‘Between Unipolar and Multipolar Worlds: Bridging the Gap’ – Transcript of Lecture by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) in Sweden on 20 October 2026

Thank you, Lars. That was an excellent speech and a very good introduction to what I'd like to say.

Our central challenge is to develop resilience for a world of radical uncertainty.

No one can tell where today’s growing geopolitical disorder combined with AI’s exponential growth of both benefits and dangers will take us.

It also means, more than ever before, the need for responsible, ethical, and trusted governance, nationally and globally. And it requires that we find ways to create new space internationally, for countries to work together in their mutual interests.

So I'm glad to see that the SSE is establishing a School of Governance and Public Policy. And I am especially encouraged that you are also partnering with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

We have to reorient ourselves, wherever we are, for this world of radical uncertainty. Let me make five propositions.

We have not arrived at a multipolar order

First, the U.S.-led unipolar world order is past, but we have not arrived at a multipolar world order.

The U.S. is of course still the preeminent power. It is the preeminent military, economic, and technological power.

But Pax Americana did not rest on power, but on influence. It rested on the majority of nations deciding to align themselves with the rules and norms of a global order that was underpinned by the United States, because they felt it was in their national interests.

To be sure, it was a cooperative order that served America's interests. The U.S. paid large dues to keep the system going, but it also received large dividends through its economy, its capital markets, and through soft power.

What has changed is a shift in the US from the belief and practice of enlightened self-interest, to a more narrow and immediate calculation of national interests. That's what's changed.

And what has happened with that is the waning of U.S. influence. You can see it in all the surveys, in Asia, in Europe, around the world.

But we have not arrived at a multipolar world order.

There are more poles, but a thinning of global leadership.

Nor are we assured of arriving at a semblance of order: a system with the capacity to address the challenges that nations big and small face, not least the major powers themselves: the common challenges of preserving the peace, of tackling climate change, of preventing the next pandemic, and building the guardrails to allow AI to progress safely.

The simple fact of multipolarity does not assure us of a system. If anything, we are more likely than not to see growing suspicion, friction or conflicts, weaponisation of trade and materials, and a steady grind into a world of divided blocs.

Why states who can act as bridge-builders are critical

My second proposition is that we will not arrive at a multipolar order by falling in love with the destination, but only by working on the journey.

It requires states who can act as bridge builders:

• Bridge builders who can bring regions together in a world where trade and investment is in danger of fragmenting.

• Bridge builders who can find common interests between the global North and the global South.

• Bridge builders who can construct coalitions for bolder and more urgent climate action, to prevent and prepare for pandemics, and to work together to guard against the worst harms that AI can bring.

• Bridge builders between the United States and China themselves – the bridge-builders who can preserve economic networks that are integral to both the U.S. and China. We must maintain those overlapping networks and supply chains, that include both the U.S. and China, and avoid as much as we can the drift towards bifurcation.

• And we also need bridge builders towards a new, reformed multilateralism. We've got to develop the plurilateral coalitions that develop rules and norms for a new era. An era of not as dominated as it was at the time of Bretton Woods by one country, and with digital trade and AI playing a major role in the world economy.

• We have to work on reforms to the existing multilateral institutions, but recognise that progress can be held up by the current system of decisions by universal consensus in several of these institutions – in other words, where every country has to agree before we can move forward. We have to work on changing those decision-making rules and norms. But in the meantime, we have to move ahead through coalitions that work in parallel with the multilateral institutions.

The bridge builders will come from amongst nations, small, medium and large.

Sweden is a traditional bridge builder. Just think of Dag Hammarskjöld. How he initiated, for instance, after the Suez crisis, the first peacekeeping force of the UN. It was not provided for in the UN Charter, and he couldn't convince the UN Security Council, so he went to the General Assembly. Sweden has also been building coalitions to support the health of the planet, starting more than half a century ago. And together with the other Nordic countries, is actively seeking to help Africa to make a green transition in ways that supports economic development.

Canada and the EU, both larger players, are working actively to build links between the EU and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) which could create the largest plurilateral coalition in support of freer trade.

You have Australia, which was instrumental in forming APEC, and which together with Japan, managed to resuscitate the CPTPP and make it a reality after the U.S. dropped out.

You have bridge builders like Singapore – by no means a middle power, but working actively too in advancing cooperation between the CPTPP and EU, and between ASEAN and the EU. And finding ways in which the voices of small states of the United Nations are heard.

Ghana, which would not consider itself a middle power either, has built new coalitions to support reforms in global health, through the Accra Reset initiative, putting responsibility on nations themselves, establishing that sovereignty has to shape health strategy.

My third proposition is that no system of world order is possible without the U.S. and China being integral to that order. They have the largest markets. They are the largest sources of innovation. They have an overwhelming share of global AI compute. And they are essential, by virtue of their scale of carbon emissions, and in China’s case its technologies, to tackling climate change.

It may appear odd to say this, given the current political mood in the United States. But the U.S. as many know, is never unchanging. It isn’t just a matter of whether the Republicans or Democrats win elections. Change also depends on the body politic.

The best surveys consistently show that the majority of Americans like the idea of global cooperation. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2026 survey found that two thirds of Americans favoured global cooperation, even if it meant some compromise to their nation’s 3 interests. In fact, a higher proportion of Americans agreed to that statement than most other developed countries. (I should add that Sweden had among the highest percentages of people supporting global cooperation, at about 72%.)

We cannot expect the U.S, to get back to the responsibilities it assumed under Pax Americana, but neither should we assume an unchanging political mood.

However, the largest difficulty in achieving a stable global order lies in the fact that we have two major powers which are not only interdependent economically, but are close to being peers in competition. Very different from the Cold War era.

Three elements will help in achieving stability in the US-China relationship, and hence in building global order.

First, The U.S. and China have to view interdependence and competition not a threat to be eliminated, but a relationship to be managed – managed especially to constrain weaponisation of materials and technologies. If managed well, this interdependence will be a source of prosperity for both the U.S. and China, and provide a better basis for peace and stability globally. It will surely be more a more dangerous world if we end up with whole AI and technology stacks decoupled, and other supply chains and payment systems decoupled. It will make for a more profoundly dangerous world.

Second, it has to be recognised that there is no finishing line in the AI race. There is no point at which we can say that the U.S. or China has won decisively and permanently. Equally, the common threats will only grow, for that the US and China and all of us – the threats not just of rogue AI agents, but of rogue human actors using AI to develop more powerful cyber. And what AI has done is to reduce dramatically the gap between the ability of large, organised actors and lone, non-state actors, to develop powerful new cyber, biological or chemical weapons. No country can deal with this threat on its own.

Thirdly, the U.S. and China have to recognise that, given their scale, their domestic imbalances have significant international consequences. Reforms to reduce these domestic imbalances are in their own domestic interests, as well of that of the rest of the world.

The U.S cannot keep deferring the tough choices it has to make to reduce its deficits. They will exert a growing cost domestically, and be a source of instability.

China, too, has to recognise that to continue to be a large source of supply of goods to the world, it will have to be a larger source of demand than it is currently. Reforms within China are underway, but it will need time to raise consumption. In the meantime, temporary management of China's exports, such as in its recent agreement with the EU on hybrid vehicles, and a shift in balance from exports to foreign direct investment in markets abroad, have useful roles to play.

Climate Change: Recasting narratives

Let me go on to my fourth proposition – to bring the needed urgency to climate action, there's a need to recast the political and social narrative to focus more on the here and now. The narrative cannot be about the consequences of climate change in the year 2100 or even 2050. It's too far off for democracies where politicians are only concerned about the next elections.

There are, here too, good surveys to show that if we talk about climate change with regard to what it means for people’s health, for example, they will be more motivated to support measures to tackle climate change. People know what pollution feels like, and they can see what heat stress does. And they know that those who are poorer tend to suffer the most.

It also means recognising that adaptation and mitigation of global warming go hand in hand. Efforts to tackle the haze are an example. They improve people's lives today, and at the same time mitigate the longer-term dynamic of climate change. The peatlands in Indonesia contain 28 billion tonnes of carbon, accumulated over centuries – which is about twice of what the world emits each year. Indonesia’s initiative for rewetting and restoring peatlands is hence very important for both improving people's health immediately and improving children’s life chances but is also an important tool of climate change mitigation.

No win-win internationally without win-win domestically

My fifth proposition is that we cannot get to a cooperative international order without new and invigorated social compacts at home.

The social compact in many countries, particularly in the advanced world, is exhausted. Ideas which excited people 40, 50, years ago no longer excite today. And to repair and reinvigorate, it seems to me we have to go backwards as well as forwards.

The thinking and the practice of social democracy in its early days, in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and some other parts of Europe, especially after the second world war, was very different from today. It was not fundamentally about the redistribution of benefits to individuals, but about investing in the public good: good quality public schools, public health systems, public transport systems and other amenities that benefited everyone. Some redistribution was necessary, and is still necessary because inequality has to be mitigated. But investing in high quality public services was itself a progressive act, because the people who benefit most from it are the poor and the middle class. It had an uplifting tone and effect.

But we also have to go forward. And the reality of a world of rapid technological change and global interdependence, is that whilst societies have prospered as a whole, there will be groups of people who lose out.

And it has to be the task of democracies and good governance to support groups that lose out early. The nation as a whole may be doing well; the economy as a whole will be doing well. But the perceived losses of those who have their jobs and communities displaced is real, and often has greater impact on the body politic that the widely dispersed benefits enjoyed by the majority. 5 Markets do not relieve these problems quickly, and often not at all. The task of government is to not let such problems fester, and to intervene to help those displaced.

So, aggregates like GDP, overall income growth, or overall unemployment rates, are not all that matter in economic life, and especially not in politics. Losses matter, even if most people gain. We must avoid at all costs, a K-shaped economy and society as we move into an AI era.