“In 2025, the G7 must reiterate its support for multilateralism and reinforce the rules-based international order, which requires genuine cooperation with allies while standing up to those who seek to abuse human rights and curtail freedoms.” This is what the Civil7, an alliance of civil society organizations clearly committed to the rules-based international order, emphasized ahead of the 2025 G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada.
Canan Kus is based at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Beijing Office.
The word “multilateralism” is used regularly in Western summit declarations. It reliably appears in documents published by the G7, NATO, and the EU, as if the world hadn’t already moved on. While these papers reaffirm an old order, a new reality is emerging outside — one that finds little meaning in terms like this. More and more voices from the Global South are speaking not of multilateralism, but of multipolarity: an order with multiple centres of power, diverse development paths, and a clear intent not to cede geopolitical space exclusively to the West.
This is more than a linguistic difference. Even as the Global North holds out hope for inclusion in existing institutions, new alliances and global formats are already taking shape across the rest of the world. Multipolarity is a global shift that does not seek opposition, but rather reflects the plurality of the world and claims the right to pursue its own models, interests, and paths. The fact that the Global North is clinging to multilateralism while the Global South speaks of multipolarity reveals not a semantic misunderstanding, but a structural power relation. Institutions like the UN cling to “multilateralism” as if it were an anchor for stability. “Multipolarity”, on the other hand, remains something better left unspoken in many diplomatic forums. The term does not fit into an order that still sees itself as universal, even though its foundations are increasingly crumbling.
Global Renegotiations in a World without Assigned Seats
In a moment of tectonic realignments in global power, the North’s refusal to adapt, rooted in outdated confidence, is not only short-sighted, but also risks leaving it increasingly irrelevant in a rapidly transforming world. Alliances like BRICS and QUAD clearly show that we are in a period of transformation. The Global South is gaining a voice through such newly formed alliances. More and more countries are recognizing their own economic and political sovereignty and are refusing the logic of bloc alignment. Instead, they are promoting a plural order in which multiple development paths can coexist and be used, depending on their own interests, regional agreements, and global alliances.
In the current global context, such flexibility is gaining importance: not as a bloc in opposition to the West (which is becoming less relevant), but as an emancipatory platform from which countries in the Global South can cooperate independently. That is what makes multipolarity so attractive. It shifts not only ideological power relations, but also the material foundations of geopolitical agency. It opens economic spaces beyond the Western-dominated regime of accumulation and breaks with the logic of structural dependency that still reproduces colonial value chains. The appeal of these alliances lies precisely in their emphasis on equality and joint development. Instead of submitting to a hegemonic system, new tools are emerging, such as alternative currency systems, that enable a fairer, more decentralized global economy driven by countries that are choosing a sovereign, post-colonial future.
Multilateralism: The Dream of Equality?
The Latin root lateralis means “belonging to the side”, implying that international relations occur on the same level, based on some form of equivalency. It refers to a system in which power is balanced and all sides have an equal say in shaping the international order. In Western diplomacy, this became “multilateralism” after 1945, a response to the crises of the interwar period and the foundation of a new rules-based international order. It referred to a global network of states engaging in mutual coordination and supposed equality.
But from the outset, this system was structurally asymmetrical, designed not for equality, but for reproducing geopolitical and economic dominance. In recent decades, US hegemony has symbolized the enforcement of a neoliberal worldview centred on free trade, deregulation, and Western dominance. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Global North’s rhetoric has shifted from market liberalism to a supposedly values-based order emphasizing democracy, freedom, and human rights. However, this is often selective, rarely self-critical, and firmly embedded in Western politics of self-interest.
There seems to be no alternative to this model in the Global North. Nonetheless, recent developments suggest that this order is faltering. What the North calls a “rules-based international order” is in fact built on rules written in Brussels, Washington, and Paris. The South is invited to implement them. This undermines the promise of multilateralism as a forum of equals.
Europe and the US still want to be hosts and spokespersons, but they have locked themselves inside their own house, polished the rules, and are wondering why new deals are being made outside.
What is sold as multilateralism often masks the imposition of existing power relations. This becomes obvious in the way that the system presents itself as naturally nonpartisan and universal. To challenge it is not seen as advocating a more equal exchange, but rather as an attack on the system itself. It is not very surprising that the North clings to this model, not only ideologically, but also emotionally and substantively. Letting go would mean giving up power, losing the ability to define the narrative, and reckoning with the burden of past injustices. Thus, the West remains in its echo chamber: summit meetings, strategy papers, intra-European state visits.
The West talks to itself. What looks like principled steadfastness is, in truth, hubris. We see an actor who refuses to become one among many. Perhaps there is fear as well: fear that power is not just shifting, but being lost — fear that the Global South is not merely a partner, but rather an actor in its own right, with its own demands, the capacity to negotiate, and the power to shape global affairs. In this context, clinging to multilateralism is not just a political reflex, but also an active refusal to adapt. The Global North hesitates at the threshold of multipolarity, while the Global South has already taken that step.
When the Guests Stop Showing Up
Europe and the US still want to be hosts and spokespersons, but they have locked themselves inside their own house, polished the rules, and are wondering why new deals are being made outside.
Reality has become detached from the linear idea of states standing side by side. It would be too simplistic to dismiss multilateralism as outdated and regard multipolarity merely as its update. No, multipolarity represents a rupture with the existing order. The world has become faster and more chaotic, and therein lies its emancipatory potential. Multipolarity does not mean that all actors are equally strong or peaceful. It means that new centres emerge, new alliances are tried, and international platforms are no longer governed by Western-dominated interests. It is precisely in this messy diversity that there is space for other priorities, voices, and narratives. What was once subdued under multilateral structures now circulates more freely and contradictorily.
We are in a phase of hard negotiation. If multilateralism is a round table with fixed seating and an agenda, then multipolarity is a loud, chaotic marketplace. Negotiations don’t happen side by side, but criss-cross and simultaneously. This lack of clarity is uncomfortable, especially for those who are used to setting the tone. But for many countries in the Global South, it offers new opportunities. It opens spaces to articulate alternative ideas of development, security, and sovereignty beyond a liberal mainstream. These countries no longer play the role of invited guests; they define with whom and on what terms they will cooperate.
Such developments are not always coherent or conflict-free, which makes them politically significant. They are plural and fragmented, which makes them debatable and yet effective. Multipolarity should not be seen as a finished model, but as an ongoing negotiation process. It is not yet the just global order many hope for, and it still reproduces power imbalances. But it does set things in motion. This is a transitional moment in which new orders are being contested. For the first time since Bretton Woods, it is once again a truly open question who will shape the world, with whom, and under what conditions.
Multipolarity is best understood as the hot phase of global reorganization. It is uncomfortable and contradictory, but full of emancipatory potential.
