W. Pal Sidhu suggests that small groups of select countries could serve as effective forums to address immediate security challenges in the decade ahead.

Writing in livemint.com, Sidhu argues that the world must devise new strategies to peacefully accommodate the needs of established and rising world powers. “Countries and leaders can be divided into two categories,” writes Sidhu, “those who are desperately seeking to maintain the status quo that existed during the Cold War [such as the U.S., Russia and the other three unelected members of the United Nations Security Council] and those that are trying to create a new status quo [such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa.]”

One way to redistribute power through peaceful means, Sidhu suggests, is through multilateral treaties. But such treaties come with their own challenges. “Almost none of the existing multilateral treaties have been particularly effective or flexible in facilitating the peaceful accommodation of an aspirant power into the existing system,” he writes. “In fact, most of the multilateral agreements, such as the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, have ended up reinforcing the old status quo.”

Sidhu suggests that the world needs “pluralistic approaches” such as the G20 that brings select countries together to address specific issues. But again, such approaches have their difficulties. Among them, Sidhu suggests, are:

• “The selection of countries in this grouping is exclusive rather than inclusive and goes against the principles of universality that countries like India have promoted.”
• “The G20 is much too unwieldy to manage all global governance and peace and security issues that can only be effectively addressed by a much smaller and select group of no more than four or five countries”
• “while G20 countries are best suited to address the ongoing financial and economic crisis, they are not necessarily the right set of countries to address all other global challenges, such as climate change or cyber security.”

To make plurilateral groups work, Sidhu recommends the establishment different groups of countries to tackle specific issues. “An N-20 could address non-proliferation issues while a C-20 could include all the counties critical to tackle climate change and the IT-20 could work together ensure global cyber security,” he writes.

But such groups have are only temporary fixes for immediate problems. “Eventually, the new world order would have to be underpinned by multilateral treaties and agreements that would have to be freely negotiated and universally binding,” Sidhu concludes.

Click here to read Sidhu’s article on livemint.com.