This is not a bright and shining moment for multilateral institutions -- the cluster of international organizations established at the end of the World War II and designed to prevent world wars and beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies.

With wars raging in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, the United Nations appears impotent, with Secretary-General António Guterres' repeated pleas for peace mainly ignored. The World Trade Organization (WTO), the supposed guardian of rules governing the free flow of goods and services, is a disaster zone as the U.S. and Europe double-down on strategic competition with China (which I might add is not playing by the global rules either) with sweeping tariffs and industrial policy initiatives, targeted at Beijing but will have ripple adverse effects on global trade and prosperity.

Which brings me to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the multilateral institution vested with the profound responsibility of promoting international monetary cooperation and backing its macroeconomic analysis and advice with financial muscle to help countries facing traditional and non-traditional economic crises. On the face of it, the IMF appears to be doing a reasonable job in navigating the mine field of risks between the U.S. and China. The institution's cherished consensus-driven decision making process appears intact and the fact that representatives of the People's Bank of China and U.S. Treasury sit across the table at the IMF Executive Board several times a week is in itself a miracle during these fragile times.

However, look beneath the surface and it is obvious that the IMF is not immune to geopolitical pressures. If a lack of global cooperation is holding back progress in other multilateral organisations, the presence of some cooperation at the IMF is not necessarily a cause for celebration. This is because even some cooperation is leading to sub-optimal outcomes for the global economy.

Witness the torturous saga of debt restructuring negotiations between China and the G7, where low-income countries in Africa and even emerging economies like Sri Lanka have had to tighten their belts because the standoff did not lead to a meaningful relaxation in fiscal space and additional financing on concessional terms. This unsurprisingly led to protests in Kenya, where President William Ruto had to humiliatingly withdraw unpopular financial legislation, and in Sri Lanka, where the recent elections delivered a Neo-Marxist leader and a harsh populist rebuke of the IMF-supported program.

The IMF program has actually delivered monetary and fiscal stability but the public at large still feels economic pain. If the IMF's major shareholders are not able to remediate debt restructuring for low-income nations, it will more than likely fail to achieve consensus in a future global financial crisis. It is hard to imagine a repeat of the "London moment," represented by global cooperation after the April 2009 G20 summit, during these fragile and fractured times. This does not mean that the IMF should give up on trying, just as the U.N. system and WTO appear to be doing so.

However, even strong supporters of the IMF (myself included) will likely be befuddled by the institution's recent proclivity to score own goals. There is the bizarre enthusiasm (to put it mildly) for Argentine President Javier Milei. The institution appeared to be in thrall of the leader because of his rock-star glamour and commitment to deliver hyper-austerity. The enthusiasm predictably fizzled after Milei, in a fit of anger, declared that his government would no longer deal with Rodrigo Valdes, the IMF's Latin and North America head, who happens to be a highly regarded economist inside and outside the Fund. Instead of defending Valdes and standing up to bullying, the IMF caved a few weeks ago and announced that he would no longer directly oversee the program. Although the IMF has expressed confidence in Valdes' leadership, this sends a signal that the Argentina's largest creditor can be scared away by public threats.

Then there is the curious case of the IMF's aborted plans to dispatch a staff team to visit Moscow to assess the country's economic situation, a critical part of the IMF's mandate. Russia is of course waging a war against Ukraine at the moment and it is mystifying that Fund management failed to anticipate push-back from America and Europe, two of its largest shareholders who have imposed crippling sanctions against Russia. There appears to be a lack of policy coordination at the highest levels of the institution.

For the IMF to remain relevant in these uncertain times, the institution should stop scoring own goals. The Fund needs to be more disciplined and even more resolute in its analysis, advice, and financial support, and in speaking truth to power. This will entail publicly calling out the largest shareholders from time to time on their economic stewardship (hint: America's parlous fiscal position and China's self-inflicted economic slowdown, both of which pose grave global economic risks). Strategic competition between world powers should not result in a zero-sum outcome for the global economy. It is a multilateral battle that the IMF must hold and win, and one that the world cannot afford to lose.