The present Dossier takes stock of the current state of the multilateral system and its future prospects. It aims to explore to what extent global governance is in crisis as the global geopolitical order is undergoing fundamental shifts and liberal universalism is losing traction. It assesses potential of reform in extant institutions as well as emerging trends, tools and forums that are reshaping multilateral practice on a daily basis.
Note – The dossier was drafted before the Covid-19 world crisis.
© Chappatte dans NZZ am Sonntag, Zürich
The multipolar world succeeding US hegemony in the early 21st century, the financial crisis of 2007 and the corollary decline of liberalism seem to have ushered in an era of economic nationalism. States are increasingly left to fend for themselves as multilateral mechanisms lose traction and international economic relations gain in toxicity. The sanctions, embargoes and retaliations arising from the war in Ukraine, but also an accelerating struggle for dwindling natural resources, have pushed these logics to new heights. This Dossier assesses ongoing geoeconomic transformations and their potentially devastating consequences.
-
I
War by Other Means? Geoeconomics in the 21st Century
Reading time: 6 min -
1
Globalisation: The Danger of Safe Spaces
Reading time: 4 min -
2
Risky Interdependence: The Impact of Geoeconomics on Trade Policy
Reading time: 4 min -
3
A New Page in Global Sanctions Practice: The Russian Case
Reading time: 6 min -
4
The Politicisation of the Commodities Trade
Reading time: 4 min -
5
Sanctions against Russia and the Role of the United Nations
Reading time: 4 min -
6
A Renewed Neocolonial Scramble for Resources?
Reading time: 5 min -
7
The Rise of Geoeconomics
Reading time: 5 min -
8
Debt as a Political Weapon?
Reading time: 5 min -
O
Global Sanctions: A Bibliography from the Graduate Institute
Reading time: 5 min
We currently face a baffling paradox. While since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 a seemingly inexorable process of globalisation has been foreshadowing a peaceful and frontierless world, the number of walls across the world has been rising at a steady pace. Liberal and open societies buttressed by trade, international law and technological progress were supposed to implacably contribute to the erosion of frontiers and walls between nations. However, in a context of surging populist discourses, securitarian anxieties and identitarian politics as well as concomitant flows of migration alimented by climate change, conflict and poverty, nations have recently started to barricade themselves behind new walls.