From confrontation to cooperation

Demographic disorder, resource competition, and polarization

The rapid pace of these changes has left out societies unable to process and often even understand their extent and impact, and governments find it more expedient to focus on day-to-day business and invest in popular policies that will keep them in power.

Demographic imbalance, such as in regions with insufficient working-age population to sustain the rates of economic growth expected by governments and investors, sits alongside the politically charged debate over migration, itself driven by climate pressure, poverty, conflict, human rights violations and pressure by criminal networks.

Beneath these dynamics lies competition for resources. As economies continue to expand and global population levels grow out of control, resources are simultaneously more in demand and less available, and the resulting competition for control over them has become an increasingly central object of contemporary politics, fuelling geopolitical competition at the global level and deepening already existing imbalances in the process.

This complex pressure tends to produce a particular kind of political response: a turn toward leaders offering simple, often illusory, solutions – build walls, restore past greatness, correct past injustice – that minimise or deny the underlying complexity rather than engage with it. This results in a stronger polarization due primarily to the underlying conflict of interests but greatly amplified by the impact of social media and algorithmic curation, which connect individuals predominantly with others who already share their views, reinforcing existing convictions, and make genuine debate across different perspectives progressively harder. Unfortunately, such dynamics are now visible even within multilateral institutions designed explicitly as spaces for such debate.

From this perspective, artificial intelligence will hardly assist. Pushed by hi-tech corporations, the military (seeking technological superiority over their adversaries on the battlefield) and the industrial/financial sector (seeking economic advantages and a disinvestment in costly human resources), it has the potential to turn into a dangerous spiral if left unmanaged.

Perpetual growth and the limits of development

In the early 1970s, a MIT team of experts issued a study, commissioned by the Club of Rome, on limits to growth, based on data available at the time and with the limited computer simulation capacity existing then. While the report predictions did not materialize, its basic concept remains valid today: continuing population growth against dwindling resources cannot sustain a process of continuous growth. Yet, this is the mantra of governments, pressed by imperatives such as ensuring high rates of employment, affordable living conditions, effective social assistance policies.

Most economic and political systems, including pension systems predicated on continuous growth, remain structurally resistant to any suggestion to sacrifice growth levels to adjust to principles of sustainability. Artificial intelligence can accelerate growth even further, but at the expense of the livelihoods of those it replaces.

Obviously the corporate and private sectors seek constant increase in profits through exponential growth. However, this trend cannot be sustained in the conditions I have described, and alternatives need to be urgently considered and adopted, having in mind sustainability as the primary goal. This concept is a very hard sell, very unpopular with current political leaders, also in well established western democracies. The Italian physicist and Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi was criticised after stating in the Italian Parliament that growth itself should no longer be treated an unquestioned policy objective, and that limits to development needed to be acknowledged.

The case for multilateralism, and its political cost

Given the challenges before us, what is needed is an integrated strategy, grounded in a recalibrated model of development. This strategy has to measure progress against the availability of resources, and prioritize quality of life over simple quantitative growth, since the latter, pursued without limit, ultimately will run our world into a wall.

Returning to multilateralism is essential but also difficult, precisely because it requires governments to accept constraints on their freedom of action. As governments resist or hesitate, multilateral frameworks carry one underappreciated advantage for political leaders themselves: they offer political cover. A leader reluctant to adopt an unpopular but necessary policy can point to an EU directive, a UN initiative, or an OSCE-agreed position as the reason why action is required, transferring some of the political risk of difficult choices onto the institution itself.

Ultimately, though, renewed multilateralism can be advocated for, but never imposed: an institution can offer the framework, but the willingness of states to use it remains, in the end, a matter of political choice. For this reason, the level of noise of those who realise how fundamental these issues are has to increase. In any case, strong leadership at the head of multilateral organizations can actively help drive this process by putting issues on the agenda and pressing governments to develop much needed policies.

Why the OSCE model still functions and why it is not being used

At recent conference, I was asked why a heavily multilateralized region such as Europe, which has developed an inclusive cooperative framework such as the OSCE, could nonetheless find itself at war. I offered a three-part answer.