By Avilash Roul
With a management vacuum, world governance is in extreme disaster. Under the UN watch, the US attacked, captured and kidnapped the Venezuelan President on the pretext of a drug trial within the US. If that’s not a blatant violation of the so-called rule-based order, the US supposed, by army or in any other case, to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member. Consequently, NATO members within the EU have deployed their troops to defend the most important island in opposition to the President’s ambition.
Beyond these erratic and kooky actions, the US has withdrawn from 66 worldwide organisations (IOs), conventions, and treaties, together with the India- and France-led International Solar Alliance (ISA). In a nutshell, the US, singularly, by way of its legitimately elected President, can cling the world the wrong way up.
Is this the so-called liberal order {that a} handful of Western international locations have been defending tooth and nail or pretending to take action? Or is that this rule-based order an association by the Western world, for the good thing about the Western world, however imposed upon the non-Western international locations for the reason that post-World War II period? Interestingly, the Kaisers (leaders) of extremely formidable rising energy centres of a multipolar world are retaining mum or sustaining their silence to keep away from the wrath of a verbal unlawful tariff hike from the US.
It isn’t any exaggeration that essentially the most highly effective nation on this planet, the US, makes use of social media, particularly ‘Truth Social’, to conduct its grand international coverage. Most of the international locations, allies or non-allies, are compelled to hook as much as Truth Social with bated breath to know their assignments and missions with respect to world affairs, relying on the posting of the US President. In different phrases, public diplomacy has taken centre stage within the age of quicker, smarter and concise communications, however not as unpredictable and unsure as we’ve been witnessing in current months within the US.
On the opposite hand, the argument put ahead by Trump for the mass withdrawal from worldwide organisations, conventions, and treaties that had been earlier agreed upon by way of negotiations is now in opposition to the pursuits of the US. Unflinchingly, the students and commentators within the Global South are lamenting that the motion would result in the lack of the US’ management function, making a destabilised, fragmented and riskier world.
The US has been the one largest donor and creator of such multilateral and regional establishments and companies on this planet that represent the worldwide construction. For the final eight a long time, no energy centres or regional blocs or rising economies come near dismantling such relative superiority of the US. When the US, or for that matter, any single nation considers itself as indispensable for the survival of the prevailing international structure, such an edifice has an inherent tendency to ship frequent shock waves just like the prevailing state of affairs.
We should acknowledge the truth that higher connectedness has a relative trauma, because the pandemic taught us not too long ago. The current collective association, which is very depending on either side of the Atlantic, must be rearranged now by way of drastic modifications by equal regional representations, no matter its financial power.
Meanwhile, in Davos, the venue for the annual enterprise jamboree — the World Economic Forum — turns into the venue for the signing of the ‘Board of Peace’ on Gaza, initiated by the US President for the reconstruction and rebuilding of the Palestinian resettlement. The Board of Peace (BOP) is touted by the proponent, whereas bypassing the UN, as the choice to the UN.
Can this BOP substitute the UN Peacebuilding Commission, a multilateral (31 members) advisory company established in 2005 by the General Assembly and Security Council to collectively prepare sources and advise on built-in methods for post-conflict peacebuilding and restoration? Very unlikely.
Many invited members are sceptical of the intent and goal of this ad-hoc unilateral initiative of BOP. With the invitation letter to the world leaders to hitch the BOP, the draft Charter of the BOP is being shared as an attachment, exhibiting its seriousness. None of the leaders who’re becoming a member of the group or who’re contemplating becoming a member of have both participated in drafting the Charter or deliberated its goal and goals.
If one intently examines, this BOP for Gaza was a part of the US-initiated and UN Security Council-approved decision in November 2025 that limits its perform to Gaza and terminates by 2027. However, the draft Charter is contemplating the perform of BOP in all battle zones and past 2027. India, being an integral a part of the UN Peacebuilding Commission for its contribution to peacekeeping, should not be coerced into becoming a member of this unilateral and ambiguous BOP.
Unquestionable unipolarity has an incredible destructive affect on international governance. The relevance of non-alignment or its hybrid format of multi-alignment or mini-alignment as an possibility for international locations can’t be outrightly discarded. Meanwhile, the world is desperately feeling the absence of world statesmen like Woodrow Wilson, Jawaharlal Nehru, Abraham Lincoln, Dag Hammarskjöld, Sukarno, Olof Palme, Gro Brundtland, Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and plenty of extra.
At current, none appears to be certified as a world statesman. Arguably, the rise of inward parochial nationalism brings the loss of life of internationalism. At the top, leaders’ triumphalism could convey short-term dividends at dwelling, but it surely has the potential in weakening collective actions in addressing international, regional and native issues.
The author is a global advisor on local weather change danger and transboundary rivers
