‘Global and regional powers are trying to rewrite the rules of the game’: Lodhi

Speakers agreed that a new World Order is in making


Imran Adnan February 22, 2020

LAHORE: “We are passing through the most unpredictable phase where we see instability across the world. Global and regional powers are trying to rewrite the rules of the game,” former Pakistan Representative to the United Nations (UN) Maleeha Lodhi expressed these views in the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) 2020 held at Alhamrah Hall on Friday.

Renowned former diplomat and Pakistan’s Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, an Iranian-American academic and author specialising in the Middle East and the Islamic world, Vali Reza Nasr and Turkish novelist and essayist, Kaya Genç were the panelists of the LLF 2020 session titled ‘Global Retreat from Multilateralism’.

The session was moderated by the veteran journalist and television analyst Zahid Hussain.

“Anti-globalisation sentiment is prevailing everywhere because it has failed evenly,” Lodhi pointed out adding that global powers were being redistributed across the world.

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“There are various examples that multilateralism has been rejected by countries. There is widespread disagreement among the public especially the youth across the world over the utility of multilateral institutions,” she explained.

“What we are witnessing is a very unstable period and we do not know that what will be its outcome. Today the world is multipolar and no country has the ability to achieve something on its own.”

“We have witnessed that agreed international rules and agreements are being violated by the United States (US), Russia, India and other countries,” she said.

PHOTO: EXPRESS PHOTO: EXPRESS

She assessed that there was a need to make these institutions more inclusive to improve things because in the current structure of the UN, five permanent member countries use veto power to decide the agenda, what would be resolved and what would not be resolved.

“The big countries have rejected multilateralism otherwise smaller countries including Pakistan support it because they believe that it brings them benefits,” she insisted.

The former diplomat also highlighted another phenomenon in which countries are trying to get into formal alliances but prefer to have partnerships with like-minded countries on specific issues.

The Iranian-American Specialist on the Middle East Vali Reza Nasr said that for the first time staunch supporters of multilateralism, the US and Europe, are raising voices against it because they are losing their grip on these institutions.

“It is believed that multilateralism is not a useful solution anymore. Multilateral institutions like the UN, World Bank and International Monetary Fund are facing pressures,” he added.

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Nasr said that in the case of Iran Nuclear agreement, the former US president called it a plan and not a treaty, which means that a newcomer can say that it is my predecessor’s plan and I am no longer convinced by it.

Citing an example of the Turkish National Vision, Kaya Genç highlighted that in the 60s, Turkey envisioned not to align with Europe but instead make partnerships with countries like Pakistan.

“In the 90s, again there was a shift in alignments and it was decided that Turkey would work with European countries which worked well till the Davos forum in which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out after a heated debate on the Gaza War with Israeli President Shimon Peres.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22nd, 2020.

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