It may take a generation for a stable new world order to emerge

With an unpredictable US fragmenting the Western alliance, and China presenting itself as a paragon of stability, a more complex and blended reality will determine the coming years in global governance.

Expert comment

Published 8 September 2025 — 3 minute READ

Image — Leaders arrive for a reception in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 3 September, 2025. (Photo by Xinhua / Kremlin Press Office/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Dr Samir Puri

Former Director, Global Governance and Security Centre

Starkly contrasting visions of world order and global governance are being prominently displayed this September at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus meeting and the United Nations General Assembly.

Rather than the outright victory of one vision over the other, the likely long-term outcome will be a more complex blended reality. Established structures of global governance such as the UN are struggling to adapt to a more multipolar reality. Ushering in a more stable future world order will be a generational undertaking. During that time, the risks of insecurity and further wars will simmer.

US retrenchment, Chinese ambition

China’s hosting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus meeting in Tianjin on 1 September brings these points home. 20 world leaders from different parts of the non-Western world attended, allowing Xi Jinping to present China as a paragon of stability. This comes at a time when US foreign policy is anything but, given the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies, including towards its closest allies, and its withdrawal from some multilateral institutions.

As the US cedes important features of its global leadership role to China, both countries are also focusing on military competition in the Indo-Pacific. China’s huge military parade, staged immediately after the SCO meeting, saw Xi flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. 

Ostensibly the event was intended to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Second World War’s end. But it mainly served to project a fearsome display of Beijing’s growing military power. 

Meanwhile, the US is taking the next steps in its strategic tilt towards the Indo-Pacific by reducing some security assistance to Eastern European countries, shifting the burden of deterring Russia ever more rapidly to European countries.

Security questions are not the only form of competition underway. The post-1945 US-led world order has also relied on the stabilizing force of its economic leadership – now undermined by the Trump administration’s tariff policies – and the moral and practical powers resulting from its leading place in multilateral institutions.

There will be evident incongruity when the eightieth session of United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convenes on 9 September, given the Trump administration’s openly expressed cynicism toward the gathering. There are 180 separate agenda points in the Provisional Agenda of the Eightieth Regular Session of the General Assembly. Although only a handful pertain specifically to the Palestinian territories, the mood around UNGA will be dominated by outrage toward Israel’s continuing war in the Gaza Strip. The mood, and attitudes towards the US, will not have been helped by the suspension of US visas for Palestinian passport holders.

The impression all this creates is…of older, established global governance structures that are unable to deliver effective responses that reflect a workable quorum of world opinion.

Fractures within the Western alliance over this matter are widening. The Trump administration is steadfast in its support of Israel’s continuation of the war. In July, by contrast, the UK, France and Canada renewed their calls for a two-state solution. This follows the lead of many Global South countries that have been loudly criticizing Israeli policy in Gaza for some time, with some rallying around South Africa’s genocide case brought at the International Court of Justice in the Hague in December 2023.

The impression all this creates is deeply concerning: of a world riven by superpower competition, by bitter ongoing wars and of older, established global governance structures that are unable to deliver effective responses that reflect a workable quorum of world opinion.

Spreading rot

Other areas of global governance are also withering, such as security. There is an absence of new arms control treaties, for instance, to mitigate the risks of militarizing outer space or the growing automation of weapons systems. Meanwhile treaties on existing arms, from nuclear weapons to land mines, are also fragmenting with countries withdrawing and failing to agree new terms. The absence of international norms, regulations and standards around these issues opens a path to increasingly unfettered competition and proliferation that risks greater insecurity in the future.

Amidst this backdrop, it is significant that President Xi announced China’s new ‘Global Governance Initiative’ at the latest SCO meeting. While details were scarce, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi explained that the Global Governance Initiative is ‘designed to firmly support the central role of the UN in international affairs’.

This is likely to frame China’s participation at UNGA this year, with Beijing hoping to present itself as a growing global force for stability, as juxtaposed with the US’s unpredictable foreign and trade policies.

This should be interpreted as a blending between the old and the new: China continues to work through a mixture of established multilateral platforms while advancing new offerings of its own – such as Xi’s suggestion of a Chinese development bank for SCO members to mitigate the US dollar risks they are facing. 

The language of supporting sovereign equality is a compelling message to a growing number of countries, even if China is mainly using it to enhance its position at the top of the international hierarchy. 

The eightieth anniversaries of the end of the Second World War and of the formation of the UN are a reminder that security challenges and global governance offerings are entwined in important ways. 

The journey towards a more complex and blended reality, whereby different visions and offerings of global governance co-exist and in some cases combine, is just beginning.

1945 was followed by the independence of former colony nations across the Global South, while the UN system and its associated institutions provided the undergirding for a more stable and predictable world order. After 1991, following the independence of former Soviet countries, the Western and more specifically the US character of global governance, and of globalization, became unchallenged features of the global order.

These eras are now firmly over. The journey towards a more complex and blended reality, whereby different visions and offerings of global governance co-exist and in some cases combine, is just beginning. Navigating it will require fresh, innovative thinking that exhibits an openness to change. But it will also need a firm understanding of what existing structures need to be preserved.