Abstract
This paper examines the accelerating fragmentation of the post-World War II liberal international order, arguing that its rupture was paradoxically catalyzed by its greatest perceived triumph: the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on recent developments through December 2025, including the expansion of BRICS+, intensifying debates over perceived double standards in international law application, and growing calls for UN Security Council reform, this analysis demonstrates how the removal of ideological competition unleashed forces that undermined the very foundations of multilateral cooperation. The paper proposes that the path forward lies not in restoring unipolarity but in embracing a pragmatic, pluralistic meta-regime framework increasingly embodied by non-Western coalitions. Recent evidence from the 2025 BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro and ongoing UN reform negotiations illuminates both the challenges and opportunities for reconstructing global governance on more equitable foundations.
I. Introduction: The Erosion of the Liberal International Order
The global order established in the aftermath of the Second World War—commonly referred to as the Liberal International Order (LIO)—rested on several interlocking pillars: multilateral governance, collective security through U.S.-anchored alliances, the institutionalization of free trade, and a normative project centered on the diffusion of democracy and human rights. This framework was not merely a constellation of institutions; it represented a profoundly asymmetrical hierarchy, stabilized for nearly half a century by the bipolar structure of the Cold War and the perceived legitimacy of U.S. leadership within the Western bloc. NATO, the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, and the broader web of Western-aligned regimes formed the architecture through which global political and economic life became organized, regulated, and, for many states, constrained.
This paper advances the argument that the rupture of this post-war order was not the product of slow structural decay alone but was ironically precipitated and fundamentally reshaped by its greatest symbolic victory: the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. The long-celebrated “end” of the Cold War did not consolidate the stability of liberal hegemony; instead, it produced an unbalanced strategic environment marked by the erosion of constraints, the intensification of neoliberal globalization, and the re-emergence of revisionist and post-colonial grievances. The central thesis proposed here is that the Soviet Union—despite its ideological rigidity, inefficient command economy, and repressive political machinery—performed a paradoxically stabilizing function by acting as a systemic counterweight. It compelled the Western bloc to sustain a competitive commitment to social welfare, economic fairness, and ideological pluralism both domestically and internationally. In the absence of this counterbalance, the contradictions inherent in liberal hegemony were laid bare.
The erosion of the LIO is therefore not merely the result of geopolitical shifts but also of a deeper crisis of legitimacy. As former Macedonian Foreign Minister and UN General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim observed during the 2024 Doha Forum, “We are facing a far more fundamental question than how to improve global governance: whether we still believe in the very idea of shared governance at all.” His warning reflects a concern voiced by numerous diplomats and scholars: the crisis is no longer merely institutional but philosophical, rooted in a growing disillusionment with the modernist promise of universal liberalism.
By December 2025, a consensus had emerged in much of the academic and policy literature that the LIO is not merely weakening—it is disintegrating into a fragmented, pluralistic, and increasingly antagonistic system of competing political-economic models. This essay explores why, tracing the decline to three mutually reinforcing processes: the paradoxical consequences of the West’s Cold War victory, the internal contradictions of globalization and neoliberalism, and the resurgence of geopolitics expressed through military, economic, and informational contestation.
II. Why the Post-War Global Order Ruptured: An Accelerated Fragmentation
Contemporary scholarship emphasizes that the rupture of the post-war order did not occur gradually; rather, the end of bipolarity accelerated processes of fragmentation that might otherwise have unfolded over decades. The sudden collapse of the Soviet state removed not only a rival but also a structural linchpin that had anchored global politics within an orderly duality.
II.i. The Paradox of Victory: The End of the Soviet Counterbalance
The triumphal narrative of the early 1990s—most famously articulated by Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis—claimed that liberal democracy and market capitalism had achieved a decisive, civilizational victory. Yet the evidence of the subsequent decades reveals that this victory unleashed destabilizing forces.
1. Removal of the Ideological Imperative
Throughout the Cold War, the ideological competition with the USSR incentivized Western governments to demonstrate their superiority not only through economic efficiency but through egalitarian outcomes. Welfare-state expansion, progressive taxation, public investment in education and healthcare, and commitments to decolonization were partially strategic, designed to contest Communist influence in the developing world. The Non-Aligned Movement, in particular, became an arena in which both blocs competed to present themselves as champions of justice and anti-imperialism.
With the Soviet collapse, this ideological imperative evaporated. Neoliberal globalization became the unchallenged orthodoxy of the 1990s and 2000s, prioritizing deregulation, privatization, and global value chains. These policies enriched global capital and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in the Global South, but they devastated working-class communities in the West, accelerating deindustrialization and producing sharp intra-state inequalities. By the mid-2020s, this inequality was directly correlated with declining trust in democratic institutions, as documented in OECD and Edelman Trust Barometer surveys. The LIO thus suffered a crisis of domestic legitimacy within its own core states.
2. The Rise of Unipolar Hubris
The so-called “unipolar moment” saw American foreign policy shift toward coercive regime change, preventive war, and expansive military interventions justified under the banner of liberal internationalism. From Kosovo (1999) to Iraq (2003) to Libya (2011), the pattern was always the same: Washington’s discretionary use of force exposed the reality that the rules of the LIO were not binding on the hegemon. Scholars such as John Ikenberry, Stephen Walt, and Maha Aziz have documented how these interventions undermined the legitimacy of the order by reinforcing the perception that “rules-based” meant “U.S.-adjudicated.”
3. From Competitive Mobilization to Complacent Globalization
The post-Cold War period saw elites across Western democracies embrace the illusion that ideological competition no longer existed, leading to a focus on rapid economic integration at the expense of social resilience, strategic autonomy, and political cohesion. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2022, and the inflationary shocks of 2023–2024 revealed the brittleness of this model, creating a political opening for nationalist populist movements. By 2025, these movements had become institutionalized across the United States, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and parts of Central Europe, reshaping electoral politics and weakening consensus on multilateral governance.
II.ii. Internal Contradictions and Western Fatigue
The LIO also fractured from within due to long-ignored structural contradictions.
1. Inequality, Class Cleavages, and the Populist Rebellion
Over three decades of global integration produced vast cross-border efficiencies but highly uneven domestic effects. The “China shock,” automation, and offshoring created concentrated losses among Western workers. Research by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson, extended into 2025 with updated datasets, reveals persistent labour-market scarring and declining social mobility in affected regions. This economic reality fueled populist movements that sought to “re-nationalize” political and economic sovereignty.
The political consequences have been profound: the erosion of the center-left and center-right, the rise of anti-elite rhetoric, and the mainstreaming of policies once considered fringe—such as industrial protectionism, nativism, and Euroscepticism. Data from 2025 shows that trust in political institutions in the U.S., U.K., and France has declined by an average of 18–21 percent since 2021, reflecting a broader crisis of authority.
2. A Crisis of Legitimacy in a Post-Western World
The LIO was structurally Western-led, not globally consensual. Its institutions were created at a time when Western states accounted for the majority of global GDP and wielded decisive military and diplomatic influence. By 2025, however, the combined GDP of BRICS+—expanded in 2024 to include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE—surpassed that of the G7 in PPP terms. This shift has emboldened states of the Global South to demand greater representation and equality within global governance frameworks.
As Singaporean Ambassador Lawrence Ang Anderson remarked in 2024, the multilateral system was “optimized for efficiency in a different era” and has failed to evolve meaningfully — a sentiment echoed across multiple assessments of global governance. By late 2025, the WTO dispute settlement mechanism remained partially paralyzed, climate governance had splintered into minilateral blocs, and major powers increasingly bypassed the UN Security Council in favor of ad hoc coalitions or unilateral action.
II.iii. The Return of Geopolitics and Multipolarity
The assumption that economic interdependence would neutralize geopolitical rivalry has proven unfounded.
1. Revisionist Powers Reshaping the System
China’s assertive foreign policy—from the Belt and Road Initiative to its militarization of the South China Sea and its 2024 Digital Yuan settlement networks—reflects the emergence of an alternative model of global leadership. Meanwhile, Russia’s militarization of its economy, its continued campaign against Ukraine, and its deepening partnership with Iran and North Korea signal a coherent, if coercive, revisionist strategy.
These states do not seek to reform the existing order; they seek to replace it with pluralistic spheres of influence governed by transactional diplomacy, civilizational narratives, and regime-security priorities.
2. The Weaponization of Interdependence
The financial sanctions on Russia (2022–2025), U.S. export controls on China’s semiconductor capabilities (expanded again in 2024 and 2025), and competing “de-risking” policies have transformed interdependence from a force of integration into a tool of coercion.
A broad scholarly consensus now recognizes that the information sphere has become one of the primary frontlines of geopolitical competition. Researchers such as Alina Polyakova, Thomas Rid, and Peter Pomerantsev have documented how states deploy coordinated influence campaigns, algorithmic manipulation, digital subversion, and identity-based polarization strategies to undermine the social cohesion of their competitors. These techniques, once considered auxiliary tools, have become integral elements of contemporary statecraft, eroding trust in institutions, deepening political fragmentation, and accelerating the destabilization of the Liberal International Order. In this emerging landscape, the crisis of informational legitimacy has become inseparable from the broader crisis of global governance..
II.iv. The Double Standards Crisis: Gaza and Ukraine as Catalysts of Delegitimation
No issue has more dramatically undermined Western credibility than the perception of inconsistent application of international law in Ukraine and Gaza.
1. Differential Treatment and Its Global Consequences
While Russia has been subjected to unprecedented sanctions and diplomatic isolation, Israel has continued to receive robust U.S. military and political support during its Gaza campaign—even after civilian casualties exceeded 58,000 by mid-2025, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The U.S. Congress approved a $20 billion arms package for Israel in August 2024, reinforcing perceptions of selective enforcement of humanitarian principles.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar captured this sentiment succinctly in 2025: “Double standards are clearly evident.”
2. Institutional Paralysis and Selective Enforcement
UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passed with overwhelming Western support. Yet equivalent resolutions calling for ceasefires or accountability in Gaza faced repeated U.S. vetoes. The asymmetry did not go unnoticed.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto declared at the 2025 UNGA that the UN had become “a modern-day Noah’s Ark whose foundation has been eroded by double standards.”
3. The Erosion of the “Rules-Based Order”
For many in the Global South, these inconsistencies confirmed a long-standing suspicion that international law functions as an instrument of Western geopolitics rather than a universal framework. This perception has accelerated the shift toward alternative
III. How a New Order Can Be Established: Pathways to Re-ordering
The present global moment is defined by structural ambiguity, institutional decomposition, and the absence of consensus among major powers about the norms, purposes, and instruments that should govern international life. What Srgjan Kerim aptly called a “limbo situation in which anything is possible” captures a deeper, systemic truth: the world is transitioning not from one order to another, but from a collapsed order to a multiplicity of partially formed prototypes. In this interregnum, the task is not to restore a lost liberal order but to conceptualize and construct new frameworks capable of managing a diversified, conflict-prone international system marked by contrasting political models, unequal power trajectories, and competing narratives of legitimacy.
Contemporary academic literature increasingly argues that the opportunity lies not in reviving a universal liberal system—now politically untenable—but in designing a pluralistic, multi-layered architecture capable of integrating heterogeneity, managing conflict, and fostering cooperation on shared existential risks. The following subsections examine promising pathways toward such a reconstruction, grounded in real developments from 2024–2025 and framed by emerging theoretical debates about meta-governance, regionalism, and the recalibration of sovereignty.
III.i. The Emerging Proposal for a “Meta-Regime” and the Rise of BRICS+
Beyond Liberal Universalism: The Logic of a Meta-Regime
A growing body of scholarship—including the work of Dani Rodrik, Stephen Walt, Acharya, Stuenkel, and Laïdi—posits that the future of global governance cannot be rooted in universal normative convergence. Instead, an overarching but minimal “meta-regime” is needed: a flexible framework that sets only the baseline rules necessary to prevent catastrophic spillovers while allowing states significant autonomy in domestic systems and regional alignments.
This model accepts that ideological pluralism is not a transitional phase but a permanent characteristic of the 21st-century system. Its goal is not homogenization, but coordination—preventing international action in climate, finance, digital security, and conflict mediation from collapsing into complete entropy.
Crucially, the most significant real-world laboratory for this pluralist meta-regime is the BRICS+ bloc, whose rapid expansion between 2024 and 2025 makes it the foremost political, economic, and institutional challenger to the U.S.-led order.
BRICS+ as a Structural Engine of Pluralism: Expansion and Reorientation, 2024–2025
Between January 2024 and July 2025, BRICS underwent the largest transformation in its history. What was once a loose consultative mechanism has evolved into a geopolitical bloc representing:
45% of global population
37–41% of global GDP (PPP)
Over 70% of the world’s critical mineral reserves and processing capacity
By December 2025, BRICS comprises eleven full members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. The accession of Indonesia (January 2025) and Saudi Arabia (July 2025) symbolized both geographic diversification and an unprecedented convergence among major emerging powers that traditionally operated in competing regional frameworks (ASEAN, GCC, African Union).
This expansion fundamentally alters the geometry of global governance. As Maria Zakharova stated in October 2025, the coalition is no longer “a counter-order” but a mechanism for articulating “the principles of the Global Majority”—a narrative now firmly embedded in the diplomatic lexicon from Delhi to Pretoria to Brasília.
The creation of a large, non-Western institutional core challenges the LIO not by replacing it, but by demonstrating an alternative model of global coordination grounded in sovereignty, non-interference, flexible integration, and institutional pragmatism—the exact characteristics of a meta-regime.
Counter-Institutionalization: BRICS+ in Global Finance
The financial dimension remains the most developed operational arm of BRICS+. Two institutions are reshaping the terrain:
The New Development Bank (NDB):
• Over $32 billion financed across 96 projects since 2016
• Local-currency lending expanded sharply in 2024–2025
• New members: Bangladesh, Algeria; prospective: Uruguay; Colombia initiated accession in 2025Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA):
• A formal alternative to IMF emergency liquidity provision
• Increasingly attractive after the widespread sanctions on Russia and Iran
Complementary initiatives—BRICS Pay, the BRICS Bridge cross-border payment platform, and experimental digital currency interoperability projects—aim to reduce systemic exposure to the U.S. dollar. While the dollar’s dominance endures, the political imperative is unmistakable. In January 2025, Ayatollah Khamenei declared de-dollarization an economic necessity, a sentiment echoed by India and Brazil in different registers.
Internal Contradictions, Geopolitical Complexity, and the Limits of Cohesion
BRICS+ is not monolithic. It contains rivalries (India–China), divergent economic models (Gulf monarchies vs. socialist economies), and varying foreign-policy alignments. The 2025 Rio Summit, marked by the absence of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, highlighted both the difficulties of hegemonic coordination and the bloc’s decentralized, adaptive nature—one that mirrors the theorized meta-regime rather than a strict alliance.
Brazil’s presidency emphasized food security and green industrialization, countering pressures to harden the bloc into an explicitly anti-Western coalition. India continues to resist China's push for expansive institutionalization, fearing geopolitical encirclement. These tensions, rather than weakening the bloc, reinforce its pluralist DNA: minimal commonality, maximal accommodation.
BRICS+ and the Architecture of a Meta-Regime
The practical agenda of BRICS+ aligns closely with meta-regime principles:
Respect for heterogeneity in political and economic systems
Focus on sovereignty and non-interference
Selective, issue-specific cooperation, not universal integration
Pragmatic coordination on finance, trade, technology, and climate
Minimal normative demands beyond stability, autonomy, and development
This institutional ethos—partly intentional, partly emergent—embodies the first coherent post-liberal model of global governance since the end of the Cold War.
III.ii. Prioritizing Domestic Policy and the Provision of Global Common Goods
One of the core lessons of the post-1991 world is that global governance is only as stable as the domestic foundations of the states that constitute it. Hyper-globalization weakened those foundations by constraining national policy autonomy, fueling inequality, and generating political backlash that undermined support for liberal institutions. A sustainable order must therefore reverse the logic: domestic resilience first, global cooperation second.
Rebalancing Domestic Priorities: A Return to Bretton Woods Logic
The post-war architects of the Bretton Woods system assumed that democracies could only sustain cooperative internationalism if governments retained the capacity to deliver social stability, full employment, and distributive justice. The collapse of this principle in the 1980s–2000s—when domestic welfare considerations were subordinated to market liberalization—generated the political discontent now manifest in populism and polarization across the OECD.
Scholars argue that any new order must restore domestic prioritization:
Industrial policy
Social protection systems
Technological security
Climate adaptation
Resilient supply chains
This shift is already visible in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, EU strategic autonomy initiatives, Indian industrial nationalism, and China's Common Prosperity framework. Though divergent in ideology, these strategies converge on a principle: domestic strength precedes global engagement.
Revitalizing Cooperation on Global Commons
Amid geopolitical fragmentation, cooperation survives most robustly in areas where incentives converge:
Climate change
Pandemic preparedness
Financial stability
Cybersecurity and AI safety
Maritime governance
In 2025, modest breakthroughs illustrate this residual capacity:
The World Health Assembly adopted the first pandemic preparedness agreement since COVID-19.
The IMO established binding greenhouse gas reduction targets.
New BRICS+ working groups on AI governance and digital infrastructure reflect growing concern over technological sovereignty.
Yet these achievements occur against a backdrop of institutional fragility. The UN’s liquidity crisis—crippling humanitarian operations by up to 40 percent—reveals the erosion of global solidarities and the narrowing fiscal space for collective action.
BRICS+ and the Global Commons
While often framed as an alternative to Western institutions, BRICS+ is also attempting to shape global common goods:
Promoting green industrialization
Demanding climate finance reform
Expanding technology transfer initiatives
Coordinating South-South cooperation on AI, health, and digital regulation
China’s push for high-tech sovereignty, combined with the Gulf states’ investments in clean energy and Africa’s need for climate adaptation, has created an unusual functional coalition—though internal contradictions remain, especially for hydrocarbon exporters like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
III.iii. Reaffirming Pluralism and Sovereign Equality
The central paradox of contemporary geopolitics is that states demand sovereignty but remain unwilling to accept its reciprocal implications. For pluralism to serve as a stabilizing principle rather than a justification for impunity, sovereign equality must be paired with a minimal, enforceable set of rules that protect states from existential harm.
China’s “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” and its Global Security, Development, and Civilization Initiatives attempt to formalize an explicitly pluralistic vision, one that rejects liberal universalism but emphasizes coexistence and mutual non-interference. For many states in the Global South, this approach is more aligned with their historical experiences than Western doctrines of democracy promotion.
But as Daniela Schwarzer observes, pluralism generates severe normative tension: how can the system uphold minimal humanitarian standards when norms vary so sharply across regions? This question lies at the heart of debates about Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Nagorno-Karabakh—conflicts in which sovereignty and humanitarian obligations clash sharply.
The future order must therefore negotiate a delicate balance: pluralistic coexistence without abandoning the basic protections necessary for human and state security.
III.iv. UN Security Council Reform: The 80th Anniversary Imperative
A Crisis of Representation and Legitimacy
By 2025, even traditionally cautious actors—including Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa—openly argue that the UN Security Council (UNSC) no longer performs its core function: maintaining international peace and security. The Council’s paralysis over Gaza, Ukraine, and multiple African conflicts has intensified calls for structural reform.
The 80th anniversary of the UN has accelerated momentum, producing the most serious reform discussions since the 1963 Council enlargement.
Competing Proposals and Emerging Convergences
The landscape features two major reform blocs:
The G4 Proposal (April 2025):
• Expand the Council to 25–26 seats
• Six new permanent seats: 2 Africa, 2 Asia-Pacific, 1 Latin America, 1 Western Europe
• Delayed veto rights for new permanent membersUniting for Consensus (UfC) Group (2024–2025):
• Opposes new permanent seats
• Prefers long-term rotating representation
• Emphasizes transparency, veto limitation, and regional proportionality
The Pact for the Future (2024) established a procedural breakthrough: explicit commitments to negotiate concretely defined models rather than repeating general statements of principle.
Africa remains the most unified bloc, insisting that the continent’s historical marginalization—despite being the subject of two-thirds of UNSC deliberations—must be redressed through at least two permanent seats.
Institutional and Procedural Obstacles
Reform requires:
Two-thirds General Assembly majority
Unanimous P5 ratification under Article 108
This dual threshold makes enlargement possible but veto reform nearly impossible. Former UN leaders therefore advocate a phased pathway:
By 2030: Expand Council membership and adopt transitional representation formulas.
By 2045: Convene a General Conference under Article 109 for comprehensive Charter revision.
This pragmatic approach recognizes political realities while preserving the possibility of structural modernization.
III.v. Rebuilding Trust Through Institutional Accountability
Trust has become the scarcest commodity in the international system. As Marisa Kulma emphasized, the crisis is not merely organizational but relational: institutions lose legitimacy when great powers treat them as instruments of convenience rather than authoritative arbiters. Scholars of international institutions, including Kenneth W. Abbott, Lisa Martin, and Daniel Drezner, have similarly documented how declining trust undermines compliance, coordination, and the enforcement of global norms. When major powers prioritize strategic competition over cooperative governance, the resulting legitimacy gap cascades through the system, weakening the capacity of institutions—from the UN to multilateral financial bodies—to manage crises ranging from climate change and pandemics to conflict prevention. Rebuilding institutional trust, therefore, requires not only structural reform but also consistent behaviors by leading states that reinforce predictability, reciprocity, and respect for established norms.
The Information Domain as a Governance Fault Line
The erosion of institutional legitimacy is increasingly intertwined with the degradation of the information sphere. Scholars including P.W. Singer, Alina Polyakova, and Evgeny Morozov have emphasized that the manipulation of discourse—through anonymous online ecosystems, algorithmically amplified political content, and coordinated foreign influence operations—undermines the social infrastructure necessary for collective cooperation and effective governance. These dynamics exacerbate polarization, erode public trust, and create cascading vulnerabilities across both domestic and international institutions. Consequently, regulation of digital platforms, transparency in political advertising, and the restoration of deliberative, face-to-face civic spaces are emerging as essential pillars of broader governance reform, representing a crucial frontier for the stabilization of the Liberal International Order.
Regional Integration as the “New Multilateralism”
Functional progress in global governance increasingly relies on mid-sized powers and regional coalitions, particularly given the persistent paralysis of universal institutions. Scholars such as Daniela Schwarzer, Amitav Acharya, and Edward D. Mansfield emphasize that regional organizations—ranging from the EU, AU, ASEAN, GCC, MERCOSUR, to the revived Andean Community—can serve as incubators for effective cooperation, crisis management, and norm-setting. With approximately 80% of international trade occurring outside the United States, these actors possess significant economic leverage to drive specialized, issue-specific cooperation even amid great-power rivalry. This “new multilateralism,” rooted in regional integration and plurilateral coordination, offers a pragmatic pathway to mitigate systemic fragmentation while maintaining space for sovereignty and value pluralism.
The Societal Foundation: Civil Society and Generational Demands
Civil society and generational mobilization constitute a critical yet often underappreciated foundation for sustaining global norms. Scholars and analysts including Marisa Kulma, Sidney Tarrow, and Peter Uvin have emphasized that youth-led movements—ranging from climate activism and anti-corruption protests to pro-Palestinian solidarity and democratic reform campaigns—demonstrate that the normative aspirations encoded in the UN Charter retain considerable legitimacy, even amid institutional faltering. This generational demand for transparency, accountability, and adherence to universal principles represents a potent source of social energy that can drive institutional renewal. By channeling civic engagement into constructive reform, younger generations may help bridge the legitimacy gap and reinforce the capacity of international institutions to respond effectively to global challenges.
IV. The Path Forward: From Fracture to Functionality
Evidence from late 2024 through December 2025 suggests that the international system has entered a precarious phase in which conflict increasingly reflects deliberate political choice rather than accidental miscalculation. As Ambassador Lawrence Ang Anderson noted, “wars do not happen by accident. They happen when one or both sides want it.” This insight aligns with the broader literature on rationalist explanations of war, including work by James Fearon and Robert Jervis, which underscores how incentives, signaling, and perceived credibility shape the onset of conflict.
The U.S.–China relationship remains a partial exception, where heightened friction has not escalated into open confrontation. The Busan meeting between Presidents Xi and Trump—and expectations of three further meetings in 2026—has generated what Dr. Henry Wang described as “cautious optimism of a shift from strategic rivalry to strategic stability.” Scholars such as Michael Mastanduno and Elizabeth Economy similarly emphasize that sustained diplomacy, mutual recognition of red lines, and institutionalized crisis management mechanisms can stabilize competition even amid structural rivalries.
This momentary stabilization, however fragile, demonstrates that agency, strategic architecture, and political will continue to shape outcomes. It highlights that even in a fragmented, multipolar system, deliberate engagement and careful calibration of power can prevent escalation, reinforcing the argument that the post-war international order, while fractured, retains spaces for pragmatic management of global risk..
IV.i. The Imperative of Strategic Pragmatism
One of the often-overlooked developments of the past decade is the growing recognition among small and medium-sized states that they retain meaningful agency—especially when acting collectively. Ambassador Anderson emphasized, “working with like-minded major powers in UN institutions such as the General Assembly and using powerful social media tools, we can help shape narratives to win over champions in both camps.” This observation aligns with a broader body of literature on small-state diplomacy, including the work of scholars such as Robert Keohane, Lisa Martin, and Daniel F. Runde, who underscore that strategic coalition-building and networked influence can amplify otherwise limited capacities.
Singapore’s approach exemplifies this logic: states that are absent from negotiations risk becoming passive recipients of externally imposed rules. For ASEAN and other regional organizations, this translates into sophisticated dual-engagement strategies—balancing relationships with both Washington and Beijing while leveraging “miniaterals” and “plurilaterals” to safeguard supply chains, energy access, and regulatory alignment. Scholars like David Baldwin and Randall Schweller have highlighted such flexible, multi-level diplomacy as critical for small and medium powers navigating asymmetric global hierarchies.
When executed carefully, this multitiered diplomacy becomes a scaffolding for a reformed multilateral order: pluralistic, flexible, and less susceptible to obstruction by great powers. It illustrates that agency in the contemporary system is not merely a function of material capability but of strategic foresight, collaborative leverage, and the ability to shape norms and narratives across multiple platforms—a core principle for sustaining global governance amid growing multipolarity.
IV.ii. Confronting the Double Standards Paradox
The contemporary credibility crisis of the multilateral system is closely tied to what many states perceive as intolerable double standards, most conspicuously illustrated by the divergent responses to the crises in Gaza and Ukraine. As Ambassador Anderson observed, these inconsistencies are not merely the result of episodic power politics; they reflect deeper structural weaknesses embedded in a system historically shaped by alliance commitments, great-power hierarchies, and selective enforcement of international norms. Scholars such as Ian Hurd and Thomas Weiss have argued that when the principles of legality and impartiality are subordinated to political expediency, institutional legitimacy erodes, undermining both compliance and moral authority.
Yet, even amid such polarization, functional diplomacy continues. The International Crisis Group notes that many member states “seem not to want [these divisions] to obstruct all other diplomacy.” This reflects a pragmatic calculus: while moral frustration and normative criticism persist, the immediate costs of disengagement—ranging from economic disruption to security instability—compel continued participation. This duality mirrors the insights of scholars like Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin, who emphasize that multilateral institutions often survive not through ideal adherence to norms but through enforced interdependence, where actors pursue cooperation despite misgivings to mitigate mutual vulnerabilities.
The paradox thus underscores a defining feature of the emerging order: institutional legitimacy may be deeply contested, yet operational functionality endures because the structural imperatives of collective action—on climate finance, technology governance, health security, and pandemic preparedness—remain pressing. In effect, this creates a form of pragmatic multilateralism, wherein the capacity to negotiate, compromise, and maintain partial consensus becomes as vital as formal legal authority. Understanding this tension between normative legitimacy and practical necessity is central to assessing both the resilience and fragility of global governance in the post-unipolar, multipolar era.
IV.iii. Institutional Innovation Within Constraints
The geopolitical reality of 2025 underscores the political impossibility of comprehensive UN reform in the near term. Achieving universal consensus among deeply divided major powers remains unattainable, making bounded institutional innovation a pragmatic pathway. This approach emphasizes smaller, more agile platforms capable of delivering tangible outcomes, testing governance models, and generating incremental legitimacy. As Professor Daniela Schwarzer has noted, forums such as the G20—despite lacking universal legitimacy—serve as experimental spaces where states with divergent interests and perspectives can coordinate on shared challenges, from pandemic preparedness to climate finance. These venues enable flexible governance experimentation, often producing actionable solutions that larger, slower-moving institutions cannot.
Beyond traditional Western-dominated platforms, alternative multilateral architectures are maturing, reflecting a conscious shift toward pluralistic and functional cooperation. The New Development Bank (NDB) exemplifies this dynamic. Its expansion beyond core BRICS membership—to include Bangladesh, Algeria, and prospective member Uruguay—demonstrates how multilateral initiatives can evolve inclusively, fostering cooperation without requiring unanimous consent from major powers or ideological homogeneity. Scholars such as Amrita Narlikar and Edward Luck have highlighted that such initiatives represent a form of pragmatic counter-institutionalization, addressing gaps left by stalled global institutions while providing developing and middle powers with operational leverage.
Victoria Panova of the BRICS Expert Council emphasizes that the objective of these platforms is not to replicate the UN General Assembly or pursue expansion for its own sake. Rather, the goal is constructive functionalism: to build a fairer, more representative global order through practical cooperation, risk-sharing, and joint problem-solving. By focusing on results-oriented collaboration rather than ideological alignment, these institutions illustrate that institutional legitimacy can emerge incrementally, grounded in performance, inclusivity, and the capacity to manage shared risks—offering a pragmatic template for the emerging pluralistic meta-regime.
IV.iv. Technology Governance as a Testing Ground
Artificial intelligence (AI) and other frontier technologies are redefining the landscape of global risk and opportunity, presenting challenges that traditional governance frameworks are ill-equipped to address. Unlike conventional security threats, AI is inherently transboundary: an algorithm developed in one country can rapidly influence economies, political systems, and military balances worldwide. Professor Schwarzer has emphasized that managing such threats requires states to “set aside, even temporarily, our power-based view of things” and engage in collaborative risk mitigation. This represents a paradigmatic shift in international relations: governance is no longer solely about coercion or deterrence but increasingly about anticipatory coordination, shared standards, and the management of systemic vulnerabilities.
The trajectory of AI governance closely mirrors the historical experience of nuclear arms control. During the Cold War, the existential stakes of nuclear weapons created incentives for adversaries to negotiate limits and verification mechanisms despite deep strategic mistrust. Similarly, AI’s diffusion—ranging from autonomous weapons to advanced decision-making systems embedded in civilian infrastructure—poses risks whose magnitude forces even geopolitical rivals to consider cooperative mechanisms. Unlike nuclear weapons, however, AI development is far more rapid, decentralized, and globally accessible, amplifying both the potential benefits and the systemic risks. This renders traditional security-centric approaches insufficient and highlights the need for innovative, multi-stakeholder frameworks that can reconcile the dual imperatives of technological leadership and global risk management.
The rise of BRICS+ actors, particularly China and the UAE, underscores a critical dynamic in this arena. Their insistence on equal participation in shaping governance norms reflects a broader redistribution of institutional authority: technological capability has itself become a source of diplomatic legitimacy. In essence, states that dominate AI research and deployment gain disproportionate leverage in global norm-setting. Yet, just as nuclear arms control eventually demonstrated that shared vulnerability can generate cooperation, AI governance offers a testing ground for the international system to rediscover incentives for collaboration. The existential nature of the risks creates a “minimum common denominator” that unites even adversarial states around a shared objective: preventing catastrophic misuse. Success in this domain could establish enduring precedents for managing other high-stakes, transboundary challenges, including biotechnology, climate engineering, and cyber conflict, marking a fundamental evolution in twenty-first-century institutional innovation..
V. Conclusion: Toward a Pluralistic Meta-Regime
The rupture of the post-war global order is not a sudden event but the culmination of long-running structural shifts: the dissolution of the Soviet counterbalance, the surge of hyper-globalization after the 1990s, and the intense populist backlash that emerged in its wake. Together, these forces exposed the internal contradictions of the Liberal International Order—particularly its failure to manage distributional consequences, its uneven application of international law, and its growing detachment from the lived experience of many societies. The fragmentation that followed is marked not simply by a return to competitive geopolitics but by widespread institutional paralysis, an erosion of normative legitimacy, and the global perception that the rules of the system have been selectively enforced.
Developments in 2024–2025 demonstrate with unusual clarity that the future will not be a reversion to unipolarity, nor a nostalgic revival of the 1990s consensus, but a transition toward what this paper identifies as a pluralistic, multipolar meta-regime—a looser, more polycentric architecture in which states negotiate coexistence rather than ideological alignment. This emerging order is taking shape not only through the assertive positioning of major powers but also through the strategic agency of coalitions like BRICS+, now comprising eleven full members and eight partners representing nearly half of humanity and roughly 37–41 percent of global GDP. These coalitions serve as engines of incremental but cumulative revisionism: building financial counter-institutions such as the New Development Bank (which has deployed over $32 billion across 96 projects), accelerating de-dollarization via BRICS Pay and BRICS Bridge, and consistently pressing for enhanced Global South representation in international institutions.
The UN's eightieth anniversary in 2025 has brought renewed focus to the question of global governance reform. The Pact for the Future, described by Secretary-General Guterres as “the strongest language on Security Council reform in a generation,” reflects both the urgency of change and the depth of geopolitical inertia. As former General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim noted, genuine reform requires the alignment of five demanding preconditions: the continued viability of universal institutions; the active participation of all major powers; the strategic maturation of regional actors such as the European Union; tangible empowerment of the Global South; and comprehensive reform of the UN system itself. Each of these conditions is attainable, yet together they form an extraordinarily high bar—one that the current international environment struggles to meet.
The foundations of a new order therefore cannot rest on ideological convergence. They must instead be anchored in minimal consensus on essential legal norms—sovereignty, non-interference, territorial integrity—paired with maximal cooperation on shared existential challenges such as climate change, pandemics, emerging technologies, energy transition, and global financial stability. This vision echoes the intervention by Professor Daniela Schwarzer, who argued that the world must move “beyond a power-based view of things” and confront “the challenge to humanity which we are creating,” requiring foresight, scientific literacy, and a willingness to engage in “reasonable work that actually needs to happen on a global scale.” In other words, great-power competition cannot be allowed to eclipse the cooperative imperatives of the Anthropocene.
The central challenge for powerful states—whether established or rising—is recognizing that the durability of any new system will depend less on the projection of influence than on the willingness to share power, responsibilities, and rule-shaping authority within a more modest but more resilient institutional design. This reality is most clearly articulated by smaller states such as Singapore, whose Ambassador Burhan Gafoor warned that “if we are not at the negotiating table to participate in shaping these rules, we will end up being at the mercy of the rules set by others.” The logic extends far beyond small states: it captures the broader aspiration of the Global South to avoid a future designed exclusively by great powers and to secure meaningful agency in rule formation.
Kerim’s question resonates with particular force as we close 2025: “Have we forgotten the lessons that we learned from the two horrendous world wars that we fought 80 years ago?” The resurgence of economic blocs, the renewed resort to unilateral military action, and the disintegration of long-standing free-trade norms hint at troubling historical analogies. Yet there are grounds for cautious optimism. A generation has emerged that has “grown up with these values… enshrined in the UN Charter,” and even amid geopolitical rivalry, states continue to engage in hard, slow, often deeply frustrating negotiations to reform international institutions rather than abandon them.
In this sense, multilateralism—far from being a vestige of a bygone era—remains, as Kerim insisted, “not a luxury or an option for times of peace. It is a necessity in times of uncertainty.” The fracture in the foundations of global governance is real and expanding, but the materials for reconstruction exist: a more diverse distribution of power, a more politically conscious Global South, and a shared recognition that existential risks cannot be managed through dominance alone. Whether the international community can convert these elements into a stable meta-regime will depend on the willingness of major powers to embrace a different understanding of security—one grounded not in hegemony but in pluralism, partnership, and respect for the diversity of pathways toward human dignity and prosperity.
Only by accepting this shift can the world hope to build a system capable of managing the turbulence of the twenty-first century. The stakes are nothing less than whether global governance will evolve into a more balanced architecture—or fracture into competing blocs whose rivalries replicate the catastrophic patterns of earlier eras.
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References
Note: This reference list includes only sources directly cited or substantively relied upon in the analysis, reflecting academic best practices for citation.
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