The UN Between Decline and Renewal

On Feb. 24, the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly held meetings to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. What should have been a pro forma affair became a near fiasco after the U.S., which worked closely with Kyiv and European countries to condemn Russia at the UN in the Biden era, made a startling change of tack.

The U.S. attempted to block a Ukrainian-European General Assembly resolution reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and tabled an alternative resolution referring to the need for peace without citing any conditions. Ultimately, both passed, although the U.S. abstained on its own text after France led a push to add amendments referring to Ukraine’s rights under international law. Washington did, however, push through a slimline Security Council resolution citing the need for peace that China and Russia supported. European members of the council, including France and Britain, abstained. 

This sequence of votes left many UN diplomats with a sense of whiplash. Since February 2022, UN debates have followed an established pattern, with the Western powers trading barbs with the Russians to no effect. The Trump administration’s decision to upend this has left European officials in particular fretting that the balance of power at the UN has fundamentally altered.

Yet, for some other UN members, this week’s events may look like just another twist in a downward spiral. The past three years have been marked not only by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine but also by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the widening crisis in the Middle East, the civil war in Sudan, and ongoing crises from Haiti to Myanmar. And yet as global conflicts intensify, peace and security debates at the UN have remained deadlocked, producing many angry debates but few durable diplomatic wins. Just look at the data: Last year, the Security Council held 305 meetings—the most in a single year since its founding—yet passed only 46 resolutions, the lowest number since 1991. Dismal figures like those feed a sense among diplomats that the UN is losing relevance in crisis management and that the big powers that dominate the Security Council no longer take it seriously.

Yet despite the gloom in New York, various member state coalitions have responded to the organization’s travails, and in particular the deadlocks in the Security Council, with diplomatic innovations. Inside the council, the 10 elected members (E10) of the body—often relegated to passive roles when the permanent members cooperate—have become more active in pressing for resolutions and statements. Outside the council, the General Assembly has become more active in debating peace and security issues, while UN member states have started to take cases, including Myanmar and Gaza, to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in attempts to sidestep Security Council gridlocks. Long-running, and somnolent, discussions of council reform have taken on a rare degree of urgency.

Observing these intersecting positive and negative trends, it can be hard to decide whether the UN is experiencing a fundamental decline or a haphazard process of political renewal. And while it may be too early to judge the Trump administration’s Ukraine and Russia actions at the UN, it’s an apposite moment to look back over the past few years of UN diplomacy in general and ask exactly what has been going on. My best answer is that the UN has been going through decline and renewal at the same time.

There is little doubt that something is wrong at the core of the UN peace and security system, as the veto powers in the Security Council find it increasingly difficult (or undesirable) to cooperate. This inevitably weakens the organization on many fronts. Yet it also creates openings for those who want to strengthen the system—or at least keep it alive—to test out new multilateral options. 

The UN’s Decline-Renewal Paradox

One way to frame the UN decline and renewal paradox is through the lens of the economist Albert O. Hirschman’s famous analysis on responses to institutional failures. Looking at the performance of businesses and organizations, Hirschmann argued that consumers have two ways to respond to “an absolute or comparative deterioration of the quality of the product or service provided.” The first is the “exit option,” in which customers stop buying the products or quit the organization involved. The second is the “voice option,” in which customers “make an attempt at changing the practices, policies and outputs of the firm from which one buys or the organization to which one belongs.” In other words, changing it from the inside.

This distinction illustrates the dilemma UN member states face today, at least in the realm of peace and war. The UN is, by its design, a hierarchical organization in which the management (effectively the veto powers in the Security Council) claim to offer a degree of order and security to other member states. It has never done this consistently, but there was a brief moment in the post-Cold War period during which the veto powers cooperated to an unusual degree. That level of cooperation has deteriorated markedly over the past 20 years, and the decline has accelerated in the past three. While U.S., Chinese, and Russian diplomats blame each other for this downward trajectory, representatives of other members (from all regions and blocs, and inside and outside the council) often lump permanent five (P5) members together as the common cause of the problem.

This negativity toward the P5 is not always entirely fair. Even after February 2022, the veto powers have eked out compromises on many issues (46 resolutions in a year may be a post-Cold War low but is still better than the Cold War average), while elected members have also slowed down and disrupted talks on some files. The African members of the council have, for example, insisted that regional organizations such as the African Union should take a lead on mediating crises on the continent rather than defer to the UN. Nonetheless, it is clear that the permanent council members now typically lack the unity of purpose necessary to intervene jointly in many crises. 

The “Exit Option” 

In these circumstances, many states see opportunities for “exit” from UN oversight of peace and security issues. This does not mean literally exiting the UN organization (the only state to have withdrawn from the UN is Indonesia, which exited and returned in a little under two years in the mid-1960s). Instead, it means undermining UN mediation, political, and peacekeeping initiatives. In 2023, Mali (backed by Russia) forced the Security Council to withdraw the UN peacekeeping force on its territory (MINUSMA) in short order. Since then, a series of other countries including Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, and Somalia have successfully lobbied the council to withdraw UN missions from their soil, or at least to agree on timetables for exit. In some cases, governments are looking to other other security providers—such as the Wagner Group in Mali or regional forces in the Congo—to act as substitutes to the UN security frameworks that they discard. It is arguable that Israel’s recent determination to expel the UN Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) from the West Bank and Gaza, cutting off assistance to Palestinian refugees, is also rooted in the assumption that neither the Security Council nor wider UN system could seriously censure it. 

“Exit” from UN oversight can also take more subtle and incremental forms. As my Crisis Group colleague Maya Ungar has noted, many African governments that face UN sanctions regimes—especially arms embargoes—have increasingly lobbied against them. The African members of the Security Council, aligning with China and Russia, have tended to support these efforts and persuaded other council members to water down some of these regimes. Elsewhere, coalitions and blocs of states have succeeded in blocking or weakening Security Council engagement in crises in their regions. After the coup in Myanmar in 2021, for example, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members—backed by China and India—convinced a divided Security Council that the regional organization should lead political efforts to restore civilian rule. The Security Council has acquiesced to this, and while it still occasionally discusses Myanmar and there is a UN envoy for the country, the UN is now effectively marginal to the war. 

Yet offsetting these examples of states trying to exit from UN supervision, other UN members have also pushed to maintain the UN’s relevance—and gain a greater voice in its decision-making on peace and security. Inside the Security Council, the E10 have demanded a greater degree of say in how the body operates. This has included demanding the right to act as “penholders” on more resolutions (drafting or co-drafting and leading negotiations on mandates), a task that the U.S., U.K., and France have typically dominated in the past. The veto powers have ceded some ground on this in recent years, with the U.S. sharing pen-holding duties with Latin American countries on Haiti, and London and Paris inviting elected members to co-author texts on some African files. In some cases, these concessions are tokenistic—with the permanent member still wielding the lion’s share of influence—but it is at least an acknowledgment of the E10’s desire for expanded roles. 

The E10 have also increasingly frequently coordinated among themselves. Five or 10 years ago, most E10 members argued that they cooperate on procedural issues in the council but doubted that they could find shared ground on many political topics. In recent years, the elected members have made common cause on substantive questions such as the need to maintain UN aid deliveries to Syria. Last year, for the first time, the E10 floated two joint resolutions as a group, both focusing on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza (the first passed in March, but the U.S. vetoed the second in November). Some council members caution against taking these too seriously as precedents—Gaza united the bulk of UN members in a way that most other conflicts do not—but again these efforts suggest that there is a gradual tilt toward the E10 gaining greater voice.

Outside the council in the more democratic General Assembly, where all states have votes and none have vetoes, members have increased security discussions steadily over the past three years. This is in large part because the assembly has taken up the Ukraine and Gaza files after the Security Council dropped them, repeatedly calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory and for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But a significant minority of UN members have looked to engender more structural changes in how the organization approaches security questions. In 2022, Liechtenstein (which has long punched above its weight on matters of law and procedure in New York) engineered a General Assembly resolution establishing that whenever a P5 country uses a veto in the Security Council, the assembly should debate the issue within 10 days. This has not stopped the veto powers from killing off resolutions, but it has spurred further discussions among member states about how the assembly can intervene more effectively in crises. Last year, the UN University published a useful study of precedents for the assembly recommending peace operations, mediation efforts, sanctions, and other tools.

In parallel with these forms of activism in the Security Council and General Assembly, UN members have also been turning to the International Court of Justice with increasing frequency to address urgent crises. In the past, states often punted problems to the ICJ when they wanted a cooling-off period in a dispute, as the judges in the Hague can move at a stately pace. But in recent years, states have been pushing the court to make initial pronouncements on fast-moving crises at speed. The Gambia led the way by putting the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar before the court in 2019, while South Africa infuriated the U.S.—but won widespread support from other countries—by asking the court to investigate the possibility of genocide in Gaza at the end of 2023. Norway has recently asked the ICJ to rule on Israel’s obligations as an occupying power in Gaza and the West Bank. In parallel, the International Criminal Court has adopted an activist stance over both Ukraine and Gaza, issuing arrest warrants for Russian, Israeli, and Hamas leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif).

While the details of these initiatives differ, they all have a common root: the current inability of the Security Council to respond meaningfully to the crises involved. As one diplomat who is closely involved in efforts to empower the General Assembly told me, the goal is not to render the council irrelevant but, rather, to jolt the veto powers to take their responsibilities more seriously.

Skeptics may question whether all this busy work in corners of the UN system has much substance to it. As I have noted elsewhere, the elected members of the Security Council tend to find it easiest to unite around resolutions focusing on improving humanitarian access to conflict zones such as Gaza, rather than offering detailed proposals to resolve conflicts. The UN’s resulting calls for humanitarian access in war zones often have little impact. In the General Assembly, large majorities of states have voted in favor of resolutions condemning Russia over Ukraine, but texts proposing concrete steps to penalize Moscow—such as stripping it of its seat on the UN Human Rights Council—passed with smaller margins. The ICJ has not had a major impact on the course of the wars it has recently addressed.

The “Voice Option”

For many UN members, the limited outcomes of these initiatives point to the need for a more fundamental reallocation of “voice” in UN decision-making through Security Council reform. Proposals for overhauling the council are almost as old as the UN itself, and discussions of the topic have plodded along turgidly through the post-Cold War decades. But the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the Russian and U.S. vetoes associated with them, have brought a new sense of urgency to the question. Last year, UN members agreed on a “Pact for the Future” outlining areas for strengthening numerous aspects of international cooperation. While negotiations on many aspects of this sprawling text, such as overhauling the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to benefit poor countries, proved controversial, it included an unusually detailed section on the need to “intensify efforts” to enlarge the Security Council, improve its working methods, and address limits to the use of the veto. This was a nonbinding agreement, and the veto powers may have waved it through without taking it especially seriously, but the Biden administration added some weight to it by calling for African countries to gain two permanent council seats. All the other permanent members have (sometimes grudgingly) reaffirmed their belief in reform. After the past three years, nobody pretends the council is working. This does not mean major UN reform is on the horizon. Updating the UN Charter requires ratifications by two-thirds of the organization’s members, including all the current veto powers.

If council reform is still a remote prospect, the Trump administration’s disruptive approach over Ukraine raises questions about where the UN will now head. It is possible to argue that—in line with his administration’s rhetoric—Trump is pushing the UN to focus more on its core business of peacemaking by breaking down the divisions between the U.S., China, and Russia. If the three powers make genuine progress on restoring relations in New York, they could work together more through the Security Council, although possibly to the disadvantage of France, Britain, and E10 members. On a less optimistic reading, the U.S. could now pursue bilateral diplomacy with Moscow, and perhaps Beijing, without taking the UN very seriously. In doing so, it could well downgrade the importance of precisely the laws and norms that other UN members appeal to in the General Assembly and the Hague. And it is still quite possible that this week’s brief moment of big power rapprochement will evaporate, especially if peace in Ukraine proves hard to achieve, and the Security Council will default to grinding and often fruitless diplomacy on many conflicts.

If the council remains gridlocked on important issues, more countries will be able and motivated to “exit” from the constraints of the UN, undercutting sanctions regimes and peace operations. Other states will opt to detach themselves from the UN system by investing more in alternative multilateral and so-called minilateral groupings such as the Group of Seven (G7) and BRICS. But there may also be growing clamor by those states that still feel some stake in a weakening system and want a greater say in how it acts.

The recent levels of activism in the General Assembly and in international courts may presage a new era of multilateral diplomacy, as small and medium powers try to keep the UN system active, even as the major powers allow it to drift aimlessly. This may just result in an ongoing flow of more-or-less ineffectual resolutions, declarations, and press releases. But, in time, it could also provide the material for new forms of international cooperation as old models rust.