The new calculus of variable geometries in geopolitics

It’s been clear for some time now that the global multilateral order is not fit for its purpose. The covid pandemic has only made the world more aware of the real-time consequences of this gradual decay. The United Nations Security Council has faced a lot of flak for not representing today’s international power realities and for not being able to shape the global discourse on the changing nature of security. For several decades now, the world has been debating and discussing the need for reforms in the UNSC, but to no avail. Leaderships in nations like India seem to have given up and are now putting the onus on the UN to reform itself, if its credibility is to survive. What has been surprising to some is how some of the seemingly more reliable institutions, such as the World Health Organization or International Monetary Fund, have turned out to be highly politicized. China seems to have surpassed most nations in being able to game the multilateral system to reflect its own interests and priorities. If the WHO coyly followed the Chinese leadership in responding to the pandemic, it turns out that there was pressure on the staff of the World Bank from senior management to alter key data points to improve the ranking of China in particular. International institutions are inherently political in nature, but the way our post-1945 global multilateral order has been manipulated by China underscores an underlying power transition in global arrangements. This weakening of the multilateral system is happening in the context of the world’s two major powers, the US and China, either unwilling or unable to shape institutional underpinnings. On one hand, there is the US, which remains consumed by domestic dysfunctionality. President Joe Biden’s popularity is precipitously declining and his domestic agenda is being fiercely contested. From Donald Trump to Biden, America’s inward orientation is a reality that the world has to contend with. One the other hand, it is Xi Jinping’s China that no longer seems interested in working within the confines of the extant order. It is challenging the global institutional architecture on every possible front.