2026: What can be Salvaged of International Cooperation

P8 audio
Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Please take your seat, because we're going to start on time, as we always do. You sit there. That's OK.

OK, so we, I mean, Minh-Thu Pham: will be there in a few minutes. She was stuck in traffic, so she will sit over there. I'm delighted that we have for this last day two very complementary panels.

We see how the world is disrupted, how the notion of rules that structure it seem to go by the window in some cases. But the world is a big place, and countries and regions are adapting. And so I thought that in this first panel on Friday, it would be a good idea to look at how the world is coping, how it's organizing itself around disruption, so as to have the measure of predictability and strength that is necessary for prosperity.

And for that, we have speakers who come from all over the world. Sadly, Jorge Castaneda and Kishore Mahbubani both eventually couldn't come, and that's at the very last minute. But I'm very grateful to Shivshankar Menon to be there, because I thought it was absolutely essential to have a vision for Asia.

Shivshankar Menon has spoken in past Kent programs. He is, for those who don't know him, is a former Foreign Secretary of India. He was also ambassador to a number of key countries, and especially very important countries also for India.

He was ambassador to Pakistan. He was ambassador to China. He was also ambassador to Israel.

So he has huge experience. And India is one of the key players of today's world and tomorrow's world, so it'd be very interesting to hear him. We also have from Europe Nathalie Tocci, who is very active in Europe.

We are all friends. And she has run for a number of years the most respected international affairs institute in Italy. Now she's moving on to an academic life, but she is very plugged in European politics.

And so I think she can give us a nuanced view of how things are going in Europe, because obviously the way Europe will adjust to the new situation is essential. And then we will have here in New York, Thanassis Cambanis, who is already there, who is at the Century Foundation and who has been looking at the transformation of the world with a very keen eye. And so I'm very happy to have him.

And Minh-Thu Pham:, who used to work at the United Nations and has now started a new organization that looks at the future of international institutions and their possible transformation. So I would want to start with you, Shankar. And I would want to ask you how India First is adjusting to this new state of affairs and how do you see Asian power dynamics play out?

Because the United States has been a big part of the sort of regional balance. And then we can move on to beyond Asia. But first, what you see from Delhi.

Shivshankar Menon:
Well, thank you, Jean-Marie, and thank you for having me. It's good of you. I think India is adjusting to the uncertainty, the disorder by doing two things, doubling down on strategic autonomy and by rebalancing external relationships.

For instance, we've tried to restore political relations and dialogue with China after the clashes in 2020, which has now been accelerated when the US is attempting more stable relations with China directly. We've refocused on the neighborhood, which has been roiled by Gen Z protests, which toppled three governments in our immediate neighborhood in the last three years. We've restarted our dialogue with Iran after the US-Israel attack on Iran.

And we're trying to build resilience in the face of much bleaker prospects for the world economy, whether by diversifying supply sources, particularly for oil, for critical minerals, materials, fertilizers, by entering into FTAs with the EU, UK after Australia, UAE, several others. I think we're negotiating something like 19 of them. As for Asia as a whole, which you asked about, you know, frankly, the Asian balance of power is shifting rapidly.

It has been for several decades. And countries in Asia are rearming at an alarming pace. And supply chains are increasingly concentrated on China.

It's interesting that it's an unintended consequence of the China plus one strategy, which has been implemented mostly by Chinese firms, diversifying production into Southeast Asia. Asia's redrawn geopolitics are really marked by the rise of China, US hesitancy or absence, actually, in the last few years, especially in this Trump administration, and the increased agency of Japan, Korea, India, Vietnam, Australia, and others. What's happening in Europe, in Latin America, in West Asia especially, only emphasizes the threats to Asia's continued rise to its global economic centrality, and the need to work on keeping the post-Vietnam War peace in Asia, both the east and west of Iran.

But so it's a pretty fluid situation, all in all, when you look at Asia.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
South Asia, you see, and you talked about having a big economy, and I guess you'll hear some things along those same lines from Natalia about Europe, but the world cannot accept the position you give.

Shivshankar Menon:
I can't hear you. Oh, I can't hear you, Jean-Marie.

Nathalie Tocci:
Yeah, we need to put the volume up a little bit.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
The microphone is not working.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Do you hear me now? Yes. Good.

No, I was saying, I was asking Shankar, beyond Asia, I mean, the world cannot be just a juxtaposition of big islands looking for strategic autonomy. The world is connected. And in a way, for many years, the United States, because of its dominant power, especially after the end of the Cold War, was the connector and the regulator, sometimes for good, sometimes not so much for good, but it played a kind of balancing role.

If the US is relinquishing that role, if it wants itself to be just a big island with a sphere of influence, mostly about the Americas, but maybe extend it to Europe, what will, I mean, can other countries, can China play a role in being a kind of guarantor of some kind of order? Or can the global South organize itself in a way that would create more predictability beyond the strategies of individual countries?

Shivshankar Menon:
Hmm, the million-dollar question. On China's role, well, I'll tell you what I think. If history and China's practice since Mao Zedong are any guide, she will not be a guarantor or behave like the US used to.

I think the idea of a Chinese-led world order is really a variant of the 90s theory that market capitalism would make China a Western-style society and democratic polity. China will not behave as the US and Great Britain did. China would like a China-centered order.

Which country would not like an order centered on itself? But speaking more realistically, China expects others to behave as she does, which is a common mistake, and to respect the facts of military and economic power and dominance, producing anticipatory compliance with China's wishes. Trump and the March of History, they believe, are making China great again.

So, for instance, basically, US behavior has pushed Prime Minister Carney to modify Canada's posture towards China. Why then incur the costs of an order, of opening up her markets, of policing the world? So, I don't expect China to become the new US or the new old US.

On the new order, frankly, I don't see one emerging. All the great powers today are revisionist, whether it's the US, whether it's China. And power is much more evenly distributed in the world.

Without the concentration that enables a hegemon to impose an order on the world, there is no settled or agreed order now. There is an international system. You can still use your phone around the world.

You can take a flight across international boundaries. But there isn't an order. And there has not been a binding international agreement on any matter of real significance for over a decade and a half.

And this absence of a world order, to my mind, is a historical norm. For most of history, we haven't had a world order. And some of mankind's most creative and innovative periods have seen an absence of order.

The Axial Age in India, China, Greece, the Middle East in 6th century BC, Song China, 10th to 12th century Central Asia, early pre-modern India, industrializing Europe, a good example, and so on. So, we may well be in a similar age of disorder and creation, as we see in the energy revolution, the technology revolution, the military revolution. Will the Global South do something about it?

The Global South, you know, by definition, it's united in its discontents and in its common colonial experience. But it's not a cohesive geopolitical force. To be effective, as the non-aligned nations were in pushing decolonization and early disarmament measures in the 50s and 60s, they have to work with others, not alone.

In decolonization, they worked through the UN with the two Cold War superpowers, and those superpowers were interested in abolishing the classical European empires. But on the core interest of the Global South, namely economic issues, like, say, developing country debt today, the established powerholders, which today include China, have steadily held the line against the Global South. So, what's the way forward?

The way I see it, my mantra for several years, for the last three or four years, has been issue-based coalitions of the willing and able, in which the Global South will play a significant role to deal with the situation that we see now. For instance, you know, just at Shangri-La last week, in Singapore, 17 countries stepped forward to launch a framework that brings together nations of common interest in securing underwater infrastructure, like subsea telecom cables and pipelines and so on. So, things like that, I see as the way forward of trying to stabilize the situation and minimize the consequence or mitigate the consequences of disorder and great power rivalry.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Thank you very much. Now, let's turn to Nathalie. Europe is a legal construct.

It has the relations between European countries, essentially, are structured by a legal framework. In some ways, the essence of European institutions. And now, it finds itself surrounded by a world that is, I mean, we just heard the Shankar, that is just very different from that, maybe the opposite of that.

And for a while, Europe, in a way, seemed to think that its example would just be enough to be a security policy. That it could, the world would emulate what Europe, what European countries within European Union, at least, were doing. Now, that seems like a more and more distant prospect, utopian prospect.

And so, my question to you is really, how can Europe triangulate between an increasingly erratic United States that was part of the European enterprise, when the NATO-EU developed in parallel? So, it's a shock, especially for a country like Germany, to see the two diverging. So, how can Europe triangulate between this increasingly erratic United States and a China that, in its economic policies, seems quite neo-mercantilist?

I mean, it's a factory of the world. It's achieved remarkable success in that respect. But in the European industry, I mean, on many accounts, the Europeans are very worried about what that means for the European economy.

How do you see that?

Nathalie Tocci:
Okay, so, well, firstly, let me just say that actually what I'm about to say is going to, I think, fit really nicely with what we've just heard so far from Shivshankar. I mean, I have a very similar approach to many of the things. You know, while I was listening to him speaking, you could almost sort of replace India and stick in Europe, and it would be exactly basically what I would have said.

Anyway, but I'll come to this in a moment. I mean, beginning, Jean-Marie, with your question. So, Europe was, I think, as you implied, extremely comfortable when it lived in a world in which it was swimming with the tide, and it was the most, in a sense, radical form of multilateralism on the planet.

But, you know, the world was opening, the world was rules-based, or at least this was the world in the minds of many Europeans. And so Europe was really in its comfort zone. And of course, within the European continent, those rules and those norms and those institutions took form, especially with the European Union on the one hand and NATO on the other.

And it was all fine and comfortable. It became a little bit more uncomfortable, but still in ways that fundamentally fit with Europe's idea of itself. When we started entering a world of, indeed, you know, China's not gonna become this shining liberal democracy, there is a growing competition between the United States and China, great power rivalry.

Then, of course, especially when in the Biden years, this was reconfigured as a conflict between democracies and autocracies. Europe, again, was actually rather comfortable, right? I mean, it was a quote-unquote smaller world.

I mean, it wasn't the whole world, but it was only the, let's call it, liberal international order world, yeah? But it was still a world in which Europe swam in its water. And particularly when it came to, and therefore, given that there are these autocracies, chief amongst whom is China, what should we do about it?

Well, what we do about it is first, we look at what our North Star tells us. And the North Star obviously being the United States. And so the United States said, well, we want to decouple from China.

And Europeans kind of registered and they said, no, we're not gonna quite decouple, we're gonna de-risk, right? So basically European policy vis-a-vis China in this world which was configured as one, indeed, it wasn't, as I said, liberal international order, but it was kind of democracy, autocracy, we're on one side sort of world. Europe was doing a little bit less of what the United States was doing.

And it was still relatively comfortable. It was, as I said, less comfortable because war on the European continent, beginning of the war in Ukraine, but still it knew where it belonged. Now, what made it, and what started making it very uncomfortable, I mean, going back to Shivshankar's point about, you know, a system, but no order, is precisely with this entire breakdown of the order.

And the entire breakdown of the order that I would really characterize as being not one of imperial competition, but actually one of the specter of imperial collusion. And this is where Europe becomes really, really uncomfortable. Because of course, what we've been seeing, particularly over the last year and a half, is actually not really a story of US-China competition at all.

I think it's far more a story of a United States that embraces the idea that there are other great powers, there are other superpowers, and that superpowers, given that they're superpowers, understand themselves as not being bound by even the very basics of international law, meaning sovereignty and territorial integrity, and therefore feel free to invade countries left, right, and center. Be it Russia in Ukraine, be it the United States on Venezuela or on Iran, let's see what happens on Cuba. And of course, there's always the question of what is China gonna do, Taiwan, South China Sea, et cetera.

And that is an extremely uncomfortable world for Europe to be in. And out of discomfort, and it's uncomfortable because of course, in this world of imperial collusion, Europe is on the colonial menu. Be it on Russia's colonial menu, Eastern Europe, be it on the US's colonial menu, Western Europe, but it is basically on the colonial menu.

And the fact that basically you have from Moscow to Washington, you know, this frontal attack, particularly on the European Union, meaning on European integration, because of course, if you want to colonize Europe, you want to make sure that it's a collection of individual countries, right? And that becomes far easier to colonize. So this is an extremely uncomfortable world for Europe to live in.

However, and coming back to, I think this really powerful point that Sivanka made there of disorder and creation, out of discomfort comes agency, right? And I think that this is what we may be beginning to see in Europe. I see a Europe which today, if we take three main areas, defense, energy, and trade, I see a Europe which demonstrates actually a lot more agency.

Of course, the sort of best example is that of trade. Had there not been the double bind of U.S. protectionism and Chinese, you know, overcapacity, and particularly U.S. protectionism, there's absolutely no way that we would have seen in the space of only a few months, agreements being signed between the European Union and India, Indonesia, Mercosur, Mexico, Australia. Many of these agreements, I mean, if you take particularly the negotiation with Mercosur have been going on for a quarter of a century, right?

The only reason why it has happened now is because of this squeeze that Europe basically finds itself in. So out of disorder, out of discomfort, agency, particularly when it comes to trade. Defense, I think, is another interesting area.

An interesting area because indeed, if we rewind back to a year and a half, Trump took office, the U.S. betrayal of Ukraine, oh my God, what's gonna happen? Everything's gonna fall apart. I came back actually from Ukraine two days ago, and frankly speaking, Ukraine is in a much stronger position today than it was a year ago.

And this has happened with the United States basically disappearing from the scene, yeah? I mean, the U.S. used to provide Ukraine something in the space of $30 billion per year. It now provides Ukraine less than half a billion.

All of the heavy lifting is done by Europeans, of course, by Ukrainians themselves and the development of their drone industry. And hey, Ukraine is actually in a stronger position now than it was a year ago. You see basically more broadly beyond Ukraine, particularly countries which are closer to the frontline, East European countries, North European countries, and especially Germany, actually really bolstering their defenses.

And of course, the question is, well, you know, are Europeans going to become militarily as strong as the United States? Of course, the answer to that is no. Do they need to be as strong as the United States?

No, they only need to be stronger than Russia in order to prevent war from spilling, you know, ending in Ukraine and spilling beyond. And actually that is a perfectly feasible goal to achieve. Europe can defend itself against Russia, even without America.

And I think this was an awareness that certainly did not exist when we lived in that comfort zone, right? In which indeed there was the US providing protection, but it was not just a military protection, it was a psychological protection. And then I think as far as energy is concerned, there may be, you know, this is a story which has seen basically ups and downs.

Because back in, you know, 2019, 2020, out of not so much, you know, Europeans wanting to save the world, but Europeans acknowledging that as a continent that imports hydrocarbons, its energy security required an energy transition. It had presented the Green Deal as basically the way forward. It then relapsed, you know, by the time we get to the first year of the war in Ukraine, it relapses into this, oh, the Green Deal is an ideological project.

And this happens, especially with the second wave of nationalist populism in Europe rising starting around 2023. Now we have, and basically Europe dropping the ball on many green technologies. And of course, China does not drop the ball on many green technologies.

And China doesn't drop the ball on green technologies again, not because it wants to save the world, but because it wants to save itself. Because like Europe and unlike the United States, China also does not produce hydrocarbons, right? I mean, it mainly imports hydrocarbons.

I think that now with this war on this island, with this war in the Middle East and the weaponization of energy, but in a different way compared to the Ukraine war, the Ukraine war was about the weaponization of a fossil relationship, i.e. that between Europe and Russia. And of course, the answer to the weaponization of a fossil relationship is you diversify your fossil relationships. What we're seeing now in the Middle East, especially with the closure of the wars is the weaponization of fossil energy markets.

And diversification does not do the trick. And so we're basically seeing in Europe the return of, I think, a much healthier debate of remembering that we were the ones for the energy transition, not because we were nice people, but because we saw the interest basically in doing this. And I think there's an opportunity to regain agency also on that front.

So all in all, what I would say to you is that maybe, and I've never looked at it through this prism, Shivshankar's absolutely right. Maybe it's only out of a moment of disorder that Europe can actually find its agency and its autonomy.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
That's a great conclusion, but I want to push you a bit. I mean, you stressed, to push back a bit, you stressed that indeed Europe is signing a lot of agreements, trade agreements with a range of countries. At the same time, politically, Europe on the political side, on political issues of the Middle East, there's a gap between the way Europe looks at things or actually doesn't say much about things, whether it's Lebanon or Gaza and all the top, the issues that are very much in the minds of millions of people in the region.

Europe is very quiet. And when one compares the role of European countries, not talking about the European Union there, but European countries 20 years ago, and today's role, there is actually less Europe today than 20 years ago. And when one looks at the Global South and Shankar warned us that this expression of global South may be a bit of a simplification, but it's true that that creates a gap between Europe and many countries around the world, which wonder whether Europe is just a powerful club of former colonial empires, to put it in a blunt way, or is more than that.

And how will Europe address that, you think?

Nathalie Tocci:
Okay, so on the Middle East first, of course, you're absolutely right. Now, the explanation that I would give is the following. When Europe used to play a role in the Middle East, it played a role as second fiddle to the United States, whether this was in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or literally anywhere else, yeah?

So yes, Europe had a role, and it had a role because Europe was the first port of call for the United States that was the foremost external actor in the Middle East. Now, a number of things have changed. And of course, some of these are intra-European, but I would say they're mainly external.

What has definitely changed is that the United States does not turn to Europe as its second fiddle. And this is not just Trump, right? I mean, if we go back to the Biden administration, actually, there was very little coordination and cooperation on the Middle East between the Biden administration and Europeans.

The Biden administration, if it needed to do something on the Middle East, it actually tended to go to the Gulf countries first. So this is not just Trump. And so I think it partly speaks to a global reconfiguration of power, but I think it also speaks to an intra-regional reconfiguration of power in the Middle East.

So you're absolutely right. Europe is no longer second tier. I would say it's not even third tier anymore.

I think before you even kind of get Europe in your mind, when thinking about the Middle East, you kind of have to, you know, you knock off the US, you knock off China, you knock off regional powers. You know, you basically kind of think, India, Europe, I mean, kind of fourth grade, fourth level actors when it comes to the Middle East, right? But that is only because the second level actor that Europeans used to play belonged to a world that no longer exists.

Now, that may come across as being almost a sort of rather lame justification, which of course, as you know, and you know me and what I think about Europe and the Middle East, this is not where I am. I think that you can be a third or fourth rate actor in the Middle East and still have some degree of principle, right? And still actually carve yourself out some little pockets of action.

Let me just give you one or two examples. So I actually don't think that Europeans would be able to do very much on Gaza or now the war in Iran. Yes, I think that Europeans could be far more active and far more constructive on Lebanon, on Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, right?

So there are areas in which actually we could have, not to mention North Africa, right? Where no one really wants to deal with North Africa in theory, apart from, I mean, the Americans don't want to deal with North Africa. And there was a big vacuum basically left and Europeans didn't fill it.

And so of course, the Emiratis and the Turks and the Russians fill those vacuums. So I don't wish to, I mean, I think there's terrible things that Europeans have done and are continuing to do in the Middle East. So if you look at it from a value perspective and if you look at it through an interest perspective, but I do think that the reason why we used to play more of a role than we do today is because that role belonged to that order that we were talking about that no longer exists.

Now, when it comes more broadly to Europe, global South, here I'm on exactly the same page as Shivshankar was pointing out. I'm also very much in the headspace of global coalitions of the willing. And I think that indeed, the sort of one area where you can actually tell a very upbeat story is the one that we mentioned, i.e. trade. Frankly speaking, I think Europeans should be taking far more of a lead on global coalitions of the winning on other areas. Climate is the obvious one where we really dropped the ball. And this connects to the point I was making earlier about maybe this might be a moment of reawakening of Europeans on some of these issues.

But that's obviously an open question and how it translates at the global level. But I think in terms of development, what we're beginning to see is rather than the replacement of an old model, let's call it old development policy, with a new model, let's call it transactional. What we're beginning to see is the layering of one on top of the other, rather than one substituting the other.

And I don't think frankly speaking that this is actually settled into anything remotely coherent yet.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Very much. I think we'll come back to the Middle East. Maybe I'll ask Shankar later on, because as I mentioned, he was ambassador to Israel and knows the region very well.

And so I think it would be interesting to have also an Indian perspective on that. But let me turn to Minh-Thu. I introduced you just before you arrived.

And I stress how you are working on a future for international institutions, essentially, to summarize. And so we have heard, Shankar, we have heard Nathalie saying they believe more in coalitions of the willing today than overarching institutions that seem to be in serious trouble. So do you think that, I mean, what is the future of international institutions?

Do you think that they can function effectively when we see that contempt for international law that both Shankar and Nathalie stressed, that the foundations are shaking? And so what can they accomplish collectively? Is it, should we just fall back on coalitions of the willing or do you see some future for international institutions?

Minh-Thu Pham:
Thank you so much for having me here and apologies for being a little delayed. And thanks for the question. So first of all, let me just say what a pleasure it is to be on this panel and also to be here with Jean-Marie.

We worked together when he was the undersecretary for peace operations at the UN and I was a lowly policy advisor in Secretary General Kofi Annan's office. It's such a pleasure. So this is such a great question and I'll answer it by way of also addressing some of the things that have already been raised this morning, such a fascinating set of issues.

I think for those of us who look at global affairs and care about the global order and where things may be going, I really urge you to look at what's happening at the UN. And I don't mean in terms of the system or the secretariat, I mean in terms of the body where every government has a role and a seat and a vote and how they then relate to one another, not just with the Security Council, but especially the collection of 193 governments because it's a really interesting reflection of where the world is, how countries, especially the global South and the global majority countries are stepping up and then how they're then responding to create this sort of future and where we might see international cooperation and international institutions going. So if you look across and to Srivankar's point about not having any consequential global agreements in the last decade or so, I might just push back on that because if you look at the UN just in the last few years or just last year, even during the Trump administration, you had a legally binding pandemic accord coming out of Geneva.

Even during the Biden administration, they've been negotiating, they were negotiating this for three years. Even during the Biden administration, it was not guaranteed that that would be legally binding. And again, this is the agreement after COVID where states were going to get together to figure out how do we respond better next time?

How do we make sure that the information that developing countries provide, they are then if they give that up to inform how we respond, including on developing treatments and that sort of thing, that they then get the benefit of that, that they have access to treatments next time. Because as we saw, global solidarity really broke down during COVID with the states that had vaccinations and treatments weren't sharing that. So the pandemic accord, when the Trump administration withdrew from those negotiations, it became a foregone conclusion that that would be a legally binding agreement.

That's significant. They also then revised some global health regulations and that sort of thing, but that was a legally binding agreement. You just recently saw the High Seas Treaty come into force after 60 countries signed onto that.

What's the High Seas Treaty? It was 10 years in the making, negotiated, but essentially how do we govern the high seas? And that is also now been executed.

So just two examples. And then lastly, a third one just on development and to say in how the UN is a sort of reflection of where I think the global South and the global majority countries are coming together. A few years ago, so in the UN, we discussed financing for development.

How do we actually finance the economic development of countries around the world and including the poorest countries? And for a long time, African and Asian and Latin American countries were suffering from just not being able to understand how they get the revenue from global taxes. Where are those taxes then asserted?

And then who makes those rules? And essentially the OECD makes the rules on global tax cooperation. And for a while, countries of the global South just had to deal with whatever rules were made.

Well, in fact, in 2023, after many years of trying to figure out how they get around this, because the OECD does not have global South countries that are then the ones who have to take on the rules of the global rules on tax cooperation. African countries led by Nigeria said, we can't take this anymore. In the UN, the universal body of 193 governments, global South countries, developing countries have the numbers, meaning the majority to get the outcomes that they want.

And so they then took it to a vote within the General Assembly to have a legally binding framework convention on global tax cooperation. The negotiations for a framework convention on global tax cooperation to be negotiated at the UN, not in the OECD that's traditionally had the leadership to make policy and global tax cooperation, but our global tax rules, but at the UN. And so in November of 2023, you had the global majority of governments voting on this, donor countries, the United States and others, rejected it.

But again, in the UN with 193, you had the governments getting agreement to negotiate a global tax framework, conventional tax cooperation. That's significant. And now they're starting to think about how do they do that on issues like debt, where you have governments coming together and saying, we're gonna just take that to the form where we actually have power, not the OECD, not the G20, not the G7.

And that is where I think you're starting to see just in this moment of rupture, countries figuring out how they use these international institutions to then shift the power to where they can then have a greater say. And so when we talk about, it's true, the global South is not a unified set of, you know, coherent policies and interests, but there's a difference between unifying around specific policies and unifying for power. I think you aggregate the collective membership or the collective power of those countries to gain, say, voice and what you want.

Maybe you disaggregate and then what the actual policies are. But if those countries had not banded together, you wouldn't have seen these things coming out. So I think that's where we're starting to see some innovation on international cooperation within these international institutions.

And it's gonna take a while, of course. I mean, this rupture is taking place right now and it takes time for states to then step up and decide that they're gonna band together. But I think the future is that, could you potentially see countries saying on fundamental universal values, like the prohibition on the use of force or territorial integrity or sovereign equality of states, do we have to wait for the Security Council to answer the way that we want it to?

Or could you actually take that and say, you know what, the global majority countries, we're the ones suffering from that or they are the ones suffering from that. So could they then get middle and small powers and everybody else, the world minus three or the world minus five, to then band together and say, okay, how do we impose real costs on using force illegally? How do we impose reputational costs?

How do we impose maybe economic costs? Could there be economic sanctions that we eventually decide to put together? Could we even band together to reject, to deny access to critical minerals or deny access to sharing intelligence or even deny access to airspace when then a state wants to go and use the airspace of another state to deploy a force.

So there are other ways that we can do this. And I think we have to start thinking creatively about how we use these financial institutions where the global majority has the votes to get the outcomes that they want and then see where that goes. Thanks.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Well, there's strong pushback in the sense that the news of international issues death is premature, to put it mildly. Now I'm going to turn to Thanassis because you, so you have listened to, I mean, a variety of viewpoints, coalition of the willings, resilience of international institutions. You have a very critical mind.

You have been known to sometimes highlight the contradictions of the European Union, the contradictions in the UN. So between this world of order and disorder, what do you see really emerging and how should we find our way? What's the balance?

You are the referee at the end of the panel.

Thanassis Cambanis:
Oh, this is a really fun role. Thank you, Jean-Marie, for putting me in this last chair. You know, I think there's a lot of great points have been raised and my favorite framing point was the one Shankar began with, which was the reminder that most of global history has been a history of a disordered world.

I think that's a really important reference reminder, but also history is an inadequate guide to our current chapter because the nature of war has changed so much, right? War up until even 100 years ago was a relatively limited affair. Today, wars are total and they tend to target civilians rather than be waged between armed groups.

And the consequences of that, I mean, just look no further than the war in the Sudan right now as an example of what happens when we cease to care about trying to limit or resolve conflicts. So I had a couple of maybe ordering thoughts and then I'll do my usual bomb throwing at the end. What I see is, okay, so first of all, I'm so glad no one quoted Gramsci and said it's now's the time of monsters today because that is for me the sort of lazy flag of people who don't want to actually do the work of naming and thinking where we are now and pretending it's an interregnum when really we just either can't figure out or don't want to name what we're living through.

I think we are solidly in a post-Cold War period and I think of it as a sort of a power scramble. You know, the sort of reference points for me historically are the era up until 1914, maybe even from, you know, the sort of end of the Napoleonic Wars until World War I where powers, not just great powers, but powers great and medium and even small tried to maximize their advantage through force and through blunt force, whether military violence or economic violence. And I think it worked out well for some of those powers from their perspectives.

You know, from my perspective, it's not the kind of world I want to live in and I certainly don't want to live in the world we're in right now. But unfortunately, there is an organizing logic. It's not random and it's not exactly spheres of influence.

I mean, Donald Trump's American policy is trying to grab territorial influence all over the world, not just in the U.S.'s sphere of influence. So the U.S. experiment is one of, you know, to some extent, it's random incompetence. But to some extent, it is a it's a kind of extreme play, right, to see can the U.S. have a sphere of influence like Russia's in greater Russia, Eastern Hemisphere, but also be a global superpower that has sort of imposes its will in the Middle East and Asia and elsewhere. And I don't think that's tenable or sustainable. And but I also don't think that that any kind of new global ordering principle is going to emerge anytime soon. I very much agree with Shankar's assessment of China, which, among other things, I don't think is interested in being a sort of global diplomatic clearinghouse or kind of setting any any wider order.

I'm also skeptical of what happens when powers that benefited from the brief period of America's organizing influence start to turn to remilitarizing in order to in order to fill the vacuum left by America. I doubt, Nathalie, that Europe's remilitarization is going to be a happy story of reasonable European democracies finding that right level of strength to defend themselves from a bullying Russia and not to become fascist themselves. I am not excited about the rearmament of Germany.

I don't I feel like there's a lot of reason to be skeptical from a very sort of narrow perspective where I focus for many years on Syria. I and Lebanon, when I lived there, I'm not impressed by what happens when Italy has a foreign policy on Syria. It tends to actually not be that great for Syrians or for regional stability.

You know, France's little imperial feints in Lebanon, you know, again, echoes echoes of the sort of imperial culture that runs deep. And also, these haven't been effective, right? So they are glimpses of what these powers would do if they had power.

And they actually they haven't they haven't done they haven't been able to do that much. But when we see what they try to do when they get involved, it's it's not attractive. And, you know, we've lived under an American hegemony for a long time.

It was not attractive either. So for me, what I see is in parallel over the last, let's say, the 50 years after World War II, we had we didn't have only an international liberal order. We had some some aspect of an international order and some continuing of traditional Machiavellian competition.

Both those things were occurring throughout. If you look at things from the perspective of of the weaker regions of the world, as I often do, just because of my the nature of my perspective and my background, it was never that predictable or that order to begin with. Now, the for me, the strongest appealing lights are these international institutions.

They are weak. They're not up to the task, but they can be. And if you think about what the world order looked like in 1933 and could people then have imagined that in 1948, the U.N. would be founded and would actually have some real meaningful authority to do powerful, important, meaningful things that we still benefit from today? Some some people imagine that some people were working on that, but it seemed, I think, very unlikely at that time. And it came to pass. And I think what.

Certainly, middle powers will be striving for is predictability at a minimum. I mean, I would I would love it if what happens after this sort of crazy period where America joined Russia and China and being values free and sort of and shit of fires of life across the globe, that in the aftermath of that, that the overwhelming majority of people in the world will push for a rights based, justice based universal order. Right.

Where people will say I'm willing to sacrifice some amount of profit and sovereignty in exchange for a predictable world in which every state and every person in the world has some bedrock, Rawlsian share of decent life. Now, that's you know, that's my kind of my fantasy. But I do think we're going to have another probably generation, 20 or 30 years of the kind of rough and tumble, mostly war based competition for influence and resources around the world.

And when that settle, what will happen is it will cost too many people in too many states too much. And they will eventually be interested in reinvesting in some kind of compact that has hybrid or shared sovereignty. And that's when these institutions that I assume will continue operating and doing, you know, having some success, usually in the second tier, you know, second tier, but very important areas like tax policy or health policy.

You know, maybe vaccines will make a comeback after America's brief period of being an anti-vax empire and so on. When we get to the end of this period, this scramble for power, states will be willing at that point, and hopefully also, well, I don't know, also be alive. Hopefully you all will be alive and in positions of power to help organize this moment.

That is when things like universal jurisdiction or like an ICC with genuine power to prosecute, you know, war criminals and so on will actually come to pass. And for me, that will be a happy outcome. But I think for now, we recognize the contours of the world we're in and we're mostly in a paradigm of trying to manage the damage caused and trying in experiments like what happens at the UN and multilateral institutions and maybe in the EU trying to make sure the EU doesn't become too neo-imperialist or too militaristic in its reawakening.

And then we will be building, I think, the models for what a better set of international practices could look like.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
It's a mix of optimism and terrible pessimism that you gave us. Because when you say nobody in 1933 would have foreseen that there would be the United Nations in 1945, true. But in between, there were a few minor events that shook the world and were catastrophic.

So if we have something like that before the rosy picture for the future that you describe happens, that's pretty catastrophic because we now have weapons that did not exist in 1939. And that can inflict much more damage, but be much more catastrophic than anything we have known in human history. So I see that time is marching on.

I know that Nathalie Tocci will have to leave around 11, New York time. So I would want the panelists briefly, if they have any reaction to what they heard from the other panelists, to do it now. And then we'll move on to questions.

Yes, Nathalie.

Nathalie Tocci:
Yeah, just very quickly. I mean, on this point about Europe, I mean, I think there's a difference. I mean, I would agree that when, you know, you could make an argument of basically saying, well, if Europe were to play more of a role in the Middle East, then it would be a bad role.

Yeah, but that's a normative judgment and I would probably agree to it. But I don't think that, I mean, the point that I was making more broadly about European agency is that with the exception of the Middle East, the reasons that I was talking about, we're beginning to see more European agency. Now, we may like it or dislike it.

It may be good or bad, but that wasn't the point that I was making. I was just simply saying that I think that in a number of areas, we're going to be seeing more of this agency, right? That was just one reaction.

The second point that I wanted to make concerning this issue of Europe's rearmament. Of course, you know, one could say, well, oh dear, you know, I mean, Germany's rearming, what happens if all this falls in the hands of the AFD if they were to come to power? That's, of course, the horror scenario.

And it's, of course, the horror scenario that we cannot exclude. But I think there's also a presence and there is a presence in which there is a question to be raised about how Europe defends itself against Russia, given that this is the rule that actually does exist and Europe needs to defend itself without America, right? And we can have arguments about whether this rearmament, to what extent it can or should be, obviously, I would argue in favor of this taking place in a more European framework rather than a more national framework.

But I don't think we could really dispute the fact that inevitably there will need to be a Europe more capable of defending itself, given that there is a war on the European continent. And I don't think anyone could. And the other thing that I'd like to point out is that actually it is these fascist parties that don't want to see this rearmament.

And I think this is a twist that is and largely because these fascist parties are in cahoots with the Kremlin. You know, so basically it's the AFD that, you know, if it were to come to power, I'm not at all sure that it would be pushing for rearmament. It would go in reverse gear.

But that is because it shares a very similar worldview from, you know, than the one that you currently find in Washington and you currently find in Moscow.

Shivshankar Menon:
Yeah. Very briefly, two points. I wish Min Toufan was right, frankly.

I mean, that would be the ideal world. But I didn't say there were no legally binding agreements. What I said was of real significance and significance I measure by outcomes.

Pandemics, you mentioned, is a good example. Look at the difference in the way we responded to HIV-AIDS when we actually mounted an effort internationally with the U.S., with the George W. Bush administration to actually get retrovirals to those affected in Africa.

And look at the response to COVID and how fractured that was and how it was each one for themselves. You know, and I would like actually some costs imposed on the legal use of force and so on. But, you know, after the slaughter we saw in Gaza, after the attack on Iran, I mean, forgive me if I'm skeptical, if I'm still waiting.

But I do want to make a broader point about, and part of my problem is that, you know, all the international organizations that we're used to and the whole structure we built after World War II was based on member states as the constituent units. And if those states are quarreling with each other, I don't see why we blame the poor organizations. It's the member states who are not allowing the organizations to work, but I don't see how the organizations can be particularly effective when those member states are quarreling.

And in today's disorder, the problem is that every state thinks that they have an opportunity to follow their own agenda because of the absence of order, whether it's Russia and Ukraine, whether it's the US and Israel in Iran, whether it's Rwanda and Congo, whether it's UAE and Sudan. I mean, the list just goes on and on. You know, I mean, I could, this list is so long and that's the source of the problem to my mind.

Is there hope? Yes. For the reason that, frankly, politics operates according to a law of unintended consequences.

The UN that we all are so attached to, that charter was written by people like Churchill and Smuts in order to maintain an existing power structure and order. And the irony of ironies is that very organization was the one which dismantled the very order of the colonial empires that they wanted. And for me, that's a wonderful example.

I think, frankly, the attack on Iran has done more for renewable energy across the world than any number of cops or scientific papers and so on. So I'm, it's not that I'm, I don't hold out any hope. I do think there's hope in this situation, but it's not necessarily in going back to what we're used to in the last 75 years since the war, 80 years since the war.

So I just want to leave that because, frankly, even the UN and the structures that we built after World War II were the result of 400 years of war in Europe and two world wars. And I don't think that in a globalized world economy, which is for the first time ever composed entirely of nation states, we can afford to repeat that kind of history. And I think people know that.

Minh-Thu Pham:
Can I just, thank you so much for that. Just a quick response, because I'm not saying that, we're not even a year in with the pandemic accord. It was literally agreed at the very end of May, one year ago.

So that is still, the jury is still out as to, it's a legally binding agreement. Now, has it had an impact? I don't think any agreement is going to have an impact less than a year out.

But what I'm trying to say here is that, first of all, hope, yes, but hope is not a strategy. What I'm trying to lay out is what is our strategy? If we can then, we have to, this is a room full of practitioners, I understand.

If we can actually work toward getting countries, governments to band together, to assert and defend the rules and the norms that they believe in, to then start to build the international institutions and the order that they want to see. Then we have some, then you have actually a real chance of having some hope. But if we just say, well, it's just impossible, this is not going to happen.

This is what, you know, a lot of African governments in 2015, when they got a global tax body rejected by the United States and the UK in those negotiations, it was rejected. And eight years later, they said, you know what? It's not enough for us to just have failed that time.

We actually need to keep doing this. So I'm not saying that it has already, we've already seen evidence of it. But what are we seeing?

Grass, green shoots of optimism and pragmatic, just a pathway for how we might do this. It's not going to be easy. It is very messy.

And it takes a lot of work. We have to organize. We have to get, understand what the interests and positions are of states and then see how they can start to come together.

But I'm starting to see that. And I think, I mean, hopefully, you know, you all are practitioners here. We can start to chart that path together.

Thanassis Cambanis:
I guess money walks and bullshit talks is that the sort of principle of how we analyze how things are unfolding. So really there's a reordering of actual power and power comes from money and guns. More than anything else.

And I mean, the tax agreement is cool, but also not who cares, but like it's so fringe to anything that like has real world consequences. And I think what implicit in Natalie and Shankar's talk about coalitions of the willing, I think is our states willing to actually use leverage and power that they have, you know, even when it's limited to change bad situations, you know, so I mean, a small example is Hungary, right? How Europe tried or didn't try enough, but eventually got to a place where semi-fascist, authoritarian Hungary and its pro-Kremlin policies, you know, change.

And like, I don't know how we analyze that at this point, you know, did Europe do as much as it could? And it just took that amount of time for Hungary to replace its bad leadership? Or is that an example of Europe not being willing to expel Hungary when Hungary basically was acting as a fifth column within Europe?

I'm not sure where I come down on that, but it's a test case. The war on Iran is a huge one where there's been a lot of really reckless and crazy theories of power circulating, especially in the United States. And they've kind of bubbled over and the U.S. did this insane thing attacking Iran. And I mean, I'm not happy, but it is a clarifying moment where the U.S. learns finally some of the limits of coercive power. And this is, I mean, it's useful. And again, I hate that this is the price of the lesson.

And, you know, the price of the lesson is that we have to have this incredible amount of death and destruction around the world. And, you know, and that is how the U.S. will finally, I think, come to some amount of sanity about interventionism. But I'm also just want to sound one other note, which is these periods of disorder.

I think maybe it was Shankar who said they are periods of great creativity, you know, and at the same time, they're also periods of incredible destruction, right? I've spent a lot of my adult life in moonscapes of desolation that used to be cities. And I'm thinking about times I was in Gaza or Mosul or Homs or other cities where hundreds of thousands of people lived.

And in short order, everyone was gone and everything was destroyed. It takes a long time to rebound from that. And so that is the other toll of this kind of moment.

I don't think, Shankar, you meant to sound like an accelerationist when you said that the war on Iran has done more for green energy than anything else. But, you know, there is a little bit of accelerationism and I think recklessness and techno-utopianism and then the idea that war is cathartic. I think we really need to not use terms like make a country great again, which don't mean anything, but do like sort of summon fascist energy.

But what a lot of these moves are, I mean, they remind me of these old idiots who led the charge for US to invade Iraq in 2003. And a lot of their thinking went like this. They said like, well, who knows how it'll turn out, but we know it's going to be great for us.

It's going to revive our arms industry. It's going to revive the sense of manifest destiny and power and, you know, bloodlust is good for the national soul. And I don't think that's true, right?

But that's a very appealing story. And I think it has spread, right? Maybe it's socially contagious, right?

I mean, maybe more European leaders will catch the cold from, you know, from Trump, who maybe caught it from Putin or however you want to metaphorize this. But I do think there is there's going to be a long period of time where that is the dominant trend in global affairs is this maximalist gambles, right? Where, you know, people lose their livelihoods and societies get ripped asunder.

And, you know, closing thought, I'm sorry I'm talking so much, but it's fun to have a chance to share these things. While we're talking about like the high concepts of the global order, I'm thinking about a society I know pretty well that is on the verge of ceasing to exist, which is the Palestinian society in Gaza and South Lebanon, where half a million people live and where a genocide is unfolding in exactly the same blueprint as the one rolled out in Gaza and the West Bank. By the time we figure this out, it will be too late for those societies that have been destroyed with the support of both of my governments, right?

I'm Greek and I'm American. Two governments with abominable, shameful policies on Palestine. And then at some point, we'll all say, God, that was terrible.

Genocide is bad, not only morally, but it's maybe runs against our self-interest. But whoops, it's too late, too late for those societies. And that's why I like to use profanity and say things like money talks and bullshit walks or the world has been insidified because I want to remind us that it's a really dirty, dirty set of deeds that's been done and that we, I mean, me as a think tank or you as diplomats, we're involved in these things often, you know, well-meaning in our own individual work and trying to do something good within a messy context. But it is a dirty, dirty period of history that we're living in.

And I think we're all, if we're doing anything meaningful, we're all complicit to some extent.

Minh-Thu Pham:
Can I just one quick point here? Yes. Yesterday, Germany lost its vote in the Security Council.

Remember what its position was on Israel and what happened in Gaza and who are the people, what countries did it run against? Portugal and Austria. Portugal, Austria and Germany were running for Security Council and Germany lost.

If you were to look now and you look at what Hamas said on October 7th, the Israeli over-response, what Trump has done in Venezuela, Greenland, you know, Iran or even the United States in 2003 in Iraq. If you look at the medium and longer term, are any of those countries better off? They're not.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Sorry, let me just say, I think Nathalie, you have to leave now.

Nathalie Tocci:
Hang on. I've got to go, everyone. Thank you.

Apologies.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Thank you.

Nathalie Tocci:
Thanks for a wonderful conversation.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Thank you. Sorry.

Minh-Thu Pham:
Just saying that basically, unilateral action has actually proven time and again to actually give the country that did it a giant bloody nose. And I think we're seeing that in real time now. So yes, Iraq, but I don't think the lesson is, oh, let's do it.

They try it. And when they try it in the long run, they realize that was probably a bad move.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
So any questions now?

[Speaker 8]
Thank you very much for this interesting discussion. I'm Andrus from Lithuanian Mission. Lithuanian.

Lithuanian Mission. And I'm also working with the development issue. So I would like to touch upon this new and recent U.S. initiative called Trade Over Aid. And now 35 countries joined from different regions. And the main idea is that traditional ODA development assistance sort of didn't necessarily work. And now the countries have to basically trade with each other in order to achieve prosperity and development.

Would you agree with this approach? We also see ODA declining. So is really the trade the solution instead of the traditional sort of donor and support relationship?

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Okay. So we have that question. Yes.

Ifigenia Xifré:
Yeah. Hi. Thank you to all the panelists.

This was a really, really great panel. Very enlightening. I wanted to follow up on, well, this idea that's been shared that the Global South has, well, a strong voice and it does.

The Global South, when we work together, of course, we have the votes to pass any resolution that we want within the UN, at least. But still to have legitimacy, we need to have some level of consensus. And even more than that, for there to be compliance, it's necessary for both the Global North and the Global South to believe in the fiction that things are legally binding and to want to abide by the agreements we reach.

So I think my question is can we go back to having more of an incentive for, especially the Global North to have an incentive to comply and to want to cooperate and maybe getting the the one, two, three, five is a different question, but at least the others. Thank you.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Thank you. Any other? Yes.

Okay, go ahead.

Tobias Maureschat:
Yes. Thank you very much for some very interesting thoughts. I have just one question.

I think Natalie mentioned, oh, she's not here anymore, but she mentioned that Europe is on the menu. And the only thing that Europe should do is to build a fence to deter Russia. I think some parts of Europe would also argue that there's some threats from Washington now.

So I have two questions. First of all, how do you see the threat of the US to the European territory? And then the second question is we have a new government in Denmark that came two days ago.

If you were to advise them in their policies towards the US and maybe also the European Union towards the US, what would you advise them to do? Thank you.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Okay. And one.

Raphaël Ollivier-Mrejen:
Yes. Thank you very much to the panelists. My name is Raphael.

I'm with the French mission to the UN. The question is, I think whether the multi-pillar liberty that you've described is a more stable power equilibrium than a world where you have only one or perhaps two superpowers. And if not, the kind of international institutions that we must have to have this kind of stability.

I heard what you said about the UN General Assembly. The problem is that for peace and security issues, GA resolutions are mostly not legally binding. For example, with the war against Ukraine, the security council was blocked.

So an emergency special session was open and is still open. There've been a couple of resolutions that were adopted by a large majority of GA member states, but it didn't really make a change on the ground in Ukraine. So this power of the GA, even when a vast majority of countries do agree on what should be done, has some kind of limits, I believe.

So it would be interesting to hear what you have to say about that. Thank you.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Question quickly, because we are running over time in one minute.

[Speaker 10]
Thank you. I wanted to ask, what space do you see for moral leadership in this world that's so driven by real political and national economic interests? None of the big powers seem to care about this.

I think we used to have some big voices in the Global South. They seem to have faded. Our SG has tried, but not sure that he's been very successful.

I think the Pope is trying at some points as well. But we have really great examples in history of how these moral voices really brought about a lot of change. Think of anti-apartheid and the Vietnam War protests.

So just wonder if you see any space for that in this world.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
For the panelists to answer the question that if she or he feels most activated by, why don't we start with you, Minh-Thu?

Minh-Thu Pham:
Okay. Thanks so much. So international law, it's not like in the United States where you violate a traffic law and then the police come after you or you're fined.

International law, even if the Security Council were to act, it still depends on countries doing something to impose consequences on the violator. And so what I'm suggesting here is, and I like this question about how do you bind great powers or any powers to the rules and especially the rules that they set? And what's happened is that so if you go from the League of Nations to the UN, the League of Nations didn't work until they found a way to get the great powers to say, actually, we will sign on to this.

It was to give them a permanent seat in the Security Council and a veto. Now, clearly the Trump administration said that's not enough anymore. So we now have to think about, think creatively about how do you bind great powers and how do you impose consequences?

Because even if the Security Council says something is illegal or the General Assembly says we don't like something, it still depends on someone or a group of someones to come together and impose some consequences. And what I'm suggesting is that I think we can actually find more creative ways to impose consequences and not just default to the Security Council. Because even then, that's still not enough.

Even then the United States had to have acted in the past to impose consequences on a violator. So now if you don't have the United States and just to the question of can you have a stable order? I can't remember who asked it with multiple actors.

I think the jury is out. Amitabh Acharya looked in history and he said a multipolar order can be stable. But I think in this day and age that's much more interconnected.

I don't know. I think the jury is out. But it's now I think on us to prove that you can have a more stable order with multiplicity of actors.

Thanassis Cambanis:
I love the question about moral leadership. I think we need more of it. The excitement with which secular people non-Christians respond to the Pope.

It shows the hunger. I don't care about the Pope per se. And I'm excited to hear the Pope talk about AI or Gaza or whatever because no one else does.

I was also very excited about Jacinda Ardern, leader of a tiny country on the other side of the planet that has no power. Because again, she sometimes used the language of moral leadership. And so few people do.

So I think that's useful. I think the other thing that's useful and this answers the gentleman from Denmark's question is states need to use power at their disposal. I think when Trump was musing about invading Greenland, the thing that changed his course was Denmark and some other countries actually deploying troops to Greenland.

And as I understand it, some European countries stopping their treasury buys, right? So the money talks and Europe and other places and the global South can sometimes use the leverage of trade boycotts, where they spend their money, where they invest their money and where they're willing to sometimes use force. Now, I don't think moral war is going to fix the problem of bellicosity by superpowers, but it is a very unstable time.

And we're not in a truly multipolar era, right? We're in an era where the US is still the global superpower, diminished and erratic as it is. And it is not yet in any way matched in a multipolar way by any other coherent power.

And I think that it's going to take a while before that changes. So, yeah, I think that's all I'll say.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
You have the last word.

Shivshankar Menon:
Well, I agree entirely that we do need moral leadership and that we do need to find ways of making the global consensus on some of these issues, at least the overwhelming majority of you making it binding in various ways. But I don't think that we can find an overall systemic solution to it right now. Is this world more stable?

No, it certainly isn't, judging by what we see before us. But because power is more evenly distributed, I do think that many more people have the power to try and build these coalitions on issues that matter. I think the real test going forward is what we do on climate change, what we do on developing country debt.

And for me, that's going to be something. I'm not sure that on peace and security issues, and I think Gaza, Iran, these are proof of it, that because of the imbalancing power, those who have the power are going to be willing to accept restraints on what they do. So for me, the immediate test, therefore, is to work on the parts that I think we can build large coalitions on.

And the way to do that would certainly include moral leadership of some kind.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno:
Thank you very much for your contribution. Thank you to all the panelists for their contribution. I think we have had a very substantive discussion where, as Shankar says, there is not one systemic answer, but each of us, in her or his own way, can do something about it.

The next panel will be about actually the roles of non-state actors, of civil society, of business, because the world is not just ruled by state. It's increasingly connected. And so that will be another way to continue the conversation on how to bring some measure, not just of order, but of principles in a world that is definitely very unprincipled at the moment.

So thank you.

Shivshankar Menon:
Thank you.