The last year has been marked by a dramatic turn away from multilateral cooperation towards the assertion of national interest. Many attribute this directly to the re-election of President Trump, and while he is the most prominent spokesman and catalyst for this change, the talk will trace how the US move away from multilateral cooperation began much earlier. This shift is also not limited to the US, as other countries also focus on the promotion of national interest over international solidarity.

A phrase that has been used to describe the new condition of international politics is: "multipolarity with Trump characteristics." This deliberately borrows from an earlier apparent conversion of the multilateral system to one where China played a much more important part. That competition between the US and China is now playing out across a range of international political and trade issues, including leadership in institutions such as the United Nations and BWIs. And as these rivals tussle for influence, a range of new emerging powers such as Brazil, India, South Africa and others demand a greater role. They, together with many smaller countries, fear the collapse of the multilateral value system associated with rule-of-law. The talk will describe this three way tug of war for influence and its likely outcomes.

Mark Malloch-Brown has had a long career in international affairs, development, business, and communications. At the United Nations, Mark Malloch-Brown led the global promotion of the UN Millennium Development Goals as head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP). At the UNDP, and previously as vice president of external affairs at the World Bank, he led reform efforts to increase the impact of both organisations. He later served as Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, and then as UN Deputy Secretary General, before joining the British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as minister responsible for Africa and Asia from 2007 to 2009. Most recently, he was president of the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. Mark Malloch-Brown is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics (LSE), a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House, he was knighted for his contributions to international affairs, and is currently on leave from the British House of Lords. 

Professor Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (Chair)

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Full Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Paris, co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin and a former editor of African Affairs, the journal of the Royal African Society. He has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust/British Academy Senior Research Fellowship for 2023-24.

'In Trump's world, is there room for multilateralism?' with Lord Malloch-Brown