The US-led global order is faltering, but two steps can reform it before it breaks

Humphrey Hawksley argues that multilateral institutions, namely the UN and EU, need reforms that limit the powers dominant nations have flaunted and which address the concerns of the discontented. They should also stop stereotyping China and Russia, pushing them to set up a rival order

Reading Time:5 minutes

Published: 2:03am, 30 Jun 2018Updated: 2:03am, 30 Jun 2018

Two years ago, China and Russia issued a joint declaration with the aim of throwing out an open challenge to the current US-led world order.

Coming after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and a court ruling against Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea, the two governments announced bluntly in June 2016 that they would enhance cooperation to establish a “just and equitable international order”, in effect saying they no longer trusted the rules-based system largely drawn up after the second world war. Since then, debate has picked up about the threat posed to Western values by authoritarianism.

War talk is rolling far too easily off tongues, creating a false prism, not least because Beijing is well aware that the system created by the United States and its allies remains the bedrock of their own success.

Even now, China needs the West more than the West needs China. China, however, is stepping into an array of vacuums created by economic crises, weak governance and unpredictable populism, yet neither Beijing nor Moscow has the wherewithal to build rival institutions of the strength that has allowed the West to hold sway in the world order for centuries.

Still, the speed of China’s rise and Russia’s aggressive resurgence have caught the West on the back foot, exposing many Western-dominated global and regional organisations and rules as outdated and ineffective.

Watch: Belt and Road Summit highlights

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x