It’s the season for summitry. For world leaders, this time of year involves deciding whether or not to attend the United Nations General Assembly, the Conference of the Parties (COP) climate talks, and various other confabs, such as the G-20 summit. If a head of state chooses not to travel to, in this case, the United States, Brazil, or South Africa, respectively, the question then arises of who to send instead, what signal that might send, and how that could impact relationships built over decades.
2025 brings several additional complications. For starters, the United States has not only withdrawn from but also denounced the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, rendering a major component of U.N.-related discussions somewhat pointless. As a reminder, the SDGs include such innocuous ambitions as no poverty, zero hunger, and good health and well-being, to name just three of the 17 goals. The United States has once again pulled out of the Paris Agreement, too, which means Washington will no longer be bound by obligations to submit climate action plans or provide climate financing—reducing the COP meeting to little more than a talking shop and trade show. And then finally, there are significant doubts about whether the United States will choose to attend the G-20, leaving another major summit without the presence of the world’s biggest economic power.
The demise of do-gooding multilateralism is just the starting point of our Fall 2025 issue, “The End of Development.” As FP economics columnist Adam Tooze argues in our lead essay, it’s too easy to blame the kneecapping of global aid on the Trump administration’s America First agenda. Development has always been about power, Tooze argues as he indicts policymakers—on the left and right—for prioritizing national security interests above humanism and for seeing the rise of countries such as China purely as a threat (rather than as a more nuanced tale of a growth miracle with complications).
Macroeconomist Daniela Gabor builds on that point by critiquing the hopeful but doomed “Billions to Trillions” movement, where public capital assumes the risk of development assistance. “The scarcity of public finance is a political fiction,” Gabor concludes. “The money exists. The institutions can be rebuilt. Only the will to reclaim them has been de-risked into oblivion.”
Could aid agencies fill development gaps? You may have heard they have their own troubles these days. Suparna Chaudhry, who studies NGOs, points the finger at governments around the world that saw opportunity in repressing them. As Chaudhry observes, the war on nonprofits is not restricted to the United States, though the decimation of the U.S. Agency for International Development has directly impacted many.
Moving into the realm of the possible, political scientist Daniel W. Drezner and historian David C. Engerman both find inspiration in the past. Drezner revisits the work of the forgotten father of development economics Albert O. Hirschman, whose contextual, country-driven approach looks newly relevant to a post-neoliberal world. And Engerman discusses the vexed history of south-south cooperation and its return, for better or for worse. Our cover package concludes with a look at who might fill the hole left by the United States on the global stage. Henry Tugendhat and FP’s James Palmer interrogate China’s aspirations in development, and—striking a note of hope—Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli of the ONE Campaign makes the case that Africa is already leading with effective and just public-private partnerships across the continent.
Lots more in the book, as always. Keep an eye out for our newest newsletter, Southeast Asia Brief, a weekly dispatch from Jakarta that will keep you informed on 11 countries in the region, from Indonesia to Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and beyond.
As ever,
Ravi Agrawal
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