs to be reformed, what needs to be added to the UN and the multilateral system? But what is missing is the ‘How’. It is not the first examination – with strong detail, to discuss the reform and updating of the UN system and indeed beyond that to the international financial architecture. But like earlier documents before it and with serious discussions about this Document what is missing is the ‘How’. How do you in the context of heightened geopolitical tensions, and particular national interests, implement reforms? How do you accommodate the often reasonable demands of the Global South? In the world of 4-Cs – cooperation, collaboration, coordination and commitment – there is little evidence acknowledging ‘commitment’, as opposed to need for cooperation, because in fact it is scarce. In the end national governments are the key to achieving the SDGs and meeting necessary reforms of policies and institutions; and as best I can see and understand this critical element is hard to find.

I can understand the Secretary General urging the organization and the members forward but are we closer to reform of the Security Council after years of discussion? I am afraid we are not there yet and the Pact for the Future cannot hide it.

Image Credit: Summit of the Future & The Role of Geneva – Geneva Environment Network
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Are They All Middle Powers? Or, are there None!

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With a degree of valuable planning by my colleague Colin Bradford  at the China-West Dialogue, or CWD, we convened our first virtual session of the current year. And we were very pleased that some thirty folk joined us from across the digital world  – from Japan through Asia and Europe to Canada and the United States and on to Brazil. We hoped this session would be an opportunity to examine and critique “Asia’s Future at a crossroads: A Japanese strategy for peace and sustainable prosperity.” This very valuable Report was the outcome of years of work by the ‘Asia Future’ Research Group (Research Group)  co-convened by Yoshihide Soeya, Professor Emeritus of Keio University and Mike Mochizuki of the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University.

The Research Group began meeting in 2018.  In 2022 the Japanese government adopted a new “National Security Strategy” for the first time in a decade. And it was the evolved new Japanese foreign policy and security strategy that the Research Group critically reviewed.

The Research Group early on ‘revealed its hand’. As they declared:

What underlies the discussion and recommendations in this report is our serious concern that the new paradigm will leave Asia entangled and divided in the future.

And as a result the Research Group urged :

Japan’s long-held emphasis on a multifaceted and multilayered approach to Asia policy continues to be a constructive way to address the new regional and international challenges that have emerged.

What a continuation of this Japanese foreign policy approach demanded, according to the Report, was:

… Japan should maintain and promote security cooperation with the United States; but at the same time, it should also exercise leadership to help mitigate the competition between the U.S. and China in Asia through constructive diplomacy, thereby reducing the danger of great power war in the region.

The Research Group urged that Japanese policy not be reshaped by the rise in US-China rivalry and the growing geopolitical tensions in the international system generally and in the Indo-Pacific specifically. Alas, that may prove to be quite difficult.

Back to the Report, however. I am not doing justice to the fullness of the Report in this Post and those of you interested in international dynamics and relations in the Indo-Pacific, especially, I do encourage you to take some time with the Report. It will be worth it.

But I wanted to shift my attention in this Post to some of the debate that emerged during our CWD gathering and discussion of the Report. What was interesting in that discussion – and recognizing that the group was not made up of Japanese researchers – many reacted to the Report’s identification of Japan as a ‘Middle Power’ – clearly an IR crowd. This debate over the identification and impact of middle powers in international relations was further aided by the provision from our colleague Amitav Acharya of a new article by Robertson and Carr on middle powers. It is apparent that there has been a long running discussion – and I do mean long running – by IR colleagues – you’ll not be surprised to hear, over what is a middle power and the impact of these powers have on shaping global relations.

Now middle power labels have long been carried by a number of states most notably, Canada and Australia. These are the so-called traditional middle powers. The middle power definition was applied early to states that possessed structurally – that is the requisite ‘material power’ and what could then be described as being in the middle. These powers possessed less than the major, or great powers, such as the United States, and now China,  but more than those lesser powers. Unfortunately, an examination of the material powers status fails to bear this out as pointed out by Robertson and Carr:

For a start there is nothing ‘middle’ about the ranking of the middle powers. Canada and Australia, the classic middle powers, generally appear between 8th and 15th in various global lists of economic size or military capacity. This could not be classified as the ‘middle’ in a world of 143 states in 1960 and makes less sense in 2023 with 195 states.

Well, if the material power rankings don’t do it, and I think that is right, then for many the determination revolved about middle power behavior instead. As pointed out by Robertson and Carr:

The three core assumptions of middle power theory of states as international in focus, multilateral in method, and good citizens in conduct had clear analytical utility during periods of the 20th century, exemplified by a prominent practitioner–scholarly nexus during this period.

However, their analysis of some six contenders by the two authors, chosen by the two on “principles of consensus, hard cases, and breadth, our contemporary cases are, in alphabetical order, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey.” I’ll leave aside the obvious questions as whether all deserve in fact the middle power label, these states show, as analyzed by the authors, that the behavioral concepts are increasingly unable to capture the practices and actions of these states. As Robertson and Carr describe:

To be effective, middle-sized states must respond to, and evolve with the nature of the system they operate in. Conceptually therefore, the middle power concept ‘is not a fixed universal but something that has to be rethought continually in the context of the changing state of the international system’. … middle power theory no longer helps us distinguish or interpret these states. Changes in the international environment suggest this finding will endure. … As the 21st century has worn on, these states have all been less internationally focused, less supportive and active in multilateral forums, and shown sparse evidence of being ‘good citizens’.

Assuming we can accurately describe in an international order those that are possibly middle powers then, the relations between and among state actors become critical in revealing middle powers. As a result in an order with US-China tensions and a growing willingness on the part of a growing number of states to act aggressively – read that Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah and indeed Iran as well then:

As the 21st century has worn on, these states have all been less internationally focused, less supportive and active in multilateral forums, and shown sparse evidence of being ‘good citizens’. … As we enter a period that is marked by increased competition, a remembrance of the possibilities of middle power cooperation that produced initiatives such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty, and the Ottawa Treaty deserves to be made.

What then is revealed by all this? Well lots. But let me suggest at least one conclusion. And it is not about Japan or middle powers but the difficulty of drawing conclusions and outcomes in international behavior. A little like astronomy: ‘all are working on all’. Examining at a point in time and then drawing conclusions from that moment the character and behavior of the global order and then looking forward may be all but futile. Or, at least, it is very difficult and must be approached with great caution. Caution is indeed the watchword.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

This Post appeared originally at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. Comments and free subscription is welcomed.

 

 

The SDGs are faltering! What can be done?

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Returning to the SDGs

We have pointed out in the past – either through LinkedIn or in Substack posts that the Global Summitry Project (GSP) has targeted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The issue is now front and center as we enter the UN General Assembly’s return next week.  The 2023 SDG Summit will take place on September 18th and 19th. It will mark the beginning of, at least according to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Gueterres, “a new phase of accelerated progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals with high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions leading up to 2030”. At least that is his hope.

Early on the GSP identified this initiative as a means to assess the health of current multilateralism. First, a quick review of the SDGs:

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The SDGs were passed unanimously at the UN General Assembly in 2015. Agenda 2030, as it was called at the UN, identified 17 goals, 169 targets and at least 241 indicators.

These goals, targets and indicators, unlike the earlier Millennium Development Goals Initiative  – the MDGs – were designed to apply not just to developing countries but to all countries, whether developing or developed. Agenda 2030 was not then just a classic development effort. This effort was, and is, a global project for all states. Achieving the SDGs is about securing global development and achieving global sustainability for all – developing, emerging market and developed economies, Global North, Global South – all. Here are the goals:

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2: Zero Hunger

Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4: Quality Education

Goal 5: Gender Equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all

Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy

Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13: Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal 14: Life Below Water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources

Goal 15: Life on Land: Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies

Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
The ‘Two Summits’

Now we are on the case of the SDGs at the GSP. As a result we are following what are often referred to as the “Two Summits”. The first is the SDG Summit: The UN Secretary-General calls the SDG Summit [HLPF Summit, September 2023] the “centerpiece moment of 2023.” It takes place at the midpoint – completion of the first 7.5 years toward the final goal – for fully implementing the development agenda, the SDGs, adopted by countries in 2015 in 2030.

In 2024, in addition, a second Summit will take place. The UN will convene the Summit of the Future (SOTF). The theme of this Summit – ‘Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow.’ In September 2021, the Secretary-General issued a report, ‘Our Common Agenda’ urging a speed up of the implementation of the SDGSs and advancing the commitments contained in the UN75 Declaration. In some cases, the proposals addressed gaps that emerged since 2015, requiring new intergovernmental agreements. The report, therefore, called for the convening of a Summit of the Future to forge a new global consensus on readying for a future that is rife with risks but also opportunities. The General Assembly agreed to hold the SOTF Summit on September 22nd and September 23rd 2024. A ‘Pact for the Future’ is expected to be put before the UNGA and approved.  The Summit’s aim is to reinforce the UN and global governance structures to better address old and new challenges and to formulate a ‘Pact for the Future’ that would help advance the SDGs by 2030.

Overall, the SOTF, it is hoped, will revitalize multilateralism and lead, possibly, to needed multilateral institutional reform and provide a convincing narrative spelling out how the SOTF can:

●  foster enablers of SDG acceleration such as digitalization and access to finance;

●  tackle obstacles to SDG implementation, for example, through the New Agenda for Peace, by promoting effective crisis response through the Emergency Platform, by addressing fake news, and by supporting global public goods financing;

●  reinforce international standards conducive for the SDGs, including Beyond GDP, ‘longtermism’ and rights for future generations, and of course those on human rights and gender; and

●  develop a more networked, inclusive, and effective UN for SDG acceleration through the Emergency Platform, Youth Office, and a biennial summit with IFIs and the G20, among others.

The Multilateral Disconnect

So, where are we? At the midpoint it is evident the implementation of the SDGs is in deep, very deep trouble. As former UN Deputy Secretary General and currently the President of the Open Society Foundations, Mark Malloch Brown has recently written in FP:

Confirmation of that gloomy picture will come at the summit on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Sept.18-19 . This was meant to be a midway progress review: the implementation period for the 17 interlinked objectives, which include ending extreme poverty and hunger, began in 2016 and is due to end in 2030. The world is far from the right track. Out of 140 metrics by which the SDGs are measured, half are not on the desired trajectory and about one-third have stalled or gone into reverse. … Time and trust are running out, both on the SDGs and the wider restoration and renewal of the multilateral system.
There will be serious efforts at the UN meetings to urge all to focus on the SDGs and accelerate efforts to achieve these goals. But there is a huge problem – a serious disconnect. And it spells continuing problems for collective global governance efforts. There is an unfortunate glaring disconnect here. The urging is  occurring at the multilateral level but the implementation is at the national level. And efforts at the national level are either underwhelming or, sadly, non-existent. Multilateralism continues to largely occur at the national level and as I have pointed out before, key member states, read that the United States – are disengaged from any national effort. US executive and congressional budgeting processes and finance and development policy implementation are simply void of any SDG policy efforts. And the US is not the only member state in this situation. The rhetoric may be there at the international level but today it does not link to national policy action. Now, in the face of the absence of national policy, numerous local and regional actors and non-state actors, corporations and civil society organizations (CSOs) have stepped in. But their efforts, I am afraid, cannot substitute for national efforts. Without that the strong urging will continue at the international level but without serious progress.

What can be done? We will return to this here.

This Post was first uploaded to my Substack at Alan’s Newsletter:

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BRICS Confusion is Rather Evident

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Well, though still in the weekend, I must admit this Post is a bit late, though still available, I hope, for an enjoyable weekend read.

So, I was not planning to target the BRICS South Africa gathering a second time in this Alan’s Newsletter Post, at least not quite this soon. However,  the decisions taken, or not taken in some cases at this most recent BRICS Summit in Johannesburg South Africa was too ‘juicy’ to ignore.  As pointed out by Rajiv Bhatia of India’s Gateway House now, more than ever the diplomatic balancing act for the new and enlarged BRICS presents an even more dramatic challenge for this Leaders’ Summit:

As BRICS heads into its 18th year, [the South Africa Leaders’ Summit is the 15th] its success and way forward will depend on the members’ ability to tackle the principal challenge of retaining its internal solidarity while balancing expansion and its impact and influence in the world.

And that central point – retaining its internal solidarity while balancing expansion – is hard to foresee. There is confusion over who was chosen to add and indeed whether they have agreed to join, and what conditions; there is confusion over the choices themselves; and there is confusion over what the enlargement is likely to mean for this Leaders’ Summit.

It is evident that the enlargement has added heft to an already significant leaders’ group. As Bhatia points out:

As a grouping of five nations, BRICS represents 27% of the world’s land area, 42% of the population, 16% of international trade, 27% of global GDP in nominal terms, and 32.5% in PPP terms.

Now the group, according to, Bhaso Ndzendze in The Conversation , is:

The enlarged grouping will account for 46.5% of the world population. Using IMF GDP data, we can deduce that it will account for about 30% of global GDP.

On a PPP basis apparently, it will represent 37 percent of global GDP according to James Kynge in the FT.

So, six countries were identified as joining the BRICS come January 2024: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iran. JIm O’Neill, formerly of Goldman Sachs,  who has been tagged for creating the BRICS acronym suggested this about the enlargement:

… I have questioned the organization’s purpose, beyond serving as a symbolic gesture. Now that the BRICS has announced that it will add six more countries – Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – I pose the question again. The decision, after all, does not appear to have been decided on any clear objective, much less economic, criteria. Why, for example, was Indonesia not asked? Why Argentina and not Mexico, or Ethiopia and not Nigeria?

All good questions. Now the list, I would suggest, seems to reveal that China and Russia prevailed in the choices agreed to. Why, I suspect that is, is the BRICS enlargement includes Iran. As the NYTimes pointed out in its article on BRICS expansion:

The inclusion of Tehran — which has antagonistic relations with China’s chief rival, the United States — suggests that Chinese and Russian pressure had succeeded over the qualms of members like India, Brazil and South Africa, which maintain friendly ties with the West.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that adding Iran can only heighten the geopolitical tensions between the BRICS and others – most notably the G7, and most particularly the US with its many Iran sanctions.

Nevertheless, the hosts and commentators as quoted in the NYTimes again, tried to put the best face on it:

… South Africa, sought to put a hopeful spin on the enlargement decision in any case.

Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s representative in the BRICS negotiations, told reporters that the group needs to change with the times. “This is what BRICS is saying, let’s be more inclusive. BRICS is not anti-West,” he said.

And then of course there is the boosterism from the South Africa President, Cyril Ramaphosa as well (FP):

BRICS has embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world that is also inclusive and prosperous,

As for Indonesia, an obvious choice for the BRICS to draw closer to ASEAN and Southeast Asia more  broadly. Why was it not part of the enlargement group? It would seem that Indonesia has not yet decided whether it wants membership. It has not submitted, apparently, a letter of intent. Also, it appears, notwithstanding the announcement that the UAE, in fact, has not decided whether to accept the BRICS invitation, though I suppose in the end it will.

And then there is – Argentina.  Argentina remains mired in a dreadful economic crisis. If in the end new members will be asked to contribute capital to the most important BRICS creation, in my opinion, the New Development Bank (NDB), Argentina is far more likely to ask for support than to be able to contribute support. In the end, I suspect it was Brazil and its current president, Lula that pressed for membership to be extended to Argentina.

As just noted, the most notable significant BRICS achievement, in my opinion, has been the creation of the NDB. There  was some indication that the expanded members would all be required to contribute to the NDB.  And that still may occur.  Still, it is disappointing that not more was mentioned of the NDB by the current announcements.

There was, also, a fair bit of reporting, and loud statements prior to the conclusion of the Summit, that suggested the BRICS might well take steps to create some form of common currency, or steps at de-dollarization by the BRICS. But as was pointed out by Henry Poenisch in OMFIF:

A declaration released at the gathering in Johannesburg on 24 August made no mention of a common currency and instead focused on bilateral clearing – the second-best option. It stressed the importance of ‘encouraging the use of local currencies in international trade and financial transactions between Brics as well as between their trading partners.’

Yet, it seems to me the enhanced use of local currencies, except possibly the Chinese renminbi, is a rather questionable proposition. Using some of the local currencies available, and then holding the surplus for future use doesn’t seem a rather appealing course of action.

Finally, what most commentators failed to point to in their descriptions of the enlargement of the BRICS is that two of the six new members – Argentina and Saudi Arabia – are already members of the G20, as of course are all of the original BRICS. Rather than contemplating the consequence of the enlarged BRICS for global policy progress, it strikes me targeting the efforts, and today’s evident hardships in advancing global governance in the face of rising geopolitics by focusing attention on the G20 might well be a more fruitful avenue of inquiry if one was examining global summitry and the efforts to advance global governance. Looking again, at Jim O’Neill he turns, not reasonably, in this direction:

What the world really needs is a resurrected G20, which already includes all the same key players, plus others. It remains the best forum for addressing truly global issues such as economic growth, international trade, climate change, pandemic prevention, and so on. Though it now faces significant challenges, it still can reclaim the spirit of 2008-10, when it coordinated the international response to the global financial crisis. At some point, the US and China will have to overcome their differences and allow the G20 to return to its central position.

This was originally posted at my Substack ‘Alan’s Newsletter’ You can view there and you are free to subscribe as well.
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Image Credit: France 24

Not Simply the Pace of Summitry: In then end, it is all about the 4Cs

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I posted recently here at Alan’s Newsletter on the upcoming BRICS Summit – Puzzling over a BRICS Enlargement. And BRICS, as I described in the Post, is a ‘big deal’ in the pantheon of Leaders’ Summits. I also noted the possible ‘reignition’ of the Trilateral Summit – China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (Korea). But this is not the current extent of summit activity. There is, in fact, another Trilateral Summit that is about to gather – what I am referring to as a ‘Second Trilateral Summit’. This is the gathering at Camp David of the leaders of Japan, Korea and the United States. And since that gathering is tomorrow, Friday, I thought I’d get this Post out in anticipation of the Camp David Trilateral Summit of the three leaders.

‘Global summitry’ – the extent, importance and consequence of these leaders’ gatherings and the global governance progress achieved at these gatherings is, not surprisingly, at the heart of the Global Summitry Project (GSP). It is here in the e-journal Global Summitry, in our work with colleagues in the China-West Dialogue (CWD), and the strengthening of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and our work with students and researchers through the GSP including the articles, podcasts and videos.

Well let’s turn back, for just a moment to the upcoming  Summit. What, you say, a second trilateral summit? Well, yes, actually. The JapanTimes sets out possible goals for such a Trilateral Leaders’ gathering – the Second Trilateral Summit :

In a major step toward making trilateral cooperation a more permanent fixture, U.S.President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol will agree to hold three-way summits at least once a year, while also conducting more frequent joint military drills around the Korean Peninsula and bolstering intelligence-sharing, including real-time warning data on North Korean missile launches.

The three leaders are also expected to signal deeper cooperation in areas such as cybersecurity, supply chain resilience and fighting economic coercion.

The one-day meeting — the three leaders’ first stand alone summit not held on the sidelines of a separate event — will take place against the backdrop of North Korea’s ever-improving nuclear and missile programs as well as China’s growing military assertiveness. Both issues will be high on the agenda.

But first and foremost, the summit is expected to focus on laying the foundation for a more durable trilateral relationship that can withstand political change, namely the growing partnership between two of the most powerful democracies in Asia.

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