STATES ARE pulling against the ties that hold the world together. Trade volume is at an all-time high, yet protectionism has hit levels unseen in a generation. Conflicts claim nearly a quarter of a million lives a year—double the toll of a decade ago—and are increasingly connected through the very systems that drive global prosperity. Interdependence itself, a defining achievement of the post-war order, has become its most contested terrain.
Consider the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict there is reaching countries far beyond the range of any missile, through the cost of energy and fertilisers, and thus food prices and bond yields. Tools of co-operation—payment networks, maritime transport, supply-chain nodes—have become instruments of contest.
For most countries this is not an abstract debate about institutional design. They live with the effects of conflict they did not start, supply chains they cannot control and technological decisions in which they have little say. They need the UN more than ever, to help them navigate interdependence on their own terms and have more freedom to act. For nations large and small, a better multilateral system is not a constraint on sovereignty. It is the only realistic way to exercise it.
Technology heralds further strife. Data sovereignty is becoming as great a source of tension as territorial sovereignty. The possibilities that artificial intelligence opens are so vast that the chips needed to develop it, the energy needed to sustain it and the infrastructure through which it reaches users have become central to great-power rivalry. Most people are watching this competition from afar, uncertain whether they will share in the wealth frontier technologies create or in managing the risks they bring. Countries are responding to these pressures with new regional trade agreements, ad hoc coalitions, industrial strategies and alternative logistics routes. And the more interdependence is used as leverage, the faster alternatives emerge. Renewing co-operation will require addressing the grievances that fuel fragmentation—not least those felt by globalisation’s discontents—and repairing the frameworks it has damaged. Making the agreements work meant bringing others to the table. Banks would not clear payments, insurers would not cover vessels and shipping companies hesitated. We brought them into the effort. Each obstacle brought another actor in, and each new actor added complexity but at the same time widened the possible paths to agreement.
