Cooperation amid conflict: 5 questions for RUSI Director-General

With war continuing unabated in Ukraine and tensions rising in the Middle East, the state of global cooperation remains precarious. Yet multilateral engagement, many experts note, remains essential for ending the ongoing conflicts and ensuring a peaceful and resilient future. As a recent white paper from the World Economic Forum, Shaping Cooperation in a Fragmented World, notes, “the current, turbulent geopolitical context in which conflict and competition are increasing has pulled stakeholders apart at the very moment that acute and ongoing global challenges demand collaborative solutions." One of the co-authors of the white paper is Karin von Hippel, the Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an independent defence and security think tank in the United Kingdom. In the following question-and-answer, von Hippel explores the evolving state of international cooperation and the ongoing conflicts around the world.