India, Oct. 26 -- The multilateral system designed to manage the world's common challenges is no longer fit for purpose. What was once the crowning achievement of post-war cooperation has ossified into a bureaucracy so sclerotic and politicized that it often serves itself more than the people it was created to help.

The grand institutions forged at Bretton Woods after 1945 were intended to prevent another global catastrophe. And for a time, they succeeded. The UN provided a forum for diplomacy, the World Bank and IMF rebuilt economies and stabilized currencies; the GATT and its successor the WTO expanded trade and prosperity.

But the world that gave birth to these bodies has vanished. Power is now multipolar, capital moves at digital sp...