Dialogue can reduce the risk of miscalculation, but Washington and Beijing are building rival AI ecosystems that will increasingly force other countries to make practical choices. President Donald Trump recently distilled the strategic pressure shaping the artificial-intelligence contest into four words: “Whoever wins AI, wins.” His dismissal of warnings about potentially catastrophic AI risks exposes…
The international order is changing before our eyes. Great-power rivalry is once again dominating global politics. Strategic competition increasingly overshadows cooperation. International law is applied inconsistently, if at all. Trust in multilateral institutions is weakening. The temptation is to conclude that the age of effective multilateralism is drawing to a close. That would be a…
State of the world: many not-so-beautiful games The FIFA World Cup ended on 19 July with an apotheosis of the Spanish national team and a resounding boo for US President Trump. Whether one agrees or not with the appropriateness of these facts, there is a broader sense of a world caught up in an endless…
The international community has become preoccupied with reforming its institutions. We debate the future of the United Nations Security Council, the composition of the G20, the legitimacy of international financial institutions and the emergence of a more multipolar world. These are important conversations, but they all risk overlooking a more fundamental problem. The world is…
The process is underway to choose the new UN Secretary-General. Candidates have been declared and hearings held. With Security Council deliberations pending, the situation is revealing of the condition of the international system, and the distance between what that system claims to be and what it has become. Today, the questions about who is best…
At a time when criticism of the UN is constantly resurfacing, and a state that claims to rule the world is striving to dismantle it, I believe it is timely to defend the imperative of global governance. The contemporary international order is the result of a long process that took root in the 17th century…
The international system appears to be entering a period of profound uncertainty. Geopolitical rivalry is intensifying, confidence in global institutions is weakening and rules that once appeared relatively settled are now being questioned with increasing frequency. In such an environment, the conversation about the role of so-called “middle powers” becomes more important than it might…
Some positive signs… After years of poor performance bordering on irrelevance vis-à-vis many of the challenges facing the world, especially in the peace and security field, the United Nations has recently been getting a boost to its standing, from expected and unexpected places. No surprise that small and middle powers of the South and the…
Qatar is a tiny state with a population of around three million, in which foreign nationals make up approximately 76 percent of the population, while migrant workers account for nearly 90 percent of the labour force. And yet it plays an outsized role in global and regional politics, ranging from major investments in Africa and…
The international system today carries the feel of an era that has outlived its own assumptions. Institutions built with the optimism of 1945 continue to stand, yet their foundations no longer align with the world taking shape around them. The gravitational pull that once held the system together, its shared purpose, its post-war coherence, has…