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View all search resultsThe un-ordered UN order
With the UN about to choose a new secretary-general and United States President Donald Trump’s administration openly hostile to multilateralism, it is unclear how much longer the system can stagger on.
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Delegates walk out as Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, on Sept. 24, 2026. (Reuters/Jeenah Moon)
A
s world leaders descend on New York City, the United States, for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, the international order they have ostensibly come to defend is in worse shape than at any point since 1945. China and Russia never fully accepted the post-Cold War international system, many newly assertive middle powers resent it, and its principal financial backer, the American public, has lost interest in underwriting it. With the UN about to choose a new secretary-general and United States President Donald Trump’s administration openly hostile to multilateralism, it is unclear how much longer the system can stagger on.
Sadly, no new order is in the making. This is not an interregnum between an American-led order and a Chinese-led one. We have long lived with instances of disorder, with states breaking the rules within a framework that they still recognize, but we are now approaching something new. I call it un-order: a situation in which states act without reference to any common framework.
One can already see this new dispensation in how crises unfold. After the US and Israel launched their war against Iran in February, the parties could not even agree whether a ceasefire existed, let alone who had won. Moreover, disputes regularly jump from one domain to another, such as when Trump’s designs on Greenland led to tariff threats against the European Union. Everywhere one looks, the ties that once bound the world together are being turned into weapons. Over half of globally traded staple crops pass through at least one maritime chokepoint, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (and now the Bab al-Mandeb) has shown what happens when they are used for leverage.
Europeans have responded to all this as architects would, drawing up blueprints, defending universal norms and trying their best to keep the old institutions standing. Others are behaving more like artisans, improvising, repurposing what still works and adapting quickly to the loss of what doesn’t. China has built up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and an expanded BRICS, joined the Arctic Council as an observer, and written its surveillance-friendly preferences into internet standards at the International Telecommunication Union. Europeans could do well to learn a thing or two from this approach.
Yet even in a world of un-order, it would be a mistake to think that multilateralism itself is dying. Instead, it is migrating and being transformed. Our research at the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that middle powers are building creative new forms of cooperation everywhere.
For example, Barbados’ Bridgetown Initiative is reshaping the debate on climate and development finance; the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and Lobito Corridor are using infrastructure instead of treaties to bind countries together; and Qatar, Oman and Turkey have become the go-to mediators in conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine. In other words, today’s middle powers are doing what the UN was built to do, but in a more improvised, ad hoc fashion.
For Europeans, this is an uncomfortable moment. As architects, they have the furthest to go to catch up with the times. But with the right strategy, they also have much to gain. After all, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently visited Strasbourg to seek an “alliance for the future” because he understands that the EU can serve as an anchor for the West.
