What If Multilateralism Is Adapting Rather Than Failing?

Looking at UN peace operations in Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo challenged some of my assumptions about the future of international institutions.

UN peace operations continue to adapt to an increasingly complex geopolitical environment.

Over the past few months, I have spent a lot of time reading about geopolitical fragmentation.

Depending on who you ask, we are living through a crisis of multilateralism. Relations between major powers have become increasingly tense, cooperation inside the UN Security Council is often difficult, and international institutions are frequently criticised for being slow, ineffective or disconnected from political realities.

After a while, it becomes easy to assume that fragmentation automatically leads to institutional decline.

Yet while researching my Master’s thesis, I kept running into a different reality.

International institutions are still there.

They are still operating, still negotiating, still coordinating and, in many cases, still adapting to circumstances that look very different from those they were originally designed for.

That observation became particularly clear while studying two United Nations peace operations: MINUSMA in Mali and MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I initially expected to find plenty of evidence showing how geopolitical tensions were making peace operations less effective. In some ways, that was certainly true. Political divisions, changing host-government relationships and increasingly complex security environments created significant challenges for both missions.

What surprised me, however, was how much of the story was actually about adaptation.

Rather than simply continuing with business as usual, both missions repeatedly adjusted their priorities, mandates and ways of operating in response to changing realities on the ground.

That does not mean they were always successful.

MINUSMA eventually left Mali, and MONUSCO continues to face difficult questions about its future. But neither mission remained frozen while the political environment around it changed. Instead, both demonstrated a degree of institutional flexibility that often gets overlooked in broader debates about multilateralism.

And perhaps that is what I found most interesting.

When we talk about international institutions, we often frame the discussion in very absolute terms. We ask whether they are working or failing, relevant or irrelevant, effective or ineffective.

Reality is usually messier than that.

Institutions can struggle and adapt at the same time.

They can face political pressure while continuing to operate.

They can lose influence in one area while becoming more important in another.

This is not something unique to UN peace operations either.

In recent weeks, I have attended several discussions in New York focused on alliances, security cooperation and the changing international order. Whether the topic was the future of the U.S.–South Korea alliance, NATO’s evolving role, or emerging technologies such as AI and autonomous systems, the same idea kept appearing: institutions are under pressure, but they are also adjusting.

Maybe that is the real story.

Not collapse, but adaptation.

Not resilience because institutions are immune to change, but resilience because they are capable of changing.

I am not suggesting that multilateralism is in perfect health. Far from it. Many international organisations face serious challenges, and adaptation alone cannot solve problems of legitimacy, political support or strategic disagreement.

But after spending months researching peace operations, I have become less convinced by the idea that fragmentation automatically means failure.

Perhaps the better question is not whether international institutions are weakening.

Perhaps it is whether we are paying enough attention to how they are evolving.