Why it's time for the 'middle powers' to step up on geopolitics

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Bruce Jones, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution: if you look at how we have managed to advance cooperation and multilateralism, both during the Cold War and the post-Cold War, the middle powers play this extremely important role in both phases.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week: geopolitics - as relations between superpowers, old and new, are tense, we ask: can so-called ‘middle powers’ step up?

Bruce Jones: Take a country like Canada or Australia or Norway or Brazil, etc. they don't have nearly the same level of tension or antagonism with the Chinese or with the Americans or with the Russians as those countries might have with one another. And so they're able to pose things or suggest solutions and have that be received by the various top powers with some degree of open mindedness.

Robin Pomeroy: A Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and a former Argentinian foreign minister say such a move by middle powers is needed now more than ever

Susana Malcorra, Senior Advisor, IE University and former Argentinian foreign minister: The level of tension that the world is facing shows that a conflict prevention and conflict solution is absolutely necessary.

Robin Pomeroy: With major powers and the UN unable to prevent or end many wars, maybe this is the moment for middle powers.

Susana Malcorra: Something new is needed to establish that connection between the two sides.

Robin Pomeroy: Subscribe to Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts, or visit wef.ch/podcasts where you will also find Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues.

I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this look at the role of middle powers in geopolitics

Bruce Jones: It's our best bet, not our only hope, but our best bet, is for the middle and major powers to take on this role.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: Welcome to Radio Davos, and on this episode we are talking about geopolitics. The balance of power in the world is shifting. Just think of the rise of Asia and the growing importance of emerging economies. These are slow tectonic movements, but over time they have wide-ranging effects on the conditions for international cooperation.

The so-called “middle powers” - and we will come back to what that means - have in the past often played a key role in preventing and de-escalating great-power conflicts.

The question we will be discussing in this podcast is what balancing and constructive role “middle powers” can play in our current fractious, and increasingly multipolar world.

To look at all that, I am joined in the Radio Davos studio by my colleague, Nicolai Ruge.

Nikolai, you work with the Global Future Council on Geopolitics. So before we get stuck in, can you just tell us what is a GFC? It's an acronym we use a lot here at the World Economic Forum. What is it?

Nicolai Ruge: The Global Future Councils are basically multi-stakeholder fora or working groups, if you will, that are designed to promote innovative solutions and thinking around specific topics. So on each Council you would have 20 people representing academia, government, international organisations, business and civil society.

One of these Councils focuses on geopolitics, and this Council decided little while ago to do a report that looks at what the current turbulent geopolitical situation means for global cooperation in four areas: on security, technology, climate and trade. And importantly, they also try in the report to come up with some ideas on how to revitalise cooperation around those shared interests that, after all, exist within those four areas.

The title of report is Shaping Cooperation in a Fragmented World, and it was launched in connection with the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos this year in January.

Robin Pomeroy: You've invited two experts to discuss this. They are with us down the line here in the studio. Could you tell us who they are?

Nicolai Ruge: We have with us Susana Malcorra. She's a former minister of foreign affairs of Argentina. She is also co-chair of the International Crisis Group, an international NGO that's committed to preventing and resolving violent conflicts. She's also founder and president of Global Women Leaders Voices. And currently, she's a senior advisor with the IE University in Madrid, Spain.

And we also have with us Bruce Jones. He's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. That's a well-known public policy think tank based in Washington, DC. And Bruce is an expert and author of multiple books on international security.

And I should add that both Susana and Bruce have held top level advisory positions within the UN. So two very capable voices when it comes to multilateral cooperation.

Robin Pomeroy: And both Bruce and Susanna had a role in creating that report. Okay, well, let's get into it then.

We talk about middle powers. So the role of middle powers, before we discuss that, what is a middle power. Which one of you, Bruce or Susana, want to try and define what we're talking about?

Susana Malcorra: Well, the notion of middle powers has existed for a long time is the in-between, I will say.

You have the big powers, and somewhere in the middle you have these governments, these countries that represent an important part of the geopolitics but don't have enough power on their own to be competing, to be the big ones.

That used to be typically the case for Western middle powers. And we have seen that during the Cold War, the Nordics, for example, represented interesting middle powers. They had a lot of influence. What has happened now is that the middle powers have spread throughout the world and represent the different regions of the world, and that is what makes them so interesting.

You know, they can, if the arrangement is right, they can help in bringing together solutions in sort of coalitions, coming together, trying to address certain problems.

Robin Pomeroy: Could you give us a couple of examples of countries that are middle powers, perhaps, that have had the kind of role you're talking about in global diplomacy?

Susana Malcorra: Well, historically, one country that held that space, for example, was Norway. Norway was always playing a role to broker deals and try to facilitate solutions to problems of this nature.

Today we have some very interesting new middle powers. We have Brazil, from my part of the world, for example, that is an important middle power. India, who is aspiring to be a superpower, but for now is a middle power. Indonesia. It's also a middle power tool that can play a role. And there are countries in Africa, South Africa is a middle power. And in the Middle East, in the Gulf you have a countries that are stepping up to play the role of middle powers and brokering solutions.

So there are quite a few examples that what is important cover the whole geography of the world.

Nicolai Ruge: In the report on how to cooperate in a fragmented world, you clearly want to check us out of any naive conviction that economic interdependence and rationality would prevent war. Rather, the starting point must be, you say, to recognise that, and I would like to quote: "this trust is a baked in feature of geopolitical reality".

That's a that's a pretty tough, blunt statement. What does that stark reality mean for the opportunities for middle powers to assert more influence in our increasingly multipolar world? I don't know, Bruce, if you want to have a stab at that.

Bruce Jones: You're right. I think we did want to sort of shake a little bit this notion that we can still think about kind of cooperation and the traditional way. And that's really not the world that we're living in.

We're living in a world in which the scale of distrust among the top powers is extremely high. The risk of conflict we already see conflict in in Europe, there's a serious risk of a conflict with the United States and China. This is not a world where cooperation, just as it's been over the last 30 years or so, is going to cut the mustard.

So what we do in the report is talk about what are the experiences. I wouldn't even use the word cooperate. It's finding solutions to problems under conditions of distrust. What we emphasise is this brokering role the middle powers so frequently played during the Cold War, helping the U.S. and the Soviet Union de-escalate during acute crises, serving as channels when it was hard for the the two superpowers to communicate directly, and also in driving innovations in multilateralism. Some of them were designed to help solve security problems, some of them were designed to help advance economic agendas. Middle and major powers have played these constructive and creative roles.

The whole point about them is, you know, you take a country like Canada or Australia or Norway or Brazil, etc. they don't have nearly the same level of tension or antagonism with the Chinese or with the Americans or with the Russians, as those countries might have with one another. And so they're able to pose things or suggest solutions and have that be received by the various top powers with some degree of open mindedness.

Whereas solutions, you know, if the Americans were to propose a solution right now, the Russians aren't going to accept it. If the Chinese are going to propose solution, the Americans aren't going to accept it.

So the role of a sort of a semi trusted or reasonably trusted actor or a third party can be very important in in proposing solutions and in generating, sort of common action, even with this very deep distrust we have now.

Nicolai Ruge: You actually have a very interesting proposal in the report. You float the idea of forming a middle powers group, sort of an M10, to straddle our increasingly divided world of, of the G7 and the BRICs as we know them. But but creating such an M10, how realistic is that and why is it necessary?

Bruce Jones: Realism, as you know, a second question, but let's go to to what values and what could happen.

And I think one of the challenges we face is that all of the major institutions that we have for proposing solutions or solving problems are increasingly sort of stuck in this geopolitical tension. We see it at the Council at the U.N.

And so we thought it might be worth exploring a mechanism where the constructive major and middle powers, the Japans, the Brazils, the Canadas, the Australias, etc. could come together to see about proposing solutions to to kind of concert their efforts. It could be done informally, it could be done issue by issue. I think we thought that there would be some value in a more standing mechanism.

Everybody always says, oh, it's impossible to create new institutions and then we create new institutions. We do it all the time. And institutions change and evolve and evolve all the time. What it takes is a degree of vision and leadership. I don't know exactly where that would come from in the current moment, where we're lacking some leadership in the international system, but sometimes it's valuable to put ideas out there.

The G20 was an idea and it wasn't an institution before it was an institution. Things are created by proposing ideas, having debate around them, and then when the moment seems right, somebody steps forward and takes a leadership role to actually create an institution.

Susana Malcorra: Let me add something to what Bruce just said.

Two comments: one on leadership. There is no doubt that leadership is the driving force for any of these new and creative approaches that we are putting on the table. So that's a big question mark.

But the second one is this notion that the middle powers, in a certain way, do themselves a balancing act between the big ones. They rely, depend, are related to both sides. So it is important for them to find the balance between the two big powers. And that is in itself an incentive to propose solutions that, and I add here a third element, probably issues based, because often it is the case that middle powers can associate themselves very, very nicely, very, very easily around certain issues. And if you work on that issue with a combination of middle powers, you might work on another issue in a combination of another set of powers. And that can lead to, in the end, the creation of the M10 that we suggested.

But it is clearly a moment where leadership ambition that was referred to by Bruce is required. That is, in a way, what is lacking today.

Bruce Jones: By the way, we're already seeing some of this.

Look at the role that Turkey played in helping with the U.N. to broker the Black Sea grain deal to avoid some of the worst global consequences of the conflict spilling out into the Black Sea.

Look at the role that Japan played in creating something to replace TPP when the Americans walked away from TPP, the trade deal for Asia.

So you are seeing some elements of this, but the pace of geopolitical deterioration is not being matched by the scale of of innovation on the middle powers, and we're sort of trying to put our fingers on the scale here a little bit and see if we can't generate some more innovation, some more leadership, some more engagement by these countries who have such a huge stake in a stable international system, such a huge stake in the continuation of the multilateral system, which are both under very serious pressure.

Susana Malcorra: And a notion of shared responsibility too, you know, it's us, we need to find a solution, sort of approach.

Robin Pomeroy: Has the time come now for middle power. Is this kind of a golden age for middle powers? Or, as you seem to be saying, it's more, it should be, we hope there are some middle powers that who can step up with that leadership at a time when maybe the big powers, once again, are very polarised.

Bruce Jones: Well, some of it is happening. And, you know, we just mentioned Turkey and the Black Sea grain deal, Japan on trade agreements for for Asia. I would put in the same category the Indian and the Brazilian roles back to back. And then South Africans would follow in managing the G20. We've seen a kind of much more revitalised G20 under under India, and we'll see the same under Brazil. If those countries can sort of re-energize and reanimate the G20, that will be of value.

My worry is that the, as I said, the pace of deterioration of the geopolitical level is not being matched by the scale of investment.

Let me give you an example of the kind of place where we thought that a grouping or greater communication would be valuable. About a year ago, President Lula, just after he'd been elected, floated a series of proposals for how to resolve the Ukraine-Russia crisis, and they fell on completely deaf ears in the West. They seemed to be completely sort of biased towards the Russians. And you've seen other countries individually try to play similar kinds of roles.

I mean, it seems to me that if you could get Brazil, Canada and Australia and India and a couple of others working together, talking to the Ukrainians, talking to the Russians, talking to the Americans, talking to the Europeans, and coming up with some proposals together, the odds that those would, you know, be listened to and taken seriously would be much, much higher.

And so when you could have coalitions of middle powers that straddle the West and the non-West, the odds of getting to ideas or getting to proposals that would have some traction in international diplomacy seems to be higher.

So it's not that it's not happening at all. It's not happening at the pace we need if we're going to continue to see a stable multilateral system versus the rapid deterioration that we're watching.

Susana Malcorra: And it is like we see parts of this happening, but things come to full fruition, there are not enough examples. And that's the difference. It is not only the intention is the materialisation of the intent that really matters.

Robin Pomeroy: Susana, you mentioned thematic areas that need to be tackled. And I'm wondering where you think the most potential is. We've talked about conflict, but you've also got climate change. We've also mentioned trade. Where would you say there are areas either of massive necessity or of real potential for middle powers to play a role in making progress?

Susana Malcorra: Well, necessity is conflict, no question. I mean, the level of tension that the world is facing shows that a conflict prevention and conflict solution is absolutely necessary.

And there you can have a middle powers associating themselves around a certain conflict because of their vicinity or their distance or their interest in a certain particular area of the world.

Bruce made a reference to the case of of Ukraine. You know, I think it is clear that we need an approach to Ukraine that puts some roadmap on the table. That roadmap should be offered by countries that have a lot in this, because we all have a lot in this. The world has it. But that can show enough distance and balance to say it's a credible proposal to begin with.

Bruce referred to what Brazil did, what, you know, I associate Brazil to Canada, to India, to Australia. Those could be configurations that, in a specific issue, associate themselves without yet the existence of an M10 as we refer to in our paper.

But for me, because of what is going to be the lack of water in most part of the world due to climate change. This could bring together some very unusual middle powers associated to try to find proposals on how to tackle these questions.

So there are issues that can help build trust also among middle powers that belong to different regions. But there are the ones who are most urgent and no question conflict is the one that is absolutely the priority.

Nicolai Ruge: Can I come in with a question here? Because we talk about states and nations, and that makes perfect sense because we talk about middle powers. Just sort of reflect on what this potentially means for the private sector. I mean, do you see a role for middle powers in reshaping global markets, financial systems or supply chains? What does it mean for business that we have these roles of importance of middle powers?

Bruce Jones: Point we discussed earlier of India and Brazil in particular trying to reanimate the G20 as a vehicle for cutting deals and suggesting the way forward on global financial governance and global economic governance is going to be pretty important to the question of whether we see the survival of the WTO or a kind of a, you know, further breakdown in trade rules and trade regimes, for example, whether we see realistic arrangements on climate change coming to the fore.

So I think that there's this space of protecting and in some cases advancing global financial and global economic regimes, that middle powers or middle and major powers are going to be able to play that is very consequential for business.

On the broader question of rewiring globalisation, I mean, it seems to me that that one is going to be driven by the sense of geopolitical distrust. I think we're going to see a much deeper rewiring of globalisation than we've seen so far, and that's going to be driven by a lack of confidence in China. It's going to be lesser dependence on manufacturing in China from the West in particular, sort of trying to move low cost manufacturing out of China to other low cost manufacturing centres. Ngozi of the WTO has talked, I think, very convincingly about the number of countries in the global South that are ready to move up the value chain and could be sources of investment.

So that you're sort of looking at a model of globalisation and new kind of cooperation that is less sort of snared in the tension of geopolitics. I think we'll see a lot of that, but that I think will be driven more organically rather than sort of directed by middle powers, with the big exception of India, which is of course, now sort of primed to grow substantially primed to take a lot of inward investment if it can clear away some regulatory hurdles and potentially play a major new role in in globalisation.

Susana Malcorra: This means also that corporations need to look at middle powers, first as potential enablers of change, and Bruce referred to these changes in trade, for example, may be more organic than just driven by middle powers. But they also need to look at middle powers as potential destinies of certain shifts in the way that the supply chains are put together.

So in a way, what is very important as a message to corporations is that they need to look at a world that is much more nuanced than just reading the black and white option between big powers.

And this means that they need to reflect and look into their business models and in their understanding of the world with a much more sophisticated approach, because it's much more complicated.

Nicolai Ruge: You're both really pinning some hopes on the middle powers. I mean, they have a lot of potential for doing good and advancing global cooperation even.

But are there any risks associated with the rise of middle powers? Do middle powers rise at the expense of others, be it smaller or bigger powers? And that's an important question I'm really curious to hear your answer to. Do you think middle powers will reshape or replace multilateral cooperation, as we've known it since the Second World War?

Susana Malcorra: Well, it's clear that this shifting of power not only affects and brings attention to the US versus China, it adds complexity at a regional level. It adds complexity and rebalances power in a much larger landscape. So yes, there is there is certainly potential risk that the rise of middle powers could bring additional level of tensions or different level of tensions.

What is real is that middle powers are there. They have a spread across the world, and for them to have their own opportunity to bring results and have their own interests protected, they need to play a larger role in the discussions of the world.

So that's why we put so much hope in the rising of middle powers to step up to that role.

It's true that the existence of more centres of power, of a more multipolar world, which is what some of the middle powers bring to the table, could add more tension. But it's also true that if they do it in a manner that is in their self-interest, peace could help balance the needle that today is under such a tension.

Robin Pomeroy: Can I just step back and ask a really stupid question that I should probably have asked at the start? Nicolai, you mentioned the way diplomacy and geopolitics has happened since the Second World War. That's changed over time. But what we have had is the United Nations. Why can't the United Nations solve conflicts or solve climate change? Or maybe sometimes it can, sometimes it can't.

Could you just, you know, to the uninitiated, what are the real challenges with the existing infrastructure? If we just take the United Nations as one thing, why isn't that doing what probably many billions of people around the world would think it should be doing?

Bruce Jones: International institutions aren't magical, right? They don't have magic wands where they can sort of decide that things should be the way things should be. They are frameworks through which countries deploy their power.

So the United Nations can do things when the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and whoever else decide it should do things, it can't do things by itself. It's a framework.

And so when you have the biggest powers, the ones with the most influence, ones with the most capacity, who are at loggerheads with one another, then the institution itself can't do much. And that's the the moment we're in now.

What we've seen through the modern history of the UN is that unblocking that getting the major powers to decide that they should allow the UN to do something or should cooperate to solve a problem, requires a different kind of country who can propose ideas, who can sort of work as backchannel diplomacy, can work with the secretary general to just stimulate some thinking, to stimulate ideas.

And those countries typically are the middle powers, the kinds of countries who have the economic and diplomatic relationships with the top guys that are taken seriously, who can pick up the phone to the foreign minister or the head of state of the United States, or the Russians of the Chinese or whomever.

These countries who have diplomatic weight can help unblock these institutions and propose ideas that then the biggest players can get behind.

The institutions themselves don't have agency in and of themselves are not independent actors. They're instruments that the powers can use to solve problems. But when there's such distrust and tension between the powers, they tend not to win. It requires this, this other form of stimulation.

Sometimes that can be done by senior officials of the institutions, Susana did it on several occasions at the UN, but not when it's at the point where you're seeing major tensions between the top players. Then international institutional officials don't really have the clout directly that requires the backing of a major economy of sort of monumental powers to kind of lift an issue up the agenda and get the attention of senior leaders in the major powers themselves.

Susana Malcorra: And the institution as we know it was created reflecting the reality of 1945, where the powers and the power distribution was totally different.

So that in itself is not conducive sometimes to find solutions, because the Security Council, which is the centre organ to address the questions of conflict in the world, has five countries, five representatives that are permanent and they have veto power.

So when you have these tensions between the US-Russia and the US-China, they have the ability and the element to the veto to block each other in any proposal, something we have seen that recently in the case of Gaza. So that's why something new is needed to establish that connection between the two sides that are in such a deep mistrust with each other to potentially build some bridges.

Bruce Jones: And by the way, a lot of the things that people associate an institution like the UN with - humanitarianism, peacekeeping - those didn't exist when the U.N. was formed. They were tools created by the middle powers during moments of acute tension between the US and the Soviet Union, or acute crisis in world affairs.

Peacekeeping was created by the Canadians, essentially in the 1950s, as a way to stop the Americans of the Soviets from escalating in one of the crises in the Middle East. Humanitarian arrangements, as we have them now, were created by the Swedes and a coalition of middle powers in the early 1990s as a way to solve problems coming out of the first Iraq War.

So precisely the thing that people now think, oh, why can't these institutions act? The things that we most associated with the UN are instruments that were created by the middle powers to help solve the kinds of crises that we're worried about.

Susana Malcorra: And made the institution evolve in a very positive manner, in such a manner that some of these have become flagships of the institution.

Robin Pomeroy: Can we see some optimism here? This you both say, would be a good thing, if middle powers had more of this role. What needs to happen, do you think? What can we look forward to in the tangible future?

Bruce Jones: Well, I'll start on one optimistic point, and I hope Susana will find a second.

You know, one of the realities of the last 30 years is we've had enormous global growth. And that has pulled many countries who are lower middle income or middle income countries into wealthier status, has given them more state capacity, more diplomatic access.

To think about what a country like Brazil was 30 years ago, compared to what Brazil is today, India 30 years ago compared to today, Indonesia, etc..

And so in addition to the traditional Western middle powers, the Canadians, Australians, Norwegians, the Swedes, we do have this enormous dynamism in the quote unquote, global South. Now, they haven't historically played these kinds of roles, or at least not not. And so the recent past. But there's a lot of energy there and a lot of dynamism. And most of those countries understand perfectly well that their growth was enabled by the existence of a stable multilateral system. And so they have a very deeply vested interest in securing it.

Now, whether or not we'll see the leadership, whether we'll see them rise to the occasion, you know, that's to be tested.

We've referenced a few positive examples of things that are being done. Whether we'll see enough remains to be seen.

But there is this energy that transcends regions, transcends sort of political systems. It's not just the West that we would be looking to to play this role. It's really in coalitions of Western and non-Western powers, and there's just a lot more capability out there than there was 20 or 30 years ago. Whether it will rise to the moment remains to be seen.

Susana Malcorra: Then on top of that, not only there is capability. You cannot deny the existence of those middle powers. So the challenge is the leadership.

I think Bruce referred to this earlier on, three G20s, India, Brazil and South Africa, are a good example of an institutional arrangement that is providing certain level of communication, a certain level of stability in relationship during three years, in moments where probably if this was in the hands of the traditional Western powers, it will not happen.

So it's another example of allowing for an agenda to move forward with certain expectations. While the moment is really dire. And I think there is a lot of merit in what India did, what Brazil is doing and what South Africa will be doing next year.

I have a personal view. I don't know whether Bruce will share this, but I think there is an opportunity with Ukraine. You know, Ukraine needs some sort of a thinking out of the box. I mean, we are stuck there. It's a very dangerous situation. I think there is an opportunity for some of the middle powers that we have mentioned to come up with options that could start a different conversation or a conversation, not even a different conversation, on how to at least stop the disaster that is taking place. I think I personally believe that Ukraine brings an opportunity to the fore.

Robin Pomeroy: Bruce, do you agree with that?

Bruce Jones: I hope it's the case.

I would also look at this issue we talked about briefly earlier about the revitalisation of the G20.

You know, we had this idea of an M10 or a multilateral of middle powers, this multilateral grouping. It could also simply be a caucus within the G20. You know, the G7 get together before the G20 to kind of set Western policy on global financial issues.

But on some of these more geopolitical questions, you know, maybe we could see an emergence of a kind of middle powers caucus of the G20. And that would create a lot of dynamism if it existed. And you'd have then the wider forum with the top powers present where you could advance solutions.

I think it's very helpful that the Brazilians put foreign policy issues directly on the agenda of the G20 now. It was something that some of us advocated at the outset. There was a lot of resistance in the West to that, but now we're starting to see that.

So if we could see the G20 emerge as a more dynamic, more constructive mechanism, I think it would owe a lot to the middle powers and would give us an instrument that will help us navigate, I think, pretty turbulent years ahead.

Robin Pomeroy: I know we wanted to end on an optimistic note, but I need to ask you maybe a darker question. An elephant in the room. Susana, you mentioned Ukraine could be an opportunity for this. What about Israel and Gaza? Is there a role to be played there, or is that a uniquely complex, intractable situation?

Susana Malcorra: Well, I think that many of these middle powers have a lot of interest and lot vested and invested in that part of the world, and they have relationships with both Palestine and Israel, so they could eventually be helpful.

It is also true that the region has to play a significant role in this regard. And in that region you also see middle powers. So that could be another approach to bringing options.

It is clear that whatever is the solution at the end, and hopefully a very soon end to the current problems, it will require engagement by others and most likely it will have to be part coming from the region that maybe the middle powers could contribute to that.

You know, how do you secure a Gaza that, you know, brings enough reassurance? Can Israel on on its security? That will require the support in some sort of way, a model of either the region or the region plus other middle powers.

So, yes, there is there an opportunity. I see it challenging, but I think we are not talking about easy questions here. We are not talking about the middle powers getting involved in and things that will be solved over a cup of tea. So this could be another example of a challenge to tackle.

Bruce Jones: And I think it's important to say, you know, it's less to suggest that we're predicting this will happen or assessing that will happen. It's simply if you look at how we have managed to advance cooperation and multilateralism, both during the Cold War and the post-Cold War, the middle powers play this extremely important role in both phases.

And so it's as much as anything looking at the the options ahead and suggesting that it's our best bet. Maybe not our only hope, but our best bet is for the middle and major powers to take on this role as advocates for multilateralism, as channels for conflict management and de-escalation.

If we see them take on this role, then the prospects of stumbling through the next two years without major disaster go up. And if they don't, they go down.

Robin Pomeroy: Bruce Jones is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. You also heard Susana Malcorra, Senior Advisor at Spain’s IE University and former Argentinian foreign minister and a former UN Secretary General Chief of Staff.

They were speaking to me and my colleague Nicolai Ruge, Lead, Geopolitics and Trade at the World Economic Forum.

Bruce and Susana are members of the Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Geopolitics and were co-authors of that group’s report Shaping Cooperation in a Fragmenting World. Find that on our website - links in the show notes.

Please subscribe to Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a rating or a review if you have a moment. And join the conversation on the World Economic Forum Podcast club on Facebook.

This episode of Radio Davos was presented by me, Robin Pomeroy, with Nicolai Ruge. Editing was by Jere Johansson. Studio production by Taz Kelleher.

We will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.