The UN’s flaw is its design, and India’s seat won’t fix it

Last week, the United Nations marked its 81st anniversary, observed as United Nations Day. The occasion renewed attention to a question that has become increasingly difficult to avoid: what place does the UN occupy in a world where, as always, the realist conduct of international relations is starkly exposing the feet of clay on which the quixotic edifice of the UN system stands?

Two Indian interventions offered different ways of approaching the question. 

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN official who is now a Congress MP, argued in The Indian Express that the organisation needs to be recreated rather than abandoned. At the same time, writing in The Times of India, Syed Akbaruddin, a career diplomat and India's former permanent representative to the UN, examines it more trenchantly to challenge the assumption that the institution’s necessity ensures its relevance; instead, it should be scrutinised for its actual place in the real world, its performance and where it stands in public perception. 

This week, the Indian government reiterated at the UN that the veto power must be held by all permanent members of the UN Security Council and not just the P5 countries.

Such arguments are not entirely new, but the occasion merits a relook at the underlying questions. Along with a stock-taking exercise of how the UN has performed, or could perform, there is also a need to take a piercing look at the assumptions about the terms of international engagement on which the institution claimed to have rested.

For India, the issue has a particular historical resonance. The UN offered a newly independent country a platform from which to challenge an international hierarchy it lacked the material power to change. In some ways, though draped in the garb of ideological posturing, it was a pragmatic call as well. Although India continues to seek the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, there is a deeper realisation of the limits of such status beyond symbolic global standing. The UN system, which once appeared to offer a route towards a more global forum-based international order, has become even less central to the management of international affairs.

That, however, doesn’t imply that international cooperation is altogether disappearing. It may instead reveal something more fundamental: the limits of the idea that a universal institution could become the principal organising centre of world politics while states continued to pursue their own interests through whatever arrangements best served them.

The UN’s marginalisation is, to a considerable extent, the return to prominence of a reality that internationalist aspirations never displaced: international politics is shaped by the interests and relative power of states, while institutions can influence those calculations but cannot abolish them.

Contradictions in the making

Its predecessor, the League of Nations, established after the First World War, was an early attempt to organise international relations around collective security rather than the unrestricted pursuit of national power. Its failure exposed the limitations of that ambition. The United States never joined, despite President Woodrow Wilson’s central role in promoting the League. Even a cursory look at the interwar years will show that in the 1930s, the organisation proved unable to contain Japanese expansion in Manchuria and Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. The rise of militarism and the collapse of collective security helped expose the gulf between the promise of international institutions and the willingness of states to defend the order they were meant to uphold.

Almost at the halfway mark of the last century, the UN was created in the aftermath of a still more devastating war, with a stronger institutional framework and a more explicit recognition of the role of great powers. Its founders sought to prevent another global catastrophe, promote peaceful settlement of disputes and create a permanent setting for international cooperation. But they did not establish a world government. In an imprint of victors’ prize, the Security Council's permanent membership and veto were part of the bargain that secured the participation of the principal powers.

In many ways, the contradictions found a way into the very making of the institution. In mirroring its quixotic postures, the General Assembly embodies sovereign equality, with every member state entitled to one vote. At the same time, the Security Council was a bit closer to the actual play of global power politics, giving five permanent members the power to block substantive decisions. The UN, thus, combined the principle that states are equal in law with a paradoxical structure that recognised their inequality in power.

It was formulated as something more than an inconsistency between ideals and practice. It was seen as political compromise intended to make collective security possible. But it couldn’t gloss over something obvious: the arrangement also gave the most powerful states the means to prevent collective action when it conflicts with their interests.

It doesn’t need much hindsight to see that the post-war order was therefore never a clean break with power politics. It was an attempt to manage power politics through institutions, and that distinction is essential to understanding the UN today. The institution has not simply failed to realise a quixotic idea; its limitations are partly a consequence of the political conditions that made its creation possible.

For independent India, the UN represented more than a mechanism for preventing war. It offered a platform from which a newly independent state could assert sovereignty, oppose colonialism and racial discrimination, and build diplomatic coalitions despite its limited material power.

India’s engagement with the UN, the Non-Aligned Movement and the wider developing world reflected both the ideological posturing it wanted to make and the real-world strategy it calculated. International norms could give countries emerging from colonial rule a voice that their economic and military capabilities alone could not secure. Sovereign equality, self-determination and opposition to racial domination were not merely abstract commitments. They addressed the historical conditions in which India and much of the developing world entered international politics.

The UN consequently occupied a prominent place in India’s understanding of the international system. School textbooks and introductory accounts of international relations could present it glowingly as the institutional expression of humanity’s determination to move beyond war and establish common rules. Such a picture was not wrong, but it could be incomplete if the institution’s ideals were taught without equal attention to the political arrangements that constrained its decisions.

The point is not that Indian education uniformly ignored criticism of the UN. It is that the organisation’s symbolic authority could exceed public understanding of its practical powers. The difference between what the UN was expected to achieve and what it was equipped to do was not always sufficiently prominent in the way its role was explained.

Even if in limited ways, India’s early internationalism was nevertheless rational. A country without the material weight of the great powers had good reason to invest in institutions that could amplify its voice and create common causes with other developing states. The limitation lay in the hope, sometimes implicit in the rhetoric surrounding international institutions, that rules and universal membership could substantially overcome the inequalities that continued to shape the international order.

It was clear from the early years

But the subsequent record suggests a more qualified conclusion. At most, international institutions can help smaller states organise, negotiate and contest decisions. But they cannot guarantee that the interests of weaker states will prevail when those interests collide with those of more powerful ones. In the UN, this was clear from the early years. 

In essential terms, realism in international relations begins from the proposition that states operate without any world body capable of guaranteeing their security and key interests. National interest, strategic competition and relative power therefore remain central to their behaviour. This does not mean that cooperation is impossible or that international law has no value. It means that institutions operate within a political environment they cannot independently control.

Such constraint is easily visible in the UN system; the Security Council can authorise action when its members agree, but the veto can prevent it from acting when their interests diverge. Governments then turn to bilateral diplomacy, regional organisations and smaller coalitions in which agreement may be easier to secure. Such arrangements, however, are not new. Bilateral relations have always been central to diplomacy, and the UN has never been the only forum for international cooperation. But what has increasingly changed is the willingness to treat alternative arrangements as sufficient when universal institutions prove inconvenient, alongside a more openly transactional approach to international commitments.

In recent years, wars and geopolitical confrontations have reinforced the problem. The Security Council’s ineffectiveness, almost to the point of paralysis, in addressing major conflicts has exposed the limits of collective security when permanent members are divided or when their allies are involved. The institution’s difficulties are many, and not merely a matter of what it lacks or of procedural limits. A major constraint is that the procedures cannot manufacture agreement among governments that believe their strategic interests are at stake.

At the same time, the appeal of smaller groupings is understandable. They can coordinate policies more quickly and pursue specific objectives without waiting for universal agreement. But they cannot automatically claim the representative authority of a universal institution, and they may exclude countries affected by their decisions. Their effectiveness also depends on the continuing alignment of their members’ interests. So, eventually, it’s the pursuit of interests by the individual states that holds the key.

In the play of different factors, the resulting shift is not from multilateralism to bilateralism in any absolute sense. It is towards a more fragmented internationalism in which states choose different forums for different purposes and are increasingly reluctant to let universal institutions determine the limits of their conduct.

As an implication, the UN’s marginalisation is therefore partly a consequence of its institutional weaknesses and partly a choice made by states. Governments bypass it because it cannot deliver; as they do so, its influence over consequential decisions diminishes, giving them further reasons to bypass it. The institution becomes less central even as the problems requiring international cooperation become more complex.

It’s only when core interests of security, sovereign economic decisions and other constituents of national power aren’t involved that the case for preserving the UN system finds some spheres of validation. These spheres typically involve areas such as humanitarian relief, refugee protection, public health, development and environmental cooperation. These functions have practical consequences for millions of people and cannot be dismissed because the organisation has failed, and perhaps was designed to fail, on its lofty promises.

But even its limited contribution needs closer scrutiny. National governments, scientists, donors, civil society and other international organisations have contributed to many of the advances associated with the UN system. The organisation has often provided coordination, legitimacy and continuity rather than producing outcomes independently. That distinction does not diminish its contribution. It helps establish what the UN actually makes possible.

The same degree of scrutiny is needed when assessing its political failures. The UN has no general executive authority comparable to that of a sovereign government. To return to the point: the Security Council can prescribe binding measures, but the organisation cannot compel its permanent members to agree in every crisis. The General Assembly can debate conflicts and recommend collective measures, including under the 1950 Uniting for Peace framework, but its recommendations do not automatically carry the same legal force as binding Security Council decisions. Even the latter has limited teeth for genuine implementation.

This is where former Indian envoy Syed Akbaruddin’s emphasis on member states’ role becomes important. Governments provide resources, contribute peacekeepers, implement decisions and determine whether the Security Council can act. They can repeatedly block collective action or withhold cooperation, but at the same time attribute the resulting failures entirely to the organisation.

That does not absolve the UN bureaucracy of responsibility for administrative waste, poor coordination or ineffective programmes. But it does distinguish between making an institution more efficient and enabling it to do what governments currently prevent it from doing.

In reflecting on how the UN is perceived by the public, the public-opinion evidence cited by Akbaruddin adds another dimension. Gallup’s 2025 World Poll, covering 137 countries and territories, found median approval of the UN’s job performance at 50 percent, compared with 26 percent disapproval. Pew Research Center’s Spring 2026 survey, measuring favourable and unfavourable opinions across 37 countries, found that 40 percent of Indian respondents viewed the UN favourably and 18 percent unfavourably; the rest had no opinion. The two surveys measure different things and should not be treated as directly comparable.

In case one is lost in the numbers, it should be remembered that these figures do not establish that the UN has either retained or lost legitimacy in any simple, universal sense. But they do suggest that public attitudes are more varied than a narrative of universal disillusionment would imply. People may value the organisation’s humanitarian work while disapproving of its handling of a conflict. Others may support the idea of international cooperation without having a detailed view of the institution’s performance. More importantly, it would be worth asking who the respondents were, how many actually know about the institution, and how many of those who know were merely told about it or just read about it.

The more important distinction is between the belief that the UN should exist and the belief that it performs adequately. The first does not settle the second. An institution can remain necessary while requiring substantial reform, and public support cannot substitute for accountability. India’s demand for permanent membership of the Security Council reflects its changed position in the international system. Its population, economic weight, diplomatic reach and role in international affairs make its exclusion increasingly difficult to justify. But its pursuit of a permanent seat raises a question beyond national status: does India want to enter the existing hierarchy, or help change how that hierarchy operates?

The institutional obstacles are considerable. Under Article 108 of the UN Charter, amendments require a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent Security Council members. Those who benefit from the existing arrangement therefore retain a decisive role in approving changes to it. Even if expansion were achieved, a more representative Council would not automatically become more effective. Extending veto power to additional permanent members could reproduce the existing problem on a larger scale. Denying them equal veto rights would create a second tier of permanent membership. Countries may agree that reform is necessary while disagreeing over the number of new seats, their distribution and the future of the veto.

As things stand, India will continue to pursue permanent membership status, but it should not confuse a seat with the reform of the institution. At the same time, New Delhi would be aware that apart from a status at the global high table, there is little that even such membership offers. If it needs to put on the ideological garb, as many successive governments have, India will have to explain how a reformed Council would better represent countries beyond the prospective new permanent members. Seen through such a dogmatic prism, a reform that merely adds a few powerful states without addressing the wider distribution of privilege would change the membership without resolving the underlying problem.

Historical irony

There is also a historical irony which isn’t difficult to spot. India once drew influence from a system in which international norms could amplify the voice of countries without great-power status. In recent decades, starting with the turn of the century, its growing power strengthens its claim to join the privileged circle. The challenge is to pursue that claim while recognising that the UN’s effectiveness depends on more than who occupies its permanent seats. India’s engagement with the G20, BRICS, the Quad and other groupings is not necessarily a retreat from multilateralism. It reflects an attempt to use different forums for different purposes; the question is whether these arrangements can complement universal institutions or whether the international system will become increasingly fragmented, with states turning to more specific arrangements.

The UN, despite the ideological garb in which it was presented to the international community, was always set to shed its lofty goals under the inevitable weight of realist global politics. The fact that it became a ritualistic sideshow of international engagement has not come as a surprise for decades. But neither can the world easily dispense with a universal forum for diplomacy, international norms and humanitarian cooperation.

The UN’s anniversary, therefore, can be a moment for taking measured stock of its standing. It should prompt neither uncritical celebration, even from its supporters, nor a premature obituary, even from sceptics or the sharpest critics. Its continuing value lies in functions that sometimes need a broader coalition of states, something smaller coalitions cannot always fully replicate. Its limitations arise from the same political system that gives it authority: sovereign states cooperate when their interests permit and resist when they believe their freedom of action and core interests are threatened. The marginalisation of the UN system isn’t a refutation of international cooperation; it is evidence that international cooperation was never a substitute for the real turf of international politics.

In this reappraisal of the place of international cooperation and the UN’s role, the institution’s future depends on whether its members are prepared to sustain a framework that can moderate their rivalries, even when it cannot resolve them. India’s quest for a permanent perch at the UNSC high table should be seen in light of whether it can help make the international system more representative and its rules more credible.

In the midst of power equations in global politics and its vagaries, a more defensible basis for multilateralism is not to remain stuck in the fallacy that universal institutions can transcend national interest and sovereign actors, but to recognise that they can be made a meeting ground to navigate reciprocity, manage rivalries and find common ground on questions of global concern. The challenge is to make this attainable within the constant rubric of the play of realist global politics.

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