New Global Initiative Aims to Fix Broken International Order
The Quincy Institute brings together 130 scholars from 40 countries to develop a roadmap for stabilizing the international security order
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 12, 2024
CONTACT: Jessica Rosenblum | [email protected]
WASHINGTON – As war and conflict roils the world, and our international institutions fail to promote peace and develop mechanisms to tackle transnational, shared threats, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (QI) is debuting the first report from its Better Order Project, an effort to recenter the world on a law-based, universal order instead of a “rules-based” coalition of the willing.
Beginning in mid-2023, QI’s Better Order Project brought together more than 130 scholars and practitioners from over 40 countries, spanning the Global North and South and including all permanent members of the Security Council to develop “Toward A Better Security Order,” a package of proposals aimed at defusing the crises emerging from a faltering “rules-based international order.”
“The global system is moving toward collapse and Joe Biden’s push for a rules-based international order has unfortunately added to a fracturing that risks birthing a dangerous and more unstable multi-order world,,” said Quincy Institute Executive Vice President Trita Parsi. “We are hopeful that the Better Order Project’s proposals inspire a thorough discussion of how the U.S. can be a productive partner in building a more secure, stable, and capable global system that enables far greater burden-sharing than we see today — and what precisely is at stake if Washington and the world fail to seize this challenge.”
The report warns that the world faces the dual crisis of global governance institutions and mechanisms that do not reflect the increasingly multipolar characteristics of the world, and a series of interconnected, transitional challenges like combatting climate change and managing emerging technology.
Left unresolved, these dual crises are likely to yield an increasingly fragmented and insecure world that prioritizes coercion over cooperation, is prone to dangerous escalation and arms races, and would be ruinous for U.S. and global security.
The report argues that the way forward is neither the promotion of a coalition of like-minded states under the so-called rules-based international order, nor the advent of a rival order dominated by other great powers. To ensure peace, stability, and a fighting chance against transnational threats, the world needs enhanced norms and laws to rejuvenate an inclusive global order rooted in international law, multilateralism, and the ability of states to participate on an equal basis.
The project advances 20 detailed proposals for addressing vital global security concerns and instability in the global system, including: developing rules of the road for economic sanctions, tightening norms around the use of force, reforming the UN Security Council, containing rogue AI, avoiding nuclear war, prioritizing climate change, strengthening order in Europe and the Middle East, and more.
“The breakdown in the global security order is not an academic concern — it makes the world less stable, and it makes Americans less safe,” said Quincy Institute CEO Lora Lumpe. “While this document is not a panacea, the Better Order Project reforms would go a long way toward building something better out of the fractured remains of the post-WWII order.”
The Better Order Project’s many signatories hold a range of perspectives on the future of the international order — evidenced by the compromises contained in the reform package. But they all signed onto these reforms not because they agree with every word, but because they recognize and support the desirability of this package of reforms to the fracturing of the world into rival orders.. Signatories include Antonio Patriota (former Brazilian FM), Nabil Fahmy (former Egyptian FM), Jorge Castañeda (former Mexican FM), Rosine Sori-Coulibaly (Former Minister of Economy, Finance and Development, Burkina Faso), Nathalie Tocci (Italy), Hugh White (former Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence, Australia), Amb. Kingsley Makhmubela (South Africa), Nirupama Rao (Former Foreign Secretary, India), Gérard Araud (former Director General for Political and Security Affairs, France), Wu Xinbo (Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China), Fyodor Lukyanov (Russia), Amb. Kim Wonsoo (South Korea), Kishore Mahbubani (former UN Ambassador, Singapore), as well as American scholars and former officials such as Stephen Walt, Thomas Graham, Stephen Heintz, Christopher Preble, and many more.
The Quincy Institute is a transpartisan think tank established in 2019 to move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace.
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