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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 COVID-19 pandemic has delayed global summits and undermined the ability of leaders to act on issues that imperil the safety, security, and well-being of every nation’s citizens, including climate change, biodiversity loss, intellectual property rules, and nuclear risks. The unprecedented joint health and economic crisis is also exacerbating divisions between developing and developed countries amid an increasingly polarized U.S.-China rivalry and escalating Russian aggression.

The fourth and almost certainly final Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) will take place from March 31 to April 1, 2016 in Washington, DC. Washington hosted the first such meeting of heads of states and government in 2010, followed by summits in Seoul (2012) and the Hague (2014). Though the NSS process is about to end, the struggle to prevent nuclear terrorism is not, and at present there is no vehicle with which to carry these efforts forward in a concerted manner. The NSS process has led to significant achievements in securing nuclear materials worldwide, but much more remains to be done.

As the second decade of this century comes to a close, effective multilateral cooperation seems to be on the ropes. The Donald J. Trump administration has abandoned U.S. global leadership, brazen geopolitics have returned with a vengeance, and populist leaders have exploited public dissatisfaction with globalization to chip away at European and broader global integration.