CIRSD

“The Unbearable Lightness of Global Governance” — Horizons Issue No. 35 was launched in Vienna. Hosted by CIRSD in cooperation with Global Neighbours, the event brought together diplomats, representatives of international organizations, business leaders, academics, and policy experts to discuss the future of global governance. The discussion was opened and moderated by @jeremic_vuk , President of CIRSD and Editor-in-Chief of Horizons, alongside Jovanka Porsche, Siddharth Chatterjee, and former Prime Minister of Montenegro Igor Lukšić. The conversation focused on the future of multilateral institutions, the Sustainable Development Goals, the role of private actors, Europe-China relations, and the challenges of international cooperation in an increasingly fragmented world. At a time when only 18% of the Sustainable Development Goals are on track and global conflicts are at their highest level since 1945, the discussion explored what new forms of cooperation and institutional innovation are needed for the decade ahead.

The third edition of the Hili Forum 2026 in Abu Dhabi was the first major international gathering in the Gulf since the outbreak of the war, bringing together over 1,000 senior policymakers, diplomats, experts and thought leaders at a moment of exceptional regional and global uncertainty. The Forum opened with remarks by Dr. Anwar Gargash, Diplomatic Adviser to the President of the United Arab Emirates, who set the tone for the discussions by addressing the urgent need for de-escalation, regional stability and a sustainable diplomatic framework for the period ahead. @jeremic_vuk , President of CIRSD, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Serbia, participated in the Forum’s closing plenary, “Role of Middle Powers in a Ruptured Global Order,” alongside Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden and Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Zhandos Shaimardanov of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies. Jeremić stressed that strategic autonomy requires countries to diversify trusted partnerships, maintain good relations with their neighbours, avoid being drawn into other countries’ conflicts, and strengthen resilience at home. He also highlighted the growing importance of technological and strategic partnerships as traditional security guarantees become less certain, arguing that middle powers are likely to play an increasingly important role in shaping the emerging international order. The Hili Forum brings together policymakers, experts and researchers to discuss the geopolitical, economic and technological transformations shaping the Gulf and the wider international order.

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the UN and former Foreign Minister, is a leading candidate for the next UN Secretary-General. In her vision statement, she calls for a more effective and proactive United Nations, firmly grounded in the UN Charter and multilateralism. Her priorities include stronger conflict prevention and mediation, faster progress on sustainable development, protection of human rights, reform of the UN system and deeper cooperation with Member States and regional organizations. Rodrigues-Birkett argues that the next Secretary-General must combine principled leadership with pragmatism and ensure that the UN delivers tangible results for people around the world. Read the full article here: cirsd.org/horizon-article/re…

Gramsci's line about the time of monsters no longer reads as a warning. Pascal Lamy, Vice President of the Paris Peace Forum. He is also Founder and Vice President of the Jacques Delors Friends of Europe Foundation takes it as a diagnosis. The triangle of Ricardo, Schumpeter, and Beveridge has come apart, and no welfare state compensates for years of imported overcapacity in steel, chemicals, batteries, and solar panels. His fifth and most decisive driver is compute nationalism: the moment chips, frontier models, and data centers become sovereign resources, while a few private firms acquire quasi-sovereign power without accountability. Europe was built by herbivores. It must now learn to survive among carnivores without becoming one. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/th…

A history written in the wrong register, Anatoly Torkunov and Vladimir Degoev argue, is not merely dull. It is disarmed. Marking their new volume on the Russian state from its tribal unions to the Romanovs in 1613, they take Levitan's "Above Eternal Peace" as emblem and Collingwood's historical imagination as method. Their quarrel is with the frameworks forced onto that past—imported feudalism, the Asiatic mode of production, the Eurasianists' Mongol "matrix"—and with a Russophobic narrative they trace to Nazi racial theory. There is no single key to Russian history, only a bundle. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/ru…

The Alabama Claims arbitration of 1872 converted a diplomatic quarrel into legal procedure; the Hague conferences then gave the practice a building. With the WTO's Appellate Body paralyzed, the USMCA left unrenewed after its 2026 review, and investment disputes recast as security concerns, Teresa Cheng argues the urgent task is managing conflict rather than resolving it. The International Organization for Mediation—45 signatory states, 16 ratifications, seated in Hong Kong—is the first intergovernmental body devoted only to mediation. It asks not who is legally right, but what arrangement can actually be sustained. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/me…

When Washington fell behind on its UN dues in the 1990s, it was a private citizen who pledged $1 billion and founded the UN Foundation. Jovanka Porsche and Siddharth Chatterjee argue that the model must now be extended and sharpened: Track 2 and Track 1.2 diplomacy, permanent technical safe harbors, research capacity built outside the wealthy capitals, an independent scorecard measuring what institutions actually deliver against what they promise. Drawing on three decades inside the system, from Somalia to Beijing, they insist the quiet rooms matter. Oslo was not born in a ministry. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/th…

The Beijing summit produced the calmest U.S.-China relationship in years, and both sides are dismantling what holds it up. Total goods trade is down 28 percent since 2016; direct U.S. imports from China have fallen from 21 percent to 9. @CKupchan argues that “constructive strategic stability”—a Board of Trade, a Board of Investment, an AI working group with no lead agencies named—rests on an interdependence both governments are deliberately unwinding. His analogue is the Soviet Union, stable only where it was walled off: the U.S. mined Haiphong harbor two weeks before signing SALT I. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/u-…

The twentieth century measured inequality in wealth. @DMiliband argues the defining division of the twenty-first is between those who live inside functioning states and those whose states war has dismantled—a divide invisible from the fortunate side, because institutions announce themselves only when they fail. Twenty countries, home to 12 percent of the world’s population, account for nearly 90 percent of people in humanitarian need. Development is measured in years; institutional collapse takes weeks. The accident of birthplace should not set the boundaries of a human life. It increasingly does. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/th…

Eighty years on, no one has stopped believing in the United Nations, and that, @rafaelmgrossi argues, is the obligation rather than the comfort, because belief without delivery curdles into disillusionment. With 18 percent of the Sustainable Development Goals on track and mandates duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated, the gap between promise and result can no longer be papered over with declarations. Drawing on six years running the IAEA through nuclear crises, the candidate for Secretary General sets one standard: not an institution that speaks of working, nor one that reforms in preparation for working, but one that delivers. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/a-…

What is in question is not whether the world needs the United Nations, but whether anyone still believes it can deliver. @mfespinosaEC —former President of the General Assembly, former foreign and defense minister of Ecuador—argues it is slow where it should be decisive and procedural where it should act. Her answers are specific: a Prevention and Early Action Hub reporting directly to her office, a Global Energy Security mechanism, mandate review as permanent discipline rather than crisis reflex. She has never served in the Secretariat, and treats that as a qualification. Read the full article: cirsd.org/horizon-article/re…

Horizons 35: The Unbearable Lightness of Global Governance The new, 35th issue of Horizons explores the crisis of global governance and a world in which the institutions created to carry the weight of the international order are becoming increasingly unable to respond to contemporary challenges. Inspired by Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the issue examines the weakening of the United Nations, the outdated structure of the Security Council, the growing influence of Asia and the Global Majority, emerging models of mediation and cooperation, and the rise of artificial intelligence as a force reshaping sovereignty, power, and decision-making. At its core lies a defining question: can humanity build a new international order strong enough to bear the weight of the era ahead? Contributors to Horizons 35 include: Michelle Bachelet Jeria, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, Rafael Mariano Grossi, Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis, Carolyn Allison Farida Rodrigues-Birkett, Hugh Dugan, Richard Gowan, Peter Nolan, H.E. Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, Branko Milanović, Pascal Lamy, David Miliband, Pascal Boniface, Anatoly V. Torkunov, Vladimir V. Degoev, Shyam Saran, David Daokui Li, Shuyu Wu, Cliff Kupchan, Mikhail Margelov, Jorge G. Castañeda, Ditmir Bushati, Kitila Mkumbo, Teresa Cheng, Jovanka Porsche, Siddharth Chatterjee, and David Harland.

New Horizons is out! This issue of Horizons explores one of the defining questions of our time: can global governance still carry the weight of today’s challenges? Inspired by Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, this edition examines the growing crisis of international institutions, the future of the United Nations, the rise of new diplomatic actors, and the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on global order. As the world becomes more fragmented, the central question remains: can we build an international system strong enough to endure? cirsd.org/horizon-issue/hori…

Vuk Jeremić, President of CIRSD and Editor-in-Chief of Horizons, addressed leading Chinese scholars and policy experts at the Beijing Club for International Dialogue. Speaking at the event “Horizons: Eurasian Cooperation in a Multipolar Era,” Jeremić discussed the changing geopolitical landscape and the need for stronger cooperation across Europe and Asia. He argued that the rise of multiple centers of power should not lead to rival blocs, but to practical cooperation in infrastructure, trade, technology, sustainable development, and global governance. Jeremić also emphasized the strategic importance of the Western Balkans, describing the region as a potential bridge between China and Europe. Read more: cirsd.org/activities/vuk-jer…

Vuk Jeremić, President of CIRSD and Editor-in-Chief of Horizons, spoke at the World Peace Forum 2026, where he argued that Serbia is unlikely to join the European Union under the current circumstances and reaffirmed that maintaining strong ties with China remains a long-term strategic choice. Responding to recent calls for Serbia to choose between Europe, Russia, and China, Jeremić said the EU membership process has effectively stalled and questioned whether Brussels is genuinely prepared to admit new members. @jeremic_vuk also emphasized that Serbia’s partnership with China is based on long-term strategic interests and expressed confidence that cooperation between the two countries will continue to deepen in the years ahead. Read more: cirsd.org/activities/vuk-jer…

Vuk Jeremić delivered a keynote lecture at the University of Hong Kong, warning that the world has become multipolar while the international order has failed to adapt. He called for reform of global institutions and a new system based on shared responsibility, cooperation and dialogue—not rivalry, division and unilateral action. @jeremic_vuk also addressed the future of the UN, Europe’s relations with the United States, China and Russia, as well as the growing risks posed by artificial intelligence and climate change. Read more: cirsd.org/activities/jeremic…