If there was any doubt remaining about the return of great-power politics, it has been dispelled by US President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela, threats to annex Greenland, and refusal to extend the New START treaty limiting the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia. Such geopolitical upheavals are driven by “the will to power,” as Adam Tooze has pointed out – including “power over resources, purchasing power, the ability to resist the influence of others.”
The reverberations of this trend are being felt in the architecture of global cooperation, built around the Bretton Woods institutions, under which shared rules and formal governance structures shaped countries’ behaviour. Within the “rules-based order,” at the heart of which lies the United Nations, cooperation was operationalised through regular engagement, leading to incremental gains. This system often required countries to make concessions and accommodations, but they generally were willing to do so in exchange for long-term stability and predictability.
But this institutional approach to cooperation has broken down in recent years, as institutions have proven incapable of responding effectively to states’ evolving needs. From an outdated UN Security Council structure and stalled Rio Conventions to the persistence of longstanding conflicts, evidence of the UN system’s limitations steadily accumulated, eroding trust. As gridlock became entrenched, the rules-based order increasingly appeared rigid, unjust, and ineffectual. This demands a fundamental rethink of how states engage with one another to deliver global public goods.
The Global South recognised this a long time ago, with developing-country voices like Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley often pointing out that powerful states act as if they are exempt from the rules they impose on others. Now, even G7 leaders are acknowledging this. In his much-discussed address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney conceded that the rules-based order always depended on a “pleasant fiction.” The benefits were sufficient, he admitted, that countries like his largely avoided “calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.”
Those gaps are now impossible to ignore. And institutional cooperation – and the UN system, specifically – is blighted by declining faith and effectiveness, as well as deep divisions over what actors’ roles and responsibilities should be, which values should underpin cooperation, and how cooperative efforts should be implemented.
The challenges associated with the institutional approach have driven some to embrace another form of cooperation: bilateral engagement, usually driven by narrow interests. This interest-based approach produces a complicated web of connections among states, and when guided by clear-headed diplomacy, it can foster interdependence, thereby helping to sustain a stable balance of power.
A classic example of such engagement is West Germany’s Ostpolitik, which sought to improve relations with East Germany and Eastern Bloc countries in the 1960s and 1970s by promoting dialogue and economic cooperation. Conceptualised by Egon Bahr and implemented by Willy Brandt, first as foreign minister and then as chancellor, Ostpolitik opened the way for formal agreements that established diplomatic relations, clarified borders, and facilitated trade.
A similar logic guided then-US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger’s 1971 opening to China, which set the stage for decades of economic interdependence. The same can be said for Germany’s engagement with China and Russia in the 2000s. While the dependencies this created – on Chinese trade and Russian gas – have since begun to look more like vulnerabilities, America’s unreliability as a security partner shows that risks can arise even with close allies that have traditionally operated according to shared values.
But maintaining interest-based engagement demands substantial state capacity and diplomatic heft. Moreover, it does not necessarily reflect any overarching logic, and it can lead to insecurity and uncertainty, especially if it morphs into beggar-thy-neighbour policies, which ignore political, ethical, cultural, or historical sensitivities. This approach also leaves smaller countries vulnerable to unfavourable deals with larger partners, with the more powerful side dictating the terms of engagement.
There is a third way. Under a “minilateral” approach, like-minded countries form issue-based coalitions, often outside the UN system. Often built around shared ideas, goals, and worldviews, minilateral groupings prioritise pragmatism, agility, and efficiency over broad consensus and formal legitimacy. Countries can thus circumvent the gridlock of broad-based cooperation without putting themselves at the mercy of major powers.
But multilateralism can be a double-edged sword. While groupings such as the BRICS+ emerging-market countries can act as early movers that muster momentum on critical issues and challenge the status quo, other minilateral groupings can entrench the status quo by limiting membership to preserve influence (as with the G7). More broadly, they can lead to fragmentation that hampers progress, though forums like the G20 can help to overcome this pitfall by facilitating engagement across groupings.
At a time when the institutional approach to international order is breaking down, the minilateral approach holds much promise, despite its imperfections. While the emergence of more minilateral groupings will lead to fragmentation in the short term and hasten the hollowing out of the UN system, it might also offer a means of devising new ideas and carrying out scalable interventions that tangibly improve people’s daily lives. Without interventions that deliver tangible benefits, international cooperation will remain a hard sell amidst the return of great-power politics.
Reinforcing shared norms is also vital, but it will not, on its own, save us from the great power-induced disruptions we are witnessing today. New cooperative frameworks that deliver on critical but often competing goals – such as energy justice and energy security; both climate resilience and economic diversification; both human dignity and prosperity – might be our best bet.
Saliem Fakir is Founder and Executive Director of the African Climate Foundation. Prabhat Upadhyaya is Adviser on International Cooperation and Multilateral Affairs with the African Climate Foundation.