Multilateral organizations' unbridled and top-heavy mission creep has enabled bureaucrats to run amok against the tides of change. Their Brahmin bureaucracies have in essence been surviving on a Ponzi scheme, devouring the trust placed in them while marketing greater expectations.

They have been blown off course from their core missions and have lost their fitness. Poor management of errant staffs has stunted these entities from anticipating in and effectively advising on our rapidly evolving political geography. By failing to adapt, multilateral organizations are in danger of becoming irrelevant. Some would say they already are.

What is needed is a new operational paradigm. Two veterans of the multilaterals — Hugh Dugan and Daniel Wagner — take us on a journey through the dynamic landscape in which these organizations operate and provide prescriptions for how they may meaningfully adapt, while becoming more accountable.

Dugan served as Special Assistant to the President and as National Security Council Senior Director for International Organization Affairs after decades as a US Delegate to the United Nations. Wagner worked in four multilateral development banks and has published widely about current affairs and risk management over a career spanning four decades. As insiders, they lay out a plan for a new multilateral organization paradigm to make these institutions able to address the existential challenge they face today, while making the world safer, stronger, and more prosperous.