A multilateral initiative entitled ‘Partners for Multilateralism’ was launched on the margins of the eve of the High Level Segment of the new–the 81st–session of the United Nations General Assembly. A meeting of the co-sponsors of the initiative took place on September 21 in New York. The participants were the European Union, Canada, Australia, India, Barbados, Brazil and Kenya. The thrust for the initiative came from the EU and Canada. The others also decided to join it because they all have concerns about the transformations taking place in world order which are impacting their interests. They feel that they will be protected in greater measure by existing multilateral approaches instead of the unilateralism being pursued by the world’s pre-eminent power, the United States, under President Donald Trump. The fear is that some of the changes will continue after the Trump presidency ends in January 2029.

It is significant that the US’s closest partners–the EU and Canada– pitched for this initiative. This is indicative of the differences which have emerged between them and Trump’s US. This does not imply that the EU and the US or the Canadian and the US relationships have ruptured but it does mean that the priorities of the US and EU and Canada which were almost in complete harmony since the Second World War are no longer so. 

In the past, some European countries, like France particularly, asserted sometimes through their........

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