Finland's Stubb Warned Of A 'Non-Cooperative Multipolar World Order' And Told The West The Global South Is Rising
UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 3 Of 15
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| File Photo/Representational: Via: @alexstubb on X |
"We seem to be going the other way: towards a non-cooperative multipolar world order," Stubb told the General Debate on Tuesday, September 22. "This order, as it turns out, is based on zero-sum deals, transactions, and unrestrained power. This is a short-sighted approach." Such an order, he said, "will ultimately lead to conflict. It will turn against us, whether you represent a great power, a middle power, or a small state, like Finland."
His diagnosis echoed the Secretary-General's warning earlier that day that multipolarity could take the form of fragmentation and transactionalism. But Stubb went further than most Western leaders in describing the shift itself. "We in the West must acknowledge that the Global South and East are an expanding economic and political force," he said.
He described three trends. The first was plurilateralism, ad hoc coalitions built when global cooperation fails, which he said should support the UN system rather than substitute for it. The second was realignment. "Everywhere I travel around the world, I hear the word 'realignment'," he said, as nations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas seek new partnerships. The third was a new economic order in which trade, technology, energy, investment and supply chains have become tools of geopolitical competition. "We have entered a world of coercion, where dependencies are vulnerabilities," he said. "Countries seek chokepoints that can be weaponized to pressure others."
The new order, he argued, "must be based on a realistic understanding of the power balance in the world", and the global economic architecture "must be updated to reflect today's power balance". "Multilateral solutions are needed in an increasingly multipolar world," he said.
On the Security Council, Stubb set out one of the most detailed reform plans of the session: at least two new permanent seats for Africa, two for Asia-Pacific and one for Latin America. "No single state should have veto power," he said, adding that a Council member that violates the UN Charter should have its voting rights suspended. Finland is standing for a non-permanent seat for 2029-2030.
He was unequivocal on Ukraine, calling Russia's war "unlawful, unjustified and unprovoked", and highlighted the Coalition of the Willing's work for a just and lasting peace. He said the world had moved back to "raw power and narrow self-interest", but rejected the idea that the rules-based order was finished. Powers that claim to abandon rules, he argued, are really seeking rules "more permissive for the powerful".
Stubb closed by calling for "a new San Francisco moment", a process beginning with the next Secretary-General in which leaders would chart a way forward, as they did when the UN was founded in 1945.
The national statements delivered at this year's UN General Assembly left little doubt about how far the ground has shifted. Opening the debate, Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders that "we are clearly moving towards a multipolar world" and that the movement is irreversible, though he warned it could take the shape of fragmentation and transactionalism rather than a networked order rooted in international law. The backdrop was hard to miss: a US-Israeli war with Iran nearly seven months old, the US capture of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro in January, and a US President who used the same podium to say he was weighing a deal with Tehran against "annihilating" it. Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the World Trade Organization was on life support and condemned the use of tariffs as "a weapon of coercion and blackmail", while India's S. Jaishankar declared that the post-1945 order is giving way to new realities. Türkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Spain's Pedro Sánchez, from very different vantage points, both called for an end to the veto held by the Security Council's five permanent members. Russia's Sergey Lavrov went further, telling the Assembly that "the dictatorship of a single hegemon has run amok" and that a fairer, multipolar order was emerging. What remains unsettled is not whether power is spreading, but whether the institutions built in 1945 can adjust fast enough to hold it together.