About the Seminar

Multilateralism was one of the hallmark features of the post-World War II international order. From formal institutions focused on high matters of statecraft to informal regimes, there was neither a sector in international policy nor a region in the world without extensive forms of multilateralism. In the years leading up to the pandemic, many multilateral structures and mechanisms struggled as nationalism and geopolitics were revived. During and after the pandemic the challenges facing multilateralism have grown more substantial even as the problems facing states and the international system require precisely the kind of collaboration that multilateral mechanisms are intended to promote. The second Trump administration has adopted what looks to be a transactional realpolitik approach to its foreign policy and broader global role. This further complicates the broader environment for advancing cooperative approaches to international policy. This presentation assesses these trends with a particular focus on multilateralism in Asia. It will examine the track record of Asian multilateralism from its flowering in the post-Cold War period through to the post-COVID years. It then provides a brief account of Trump’s ‘transactional realpolitik’ and what it means for Asian multilateralism and will conclude with some recommendations on how states can and indeed must work out how to advance a cooperative agenda in the face of a highly unconducive geopolitical environment.

About the Speaker

Nick Bisley is the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University, Australia. Nick is the immediate past President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2020. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, has been a Senior Research Associate of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and a Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington DC.