Rules not rivalries: adjusting to our multipolar reality

As Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine initially floundered in 2022, Western decision makers predicted that they could break Russia economically and that a flood of funds and weapons would decisively turn the tide of the war, teaching a definitive lesson that hostile invasions always ended in disaster.

At the BRICS summit last week, the Russian president was anxious to send a riposte to the West: not only was he still in power, but he had also gathered a dozen world leaders around him, demonstrating that efforts at isolation had failed.

For Western policymakers, it was a lesson that should long ago have been obvious: when rogue actors are allowed to violate international law with impunity, states such as North Korea, Iran and Russia gradually begin acting as a bloc to subvert and undermine the global system.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the US and its European allies enjoyed uncontested supremacy, enabling them to impose their rules and values. But the American superpower refused to live by its own rules: engaging in illegal overseas wars, refusing to be accountable before international courts, and abusing its veto to protect its closest allies as they violated human rights with impunity.

The result was that as other states such as China, India and Russia sought to consolidate their superpower status, they felt no compulsion to even pretend to abide by international norms that had long-since ceased to function.

The latest BRICS summit was a manifestation of a truly multipolar world. In itself that is no bad thing: it is intuitively preferable to live among a community of nations, rather than have a single superpower capable of arbitrarily imposing its writ. The problem is, what kind of community?

A community of equals with a universally respected system of rules is a peaceful, equitable and sustainable model, facilitating cooperation to confront global challenges such as climate change.

But our embryonic multilateral world was born in fire: tensions around the Ukraine conflict, the escalating Middle East crisis, the US-China standoff over Taiwan. North Korea, Iran and China are all materially contributing to Russia’s war effort, and there is little the West can do to stop them. The escalatory cycle of violence between Israel and Iran and its proxies illustrates the weakness of conflict resolution mechanisms in a divided, multipolar world.

The latest BRICS summit was a manifestation of a truly multipolar world. In itself that is no bad thing: it is intuitively preferable to live among a community of nations, rather than have a single superpower capable of arbitrarily imposing its writ. The problem is, what kind of community?

Baria Alamuddin

The biggest achievement of the post-Second World War global system was a comprehensive rules-based order in which all nations had a stake in playing by those rules. For 70 years it was relatively rare for powerful states to invade and occupy weaker neighbors. However, with wars in Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine and Yemen, it has become common to see regional powers engaging in proxy conflicts. Who remembers the last time the UN Security Council agreed on a resolution that materially contributed to resolving a conflict?

BRICS was originally welcomed as a sign that a broader swath of emerging powers were taking their places at the top table, expanding this year to include Egypt, the UAE, Ethiopia and Iran. At this BRICS summit there was a rare meeting between China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi after several years of escalating tensions between these two nuclear powers.

But beyond Putin’s propaganda coup, BRICS continues to be a diverse and dysfunctional bloc. While some of these countries are drawn together by mutual hostility toward the US, many of them enjoy far greater trading ties with the West than with each other.

While BRICS countries account for 35 percent of the world’s GDP, more than the G7, the organization lacks any sort of institutional apparatus or strategic agenda for consolidating economic and political alignment, let alone promoting alternative currencies to rival the dollar. The final “Kazan Declaration” was a grab-bag of platitudes that served only to emphasize the diverse worldviews of participants — creating the question of whether BRICS serves any greater purpose than as a photo opportunity.

For the first time since the 1980s we hear threats to deploy nuclear weapons and expand nuclear arsenals. If any party acted on these threats, such a conflict could escalate so rapidly that none of us would be alive to comprehend what had occurred. The current conflict in the Middle East is highly likely to prompt Iran to accelerate its efforts to reach military nuclear threshold, making the region infinitely more precarious.

Artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, intelligent drones and other technologies will meanwhile revolutionize the face of conflict — multiplying the destructive effects, while offering a variety of cheap, deadly options for terrorists and non-state actors, who themselves can thrive amid ever-increasing numbers of disintegrating states.

NATO has responded to assertive behaviour by China and Russia through closer alliances with Asian and Pacific states, staging ostentatious military exercises while expanding munitions industries. The US presidential election, meanwhile, is a stark choice between multilateralism or unilateralism, with immense implications for American relations with other world powers.

We all prosper when we trade together, peacefully coexist, and are not spending high proportions of GDP on armaments. America and Europe must adjust to the reality that China and Russia are today global powers: but China and Russia must relearn the lesson that exploiting their growing might to oppress weaker neighbors, or their own citizens, will end in tears. The planet is crying out for leaders whose foremost priority is the wellbeing of their citizens, who comprehend that the only route to peace and prosperity is through a multilateral rules-based world.

Enough of the hypocrisy, double standards and empty rhetoric — in our new multilateral global reality, if old powers such as America and Europe want emerging rivals to play by the rules, they themselves must first set the example in consistently acting according to their own principles. Justice for all — or justice for nobody.

• Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.