Common ground amid difference.

 In her State of the Union Address of 10 September 2025 the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, emphatically stressed that “Europe is in a fight.” She argued that “[b]attlelines for a new world order based on power are being drawn right now.” Therefore, this “must be Europe’s Independence Moment” (European Commission 2025). The mood which is reflected in this speech is based on impressions caused by a series of crises starting in the 2010s with surging numbers of refugees worldwide due to a rising number of intra-state conflicts,1 the failure of liberal peacebuilding missions, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, and ultimately, the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, imposing tariffs erratically on almost every country, questioning old alliances and, above all, the international commitment not only of the United States, but the multilateral system on the whole. In contrast, other, longer-term problems, like fighting poverty and inequality, or environment-related challenges with massive economic and social impacts like climate change, biodiversity loss, the looming water crisis or the prevalent plastic waste seem to have been pushed into the background. At first glance, the prospects for multilateral cooperation seem quite dismal. The more so, since we can see an increase in autocratic regimes and the democratic backsliding of established democracies like the United States. It is no coincidence that the decline of the liberal international order has been discussed for about a decade now, after the first Trump administration came into office in 2017. The rise of populist movements, also in democratic countries, is accompanied not only by questioning the legitimacy of domestic institutions but also by re-claiming national sovereignty, which is usually equated with weakening international institutions or even the withdrawal from them. There is much talk of “independence” and making your own country “great again”. On what kind of “power”, as indicated by Ursula von der Leyen, will “order” be based in a globalized interdependent world of the 21st century? What kind of “order” will emerge or has already been emerging while the liberal international order has been dwindling? And will the new order impair or even foreclose multilateral cooperation? Or will it contribute to reinvigorating multilateral cooperation? This introduction and the following chapters argue that we are still in need of global and multilateral cooperation – and it is and will still be possible. Very likely, it will have to take different forms, though, and allow political contestation in a pragmatic and pluralistic way.