The weakening of multilateralism fuels global instability, power politics

2026-02-02 - 10:25

Contemporary global instability stems less from the sheer number of crises than from the steady unraveling of the multilateral regimes designed to manage them. As major powers—notably the United States—increasingly operate through parallel, ad‐hoc arrangements outside established international frameworks, rivalry becomes more entrenched, coercion gains ground over rule‐based restraint, and conflicts grow harder to de‐escalate. The Retreat from Rules‐Based Order