Even as the United Nations marked the eightieth anniversary of its formation on October 24, the organisation is grappling with the severest identity crisis of its existence. 

The UN’s limitations have always been clear. But the last few years have seen the chipping away of even the little relevance it possesses as a global body. At 80, the evidence of its marginalised role in international affairs is too stark to miss. From multiple conflicts to attempts at their resolution, faltering climate talks to missed SDGs, and a whole range of other global crises, the UN’s presence – or the lack of it – is largely confined to the sideshow of moral commentary. 

More significantly, the backlash against globalism in some major power centres in the world seems to have given a severe jolt to the institution’s quixotic mandate. This further shows the world body’s disconnect from realities of international politics, its key forces and drivers. 

When it emerged from the ruins of the League of Nations, a failed experiment that was steeped in the Wilsonian spirit of the ‘14 points’, the UN could only partly course-correct the scale of its ambition. It gave itself a vaguely expansive mandate while having little heft, let alone authority, to live up to its high-sounding moralism. It seemed to have little idea of the real play of the world around it and the power dynamics of international politics. 

Perhaps the only concessions to realism could be found in some of the UN’s structures, particularly the Security Council veto. But even that now seems more of a relic of the post Second World War ravages rather than representing key players, if not stakeholders, needed to assure collective security. 

That aside, the UN doesn’t register how strategic necessities of key stakeholders will shape the state action and, in turn, shape the world order. This is a limitation that was inherent in how the UN was envisaged. It was as obvious in the Cold War era as it’s stark now in the decades that followed.

More recently, this limitation is nowhere clearer than in the UN’s handling of collective security and conflicts like Ukraine and Gaza. The moral posturing of the General Assembly got a reality check in the Security Council. Moreover, when Moscow pointed towards the dangers of NATO expansion, it revealed another reason for how other multilateral groupings and military alliances have been far more important in setting the tone and tenor of regional security for state actors, rather than the lofty pacifist sermons from UN headquarters. 

The latest chapter of the Gaza conflict that erupted in 2023-24 further signalled the UN’s marginality. In 2020, the US under Donald Trump’s first term, despite no longer being in office by then, had already altered the diplomatic landscape through earlier regional agreements like the Abraham Accords (2020). The pact aimed at normalising relations between Israel and several Arab states – most notably the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – without any UN mediation. 

The deal did not reflect universalist idealism, but hard bargaining and transactional realism – the very approach global institutions tend to disdain but which, in this case, produced tangible outcomes. Trump’s White House openly dismissed the UN as ineffectual, choosing instead to work through direct state-to-state negotiations.

The more recent ceasefire efforts are also largely built on regional frameworks and bilateral understandings. The UN’s role, at best, couldn’t go beyond rhetoric. Instead, some stakeholders in the region, led by Washington, Doha and Cairo, steered the peace deal. The absence of the UN in such processes isn’t wholly new, but somehow reflects its shrinking role in conflict resolution. The conflicts are being managed by alignments of power centres and coalitions in world politics, not by the institution meant to prevent such conflicts.

The backlash against globalism has also meant a reappraisal of the UN in key world capitals, particularly in Washington under Donald Trump’s presidency. His administration treated the UN not as a moral compass but as an outdated bureaucracy draining American resources. He repeatedly criticised its “globalist” orientation, withdrew the US from UN bodies such as the Human Rights Council and UNESCO, and slashed funding to UN agencies, including the UN Relief and Works Agency. 

On the climate change talks front, the Trump-led US assailed the basis of the Paris Climate Agreement, negotiated under UN auspices. The US argued that the pact unfairly burdened its industry while giving leeway to key developing countries like China and India. The push of domestic politics has meant that many advanced economies are in line with taking only incremental steps. On their part, however, developing countries have been accusing the industrialised world of a hypocritical approach and disregard for their developmental needs in the face of historical disadvantages. 

This stalemate on key issues has implied a hollowing of these talks on the UN high table. Instead, more signs of progress on green technology and energy transition are now driven by national industrial policies or regional initiatives like the US Inflation Reduction Act, EU’s Green Deal, and China’s renewable expansion. 

The foregrounding of national interest is not a new story in international politics. It’s almost axiomatic. But the way national or even regional assertion has put globalism under the scanner is having its spillover effects on the UN too. With the depleting heft of global institutions, state actors have been turning to regional or specific issue-based arrangements. Groups like the G21, G7, BRICS, SCO, Quad, GCC, ASEAN and African Union are engaging member countries more than global bodies. These blocs, while narrower in scope, fill some glaring gaps in the UN process. At the same time, they offer speed, flexibility, and realistic stocktaking despite the formalism of an organisation. Even if limited,  the way the African Union intervenes in regional crises or the way BRICS facilitates financial coordination come across as more tangible. 

This can be viewed in light of growing “mini-laterlism” in a regional context as well as in the frame of a multipolar world. Far from being a counter to multilateralism, the emphasis seems to be more on forming alignments on specific grounds of common interest. 

At the same time, the stalled reforms in the UN system have an alienating effect of their own. The Security Council, for instance, is seen by many countries as stuck in the geopolitical order of 1945, and not of the current world politics. Emerging powers like India, Brazil, Nigeria and Japan have been asking for permanent membership to the council, but have met institutional resistance. 

In hindsight, the Wilsonian ideal – that law and dialogue could replace power politics – has cast the UN’s culture in its own image, almost oblivious of the world around. The chastening lesson for the UN is that it can’t pretend to continue to talk to a world of shared norms, even as those norms are daily contested, shaped and reshaped by interests of its members world over. 

In 2016, the then British Prime Minister Thresa May had remarked, “If you’re a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” It was an ascendent time for the backlash against globalism which has gained more steam in recent years. At the same time, such a view wasn’t a critique of multilateralism as such. In more specific contexts and recalibrated frames, multilateralism continues to be alive serving common interests of different countries. In seeking its overarching presence and its renewed relevance, the UN can take note of how the multilateral dynamics of alignment are rooted in specific alignments and interests of its members. 

That can give the world body a fresh prism to look at the world order. In doing so, it can find new ways of animating its edifying spirit at 80.

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