Multilat resilient

Yet reports of the death of international cooperation appear to be exaggerated, at least for now. US disengagement aside, the three most noteworthy features of multilateral diplomacy in the last few years have been slightly reassuring. Firstly, a majority of states have responded to the Trump administration’s attacks on international mechanisms by increasing their support for them. No other country has followed Washington out of the Paris agreement. Secondly, there is still some room for innovation in multilateral affairs: the UN’s members have just signed off on a new Global Compact on Migration (GCM) despite America’s decision not to participate in the process. Thirdly, operational arms of the multilateral system continue to function despite facing extreme levels of strain in crises, albeit highly imperfectly. UN peacekeeping forces have not been able to halt violence in Mali or South Sudan, but there has been no general collapse of blue helmet missions comparable to that which followed the Rwandan and Balkan disasters in the mid-1990s. The flow of refugees from Syria came close to overwhelming relief agencies completely in 2015, but they have managed to struggle on. There is no case for complacency. Keeping multilateral diplomacy and operations alive has involved enormous compromises. Recent major international agreements, from the Paris deal to the GCM, have been legally non-binding bargains rather than formal treaties. It is not clear that they have the heft to confront other immense challenges like global warming and mass movements of people. It is possible that future generations will conclude that the 2010s were a decade of international footling, with diplomats settling on lowest common denominator agreements that were insufficient to address worldwide threats. Similarly, the recent resilience of UN peacekeepers and agencies such as UNHCR will ultimately count for little if, as is quite possible, the years ahead see more and bigger wars and refugee crises. The historical record shows that international systems do not necessarily implode all at once. It is possible for states and institutions to pursue successful multilateral processes while the world is falling apart around them. As Zara Steiner notes in her monumental history of the 1930s, The Triumph of the Dark, the League of Nations remained busy and useful as war approached. The Health Organization (precursor to today’s World Health Organization) and International Labour Organization made serious contributions to spreading new standards in medicine and industrial legislation. The economic arm of the organization backed up international cooperation on navigating the depression. In doing so, the League laid the foundations for further progress by the UN in these fields and others after 1945. Yet, as Steiner notes, “during the later 1930s the League was perceived to be, and indeed simply was, a failure” because of its basic failure to manage the threat posed by Nazi Germany and Axis powers. Historical comparisons have their limits. Although bleak, the international security picture is still far less dire than it was in the 1930s. Today’s multilateral system is also vastly more developed than the nascent mechanisms of the inter-war period. Nonetheless, it is best to view the current multilateral scene with a 50/50 mix of optimism and pessimism. On the upside, the system is enduring the current period of disorder better than many analysts presume. On the downside, we know that even successful strands of cooperation can unravel if deeper geopolitical shifts render them irrelevant.