Who Still Believes in Multilateralism?

By Indigo Atkinson, Global Voices CEO

The Young Diplomat Society approached the Global Voices team seeking a contribution to their incredible Year in Review (out now, check it out here!). Indigo wrote for their Institutions Under Pressure chapter, which is reprinted below.

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If you are lucky, at 3:30 am, when jetlag has decided it is not your turn to sleep, you will find yourself in Geneva, sitting by the window of an old hotel. Of course, there’s no air conditioning, and your roommate is asleep, so you must be very quiet, but you will feel very lucky. On a personal level, it is utterly surreal that you, some random girl from a mid-sized regional town, have spent the day listening to world leaders present competing visions for AI innovation and regulation. Up close, these leaders are very human. Some have slight rumples in their suits; one of them even had something in their teeth. Now and then, they speak with such conviction that you get a shiver down your spine. But more often than not, they’re pretty ordinary, which is refreshingly human.

I was so lucky as to be jet-lagged in Geneva, contemplating these so-called United Nations (UN). Through my work with Global Voices, I was supporting an incredible delegation of young Australians to attend the 2025 AI for Good conference. Global Voices is a youth-led, not-for-profit organisation that sends young Australians to international conferences as part of a policy fellowship. There is always a little bit of constructive delusion when running this organisation: who says a few young Aussies can’t go into the most important international decision-making fora to understand how international headwinds impact the domestic policy landscape? 

That is, it has always been surreal to be a young Australian attending, for example, the IMF Annual Meetings or the Climate COPs. For all the parochial tendencies of our island home, Team Australia shows up and gets to work throughout our international institutions. Global Voices offers a unique opportunity to see the multilateral system in action. Whether it’s shadowing the Australian negotiating team at COP or meeting the President of the World Bank, beyond policy, we have the privilege of learning up close during our bilateral meetings.

However, lately it has been surreal not because we’re learning about how our international institutions function, but because we’re witnessing them struggle to function. 

Not long after I was in Geneva, Donald Trump got stuck on an escalator at the UN General Assembly and soon after declared, “What is the purpose of the United Nations…all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter.” We might point out the tragicomic irony that, under his administration, USAID lost 83% of its $62 billion budget, thereby strangling the ability of many UN-affiliated programs to fulfil their purposes. However, it isn’t just Trump who disdains the UN. Many of his ideological opponents also think the UN, for all its bright ideas, is at its best impotent and, at its worst, an arena for global hegemons to advance their national interests at the expense of smaller nations. For example, the use of the Security Council's veto power has long been contentious. In 2005, Costa Rica, Jordan, Liechtenstein, Singapore and Switzerland (collectively known as the Small 5) advocated that permanent members refrain from exercising their veto power, especially in cases of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of noise right now that extends beyond the historical calls for a more just system. Geopolitical tensions are multiplying, and efforts to reach an agreement, even on the highest priorities, are collapsing. After decades of relative peace and prosperity, it is very difficult to give a cogent argument in response to the pressing question: why should we still believe in multilateralism?

The case for multilateralism often begins by highlighting the mutual benefits of nations engaging with one another. Of course, it is difficult. But without cooperation, all parties would be worse off. In 1865, in one of the earliest acts of multilateral cooperation, 20 nations gathered to discuss how to make the booming international telegraphy industry more efficient. Just before the conference, several of the signatories were at war, but all still signed the treaty. They built on the mutual desire to make telecommunications cheaper and more efficient and walked away with the first instance of harmonised regulations, tariffs, and technology. They began the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which exists to this day.

Some things are simply done better in concert. 

International collective action becomes particularly difficult when negotiating the maintenance and provision of a public good, such as global peace. A similar spirit of hope and cooperation might animate multilateral institutions’ efforts to work toward global peace, but where mutual benefit is less clearly defined, progress is slow.

Perhaps the most famous example of multilateralism, the United Nations, began its true development with the Declaration of St James’s Palace in 1941. To quote: 

‘The only true basis of enduring peace is the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security … We intend to work together, and with other free peoples, both in war and peace, to this end.’

Despite that, when this was written, the allies saw no easy path to victory, and the enormity of the Second World War’s horrors had not yet become known. A persuasive argument for multilateralism is currently taking shape: multilateralism may be imperfect and difficult, but it is better than the alternative. In a world ordered by the pursuit of narrow-minded national interest and the logic of domination, all of us are made worse off. Most existentially, it only takes one leader of one nation to drop nuclear weapons that will end, or radically redefine, the course of humanity. Working in concert through multilateral institutions is hard; however, the alternative is far worse. Particularly for middle-sized powers like Australia, international institutions help to guarantee our peace and prosperity. 

Cooperation in the international arena is difficult but existentially important. In that case, young Australians are given every opportunity, including through programs like Global Voices, to practise cooperation and learn the institutional language necessary to navigate international relations. We must cultivate the ability to disagree agreeably and maintain channels of dialogue as a matter of existential importance.

Beyond the “no better alternative” argument, the history of the ITU contains a positive vision for international cooperation. In cooperating, we collectively construct something new. Before 1865, there was no standard for telecommunications. The present global flow of information has been built on 20 countries coming together in peace and in war to create a more efficient economic system. When nations come together and agree to something as important as the Millennium Development Goals, we create a new world in which hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of poverty. When nations come together and agree to limit warming to 1.5 degrees below pre-industrial averages at the Paris Climate COP, we limit the projected temperature increases from 3.5 degrees to 2.5 degrees by the end of the century. Of course, poverty still exists, and the consequences of climate change are increasingly existential. On all of our most pressing collective action projects, our multilateral institutions have not created a perfect world, and there is much more work to be done.   

Arendt offers a parable in her 1960 essay “Action and the ‘Pursuit of Happiness’” in which an inveterate gambler is warned not to play a crooked wheel and replies, “but there is no other wheel in town.” Like the gambler in her parable, all of us were born into a web of relationality. The wheel is crooked. We did not ask to enter a world of unfair systems and faltering international institutions. But there is no other wheel in town. The rise of populism is, in many ways, an angry response to the injustice and perceived failings of our institutions. But in remembering that it is through cooperation that we can create something new, we can commit to reforming what comes next for multilateralism. We are going to play with the crooked wheel regardless; why not focus on strengthening our institutions rather than tearing them down? 

The curiosity about how Australia fits into the international order and the commitment to becoming leaders that rise to the moment are genuinely humbling. It is the voices of young people that give me hope that the future leaders flowing through our multinational system are up to the task of stewarding the one planet we all must share. This is the hope I turn to when it is late at night in Geneva, when I am jetlagged and sitting quietly by the window, reflecting on the state of the United Nations.