Even without notoriously disagreeable players like China and Russia at the table, reaching consensus becomes almost impossible past a certain number of parties

Even without notoriously disagreeable players like China and Russia at the table, reaching consensus becomes almost impossible past a certain number of parties involved. If global consensus were required for anything almost nothing would ever get done, and what little did happen would be design-by-committee’d into ineffectiveness. That’s not to say that individuals should necessarily be able to do whatever they please on things of this scale, but trying to make everybody happy is a great recipe for endless stagnation.