It’s a broken world, who will fix its problems?

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency, it was reasonable to wonder if the man would prove to be “all bark and no bite” once in office. For various reasons, many people were convinced that Trump’s beliefs and personality would have no real bearing on the exercise of American power, which is supposed to be stable over time. Yet after more than a year of Trump’s presidency, it has become increasingly clear that the malicious aspersions he cast on the international system are capable of drawing blood.

If Trump’s trade policies were not evidence enough that he is taking a nationalist sledgehammer to the rules-based system, then his decision this month to renege on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal drives the point home. There can no longer be any doubt that he intends to defy the multilateral institutions that the US itself played a primary role in creating and sustaining.

The Trump administration also seems to be dispensing with America’s allies, which the US now treats with indifference, if not contempt.

Though Trump is unprecedented in American political history, it would be a mistake to assume that the end of his presidency will usher in a renaissance of multilateralism. The fact is that many of the factors behind today’s crisis of multilateralism predate Trump and will persist long after he is gone.

One might think that in an international system where power is spread more widely than in the past, the need for consensus through negotiation and dialogue would be commensurately greater. But while that might be normatively true, recent events show that the world is heading in a different direction.

For example, Russia, wielding its veto power at the United Nations Security Council, continues to stand in the way of any resolution to the war in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin seems completely uninterested in addressing the crisis multilaterally, and has instead pursued a narrower peace process alongside Iran and Turkey, with the obvious goal of diminishing America’s influence in the Middle East.

If Trump alone does not explain the crisis of multilateralism, what does? One hypothesis can be traced back to the economist Mancur Olson’s 1965 book The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. According to Olson, “unless the number of individuals in a group is quite small, or unless there is coercion or some other special device to make individuals act in their common interest, rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group interests.”

If we simply replace “individuals” with “states,” it is easy to see how Olson’s analysis can be applied to today’s increasingly multipolar global order.

Still, the current crisis of multilateralism should not be mistaken for its death throes. Most of the world’s major powers still support it. But in an increasingly multipolar world, multilateralism itself now means different things to different countries. Start with China, which publicly supports the WTO, even when it is penalised in dispute-settlement proceedings. Under the current system, China is still treated like the country it was in 2001, even though it is now one of the world’s leading economic powers. Much to the chagrin of Americans and Europeans, China has managed this feat while deferring its commitment to adopt a market economy. And India, for its part, has exploited the same double standard, by maintaining that Western countries should open their markets to developing countries without any expectation of reciprocity. India is very interested in exporting its qualified manpower, but equally keen to protect its agriculture and industry. The average Indian level of protectionism remains extraordinarily high compared to that of China.

Whereas these countries’ embrace of multilateralism is largely pragmatic, the EU’s is rooted in its fundamental values. Multilateralism is in the EU’s DNA, and thus is regarded as the only acceptable framework for governing trade. Already, the ongoing power play between the US and China threatens to impose new costs on Europe. For example, if China agrees to limit its exports to the US market, it will immediately increase its exports to the EU, thereby dragging the bloc into a trade conflict it never sought.

Multipolarity undercuts multilateralism by creating a structural advantage for strong states to forge bilateral deals that yield short-term gains

This very real possibility suggests that multipolarity undercuts multilateralism by creating a structural advantage for strong states to forge bilateral deals that yield short-term gains, regardless of the effects on global norms. Under such conditions, leading powers would not necessarily oppose multilateral rules across the board; but they would freely opt out of those rules when it suits them. The resulting erosion of global trade arrangements would be exceedingly difficult to repair. Rather than exhibiting true multipolarity, the global order is currently structured around a double bipolarity, with the US playing a leading role on two separate fronts. The first is the economic competition between the US and China, and the second is the geopolitical struggle between the US and Russia in the Middle East and on Nato’s eastern flank.

Given that the parties to these conflicts are generally focused on maintaining or slightly modifying the status quo, there is no reason to think they will pursue multilateralism anytime soon. But there is also no reason to think that multilateralism will not re-emerge when the conflicts are eventually settled. In the meantime, collective action will result in an archipelago of separate projects of different shapes and sizes. It will be a fragmented order for a fragmented world. —Project Syndicate

Zaki Laïdi is Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po