80 years on, the UN still speaks the language of a world that no longer exists and risks repeating the fate of the League of Nations

October 24 marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations - the day in 1945 when 51 countries ratified its Charter. Eight decades later, the UN still holds a special kind of legitimacy in global affairs. It remains not only a platform for tackling issues that span from war and peace to nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, and pandemic response, but also the only organization that brings together all states recognized under international law. In an increasingly turbulent world shaped by recurring interstate conflicts, the UN continues to face the same question it was created to answer: how to prevent chaos from consuming the international system.

Much like an 80-year-old who has lived through a lifetime of stress, the UN shows signs of wear and tear. Its chronic ailments were on display during the recent High-Level Week of the General Assembly in New York, when heads of state, government leaders, and foreign ministers gathered at UN headquarters. They delivered keynote speeches and raced through a diplomatic marathon of meetings on the sidelines - multilateral, bilateral, and everything in between - trying to make the most of a few crowded days.

Following the old saying that "recognizing a problem is the first step toward solving it," this analysis looks at some of the organization's long-standing issues - before they lead to a complete paralysis of one of the last functioning pillars of modern diplomacy.

Failed reforms

As paradoxical as it may sound, efforts to reform the United Nations began on the very day it was founded. Over the past eight decades, the number of member states has nearly quadrupled - from 51 to 193. With that growth came an entire ecosystem of committees, specialized agencies, and affiliated organizations. The result is a sprawling, self-perpetuating bureaucracy that often seems to exist for its own sake.

Almost every Secretary-General has tried to streamline the UN's structure and reduce its endless overlaps. Kofi Annan, for instance, convened a group known as The Elders - which included former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov - to explore new ideas for reform. Yet every attempt has stumbled on the same obstacle: the Security Council. Continuing this tradition, the current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, launched the UN80 Initiative to strengthen the organization's legitimacy and effectiveness. He has emphasized the need to modernize the Security Council, which still reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 rather than those of today. Fully aware of how difficult and divisive this issue is, Guterres nonetheless reignited the debate over two core questions - veto power and permanent membership.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Nadja Wohlleben / Getty Images

In practice, the Council's paralysis often stems from the same familiar pattern: two opposing blocs - the US, UK, and France on one side, Russia and China on the other - vetoing each other's resolutions. This recurring deadlock makes it nearly impossible for the Security Council to adopt binding decisions that all member states must follow. Yet the veto remains a powerful instrument in global politics, allowing each permanent member to protect its national interests.

Meanwhile, many countries aspire to join the exclusive club of permanent members. The so-called Group of Four - Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan - has been particularly vocal, each citing its population size, economic weight, or financial contributions to the UN. Their bid, however, faces pushback from the Uniting for Consensus coalition of more than 70 nations. Regional rivalries run deep: Brazil is opposed by Spanish-speaking Latin American states; Germany by fellow EU members; India by Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other South Asian neighbors; Japan by ASEAN and several Pacific countries. Even Africa's widely endorsed Ezulwini Consensus, which calls for permanent seats for African nations, remains mired in regional disagreements.

Russia's stance on reform is relatively balanced. Moscow supports any decision that gains broad approval among member states, but insists that the status of the existing permanent members must remain untouched. It argues that any expansion of the Security Council should favor the "global majority" - countries from Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa - since the "global minority," particularly NATO nations, already holds three of the five permanent seats. This dominance, Russia notes, has allowed Western powers to effectively "privatize" parts of the UN Secretariat by placing their representatives in top posts - from the Secretary-General and his deputies to department heads and even the incoming President of the General Assembly for 2025-2026.

Discrediting New York City as the location of the UN Headquarters

US President Donald Trump's address at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly was memorable - not for bold new ideas, but for what he himself called a "triple sabotage": an emergency stop on the escalator, a broken teleprompter, and a malfunctioning microphone. The mishaps didn't end there. In the city that never sleeps, Trump's motorcade managed to block the cars of French President Emmanuel Macron, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, and South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung.

In a way, the chaos served as poetic justice. Trump had long been one of the UN's fiercest critics. Just a week before the General Assembly, after previously pulling the US out of UNESCO, he announced that Washington would cancel its annual contribution to the UN - roughly a quarter of the organization's total budget. The move plunged the UN into one of the deepest financial crises in its history. The fallout is expected to include large-scale staff cuts within the Secretariat, budget reductions across agencies, and even the closure or relocation of some UN offices currently based in New York.

Against this backdrop, calls to relocate the UN headquarters outside the United States have grown louder. Colombian President Gustavo Petro - who had his US visa revoked for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations - has publicly supported the idea. Washington's habitual misuse of its status as host nation has drawn similar criticism from Russia, which has repeatedly seen members of its delegations denied entry to the US year after year. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov even joked that the UN could move to Sochi - a city, he noted, with all the necessary infrastructure and a proven record of hosting major international events.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2023 in New York City.

David Dee Delgado / Getty Images

The erosion of agency

"I ended seven wars. And in all cases, they were raging with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, a vicious, violent war that was. Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan... It's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them," Donald Trump said during his speech at the UN General Assembly.

His point was blunt: the UN has lost its ability to act. After a string of failed peacekeeping efforts - from Libya, where the Special Representative of the Secretary-General has changed nearly ten times in 14 years amid civil war and disintegration, to countless other unresolved crises - many member states now prefer to handle regional conflicts on their own. UN mechanisms are often bypassed altogether.

As a result, the resolution of long-standing disputes depends less on the UN's capacity to mediate than on the shifting balance of power among global players.

One telling example is the Middle East. With the so-called Quartet (which includes the UN) long paralyzed, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas used the rivalry between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on one side, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron on the other, to his advantage. His maneuvering helped spark a new wave of recognition for Palestine: on September 21-22, 2025, ten European countries - including two permanent members of the Security Council - formally recognized the State of Palestine. It also diverted Trump's attention toward Hamas, Ramallah's chief rival.

The same pattern is visible in the standoff over Iran's missile and nuclear programs. With negotiations between the IAEA and Tehran stalled, the so-called EU Three - the UK, France, and Germany - have made repeated attempts to trigger the "snapback" mechanism to reinstate sanctions on Iran. In doing so, they have disregarded not only the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but also the positions of Russia and China.

Non-transparent Secretary-General selection process

The position of UN Secretary-General is unique in modern diplomacy. The person who holds it must not only lead a vast bureaucracy that speaks on behalf of the international community, but also serve as a symbol of compromise - someone capable of reflecting the planet's political and cultural diversity.

To prevent the "privatization" of the UN's leadership, there is an unwritten rule of geographic rotation: each regional group takes its turn in nominating a candidate. In theory, this ensures fair representation. In practice, the final outcome often depends on complex behind-the-scenes bargaining among the Security Council's permanent members, who must agree on a candidate before forwarding the nomination to the General Assembly.

Ahead of the 2016 election, it was widely expected that, for the first time, the next Secretary-General would be a woman from Eastern Europe. But from the earliest voting rounds it became clear that none of the leading candidates - Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, Vesna Pusi of Croatia, or Natalia Gherman of Moldova - could win the backing of all key players. The process ultimately produced a compromise: Antonio Guterres of Portugal. By the end of his second term, however, Guterres had lost much of his reputation as an impartial mediator - in the eyes of the US, Israel, Russia, and many others.

On September 1, 2025, with Russia holding the presidency of the UN Security Council, the process for selecting the next Secretary-General officially began. This time, the right to nominate belongs to the Latin American group. Among the candidates are Rafael Grossi, the current IAEA chief from Argentina; former Chilean President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet; and Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador's former foreign minister and president of the 73rd General Assembly.

Still, none of them is guaranteed victory. The outcome won't be decided by any transparent, real-time vote - but by the quiet choreography of backroom diplomacy.

US President Donald Trump speaks during the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2025 in New York City.

Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Conclusion

As the United Nations celebrates its 80th anniversary, it does so with a long list of both inherited and self-inflicted flaws. Yet it's worth remembering why the organization was created in the first place: as a response to the shared threat of German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese militarism. It replaced the League of Nations, whose political and diplomatic failure had paved the way to the Second World War.

Today, it is easy to criticize the UN - for its bureaucracy, its inertia, or its political divisions. But despite all its shortcomings, the organization has, for the most part, fulfilled the core promise written into the preamble of its Charter: to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." The fact that a third world war has been avoided for eighty years is not an achievement to dismiss lightly.

Much, however, depends on the member states themselves and on those that bear special responsibility for maintaining global peace and security, such as Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council. The coming decades will show whether the UN can renew itself and adapt to a multipolar world, or whether it will go the way of its predecessor - the League of Nations, remembered more as a warning than as a legacy.

(RT.com)