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After a tumultuous 2016, the world holds its breath for what the coming year may bring. Angry populism is on the march. Great power relations are tense. The Middle East has imploded. Meanwhile, President-Elect Donald J. Trump proposes to upend U.S. foreign policy in areas from trade to climate, alliances to nonproliferation, terrorism to human rights. In a world in disarray, can multilateralism deliver?

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has taken a radically different approach to trade than his predecessors and calls for protectionism have increased in the United States. Trump has launched a series of unilateral moves based on the belief that international trade is a zero-sum game in which the preceding U.S. administrations’ “disastrous” policies disadvantaged American workers and companies.

Council of Councils (CoC) experts from Saudi Arabia, Germany, China, and Italy react to the surprise assault by Gaza militants on Israel on October 7, detail the regional and international implications, and propose ways forward for managing or ending the conflict in this Global Perspectives Roundup.

Italy hosted the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Apulia on June 13-15, 2024. In this global perspective roundup, seven experts reflect on the significant outcomes on policies defending Ukraine and a more assertive approach toward China, but also highlight the uncertainty of future accomplishments given domestic political turmoil in almost all G7 countries. 

This December, countries will gather in Paris to hammer out a global agreement to limit climate change at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties. The last attempt to do so ended in acrimony and recrimination; Copenhagen has gone down in history as a failure. Six years on, should we expect things to be different in Paris? I would argue yes for two reasons; one encouraging, the other less so.

Improved conditions for a deal

Cybersecurity is now a leading concern for major economies. Reports indicate that hackers can target the U.S. Department of Justice or Iranian nuclear facilities just as easily as they can mine credit card data. Threats have risen as the Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the global economy, with thousands of operations migrating onto it. For example, the innocuous practice of bring-your-own-device to work presents mounting dangers due to malware attacks--software intended to corrupt computers.

Summit diplomacy was a prominent casualty of COVID-19 during 2020. The pandemic forced the postponement of many high-level gatherings and the shift of others, like the annual opening of the UN General Assembly, to online platforms. Multilateralism-by-Zoom will continue into 2021, as the world rolls out novel coronavirus vaccines. Still, the coming year will be a critical one for international cooperation, even if the calendar remains fluid.

The sixteenth annual BRICS (whose membership has grown from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to also include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates) summit was held in Kazan, Russia, on October 22-October 24. 2024. We asked what was new and innovative at the summit this year, and how the bloc is changing the geopolitical context. Six Council of Councils (CoC) experts from BRICS member countries and beyond reflect on the future of the group and what expansion means for global governance.

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) bloc met for its annual leader’s summit in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 22–24, 2023. The highlight of the fifteenth summit was the agreement to admit six new member countries: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, who will officially join the group in January 2024. Ten Council of Councils (CoC) experts from BRICS members and beyond reflect on the future of the grouping and what expansion means for global governance.