Introduction
The United Nations turns 80 this year. As a transnational organisation, it has already outlasted its one major predecessor, the League of Nations. Endurance matters as it demonstrates the persistence of a collective aspiration for some kind of international order beyond raw state power. But longevity is not the same as success. Critics point to the UN’s failure to prevent wars, its apparent lack of “teeth,” and its tendency to be paralysed by great power rivalry. From this angle, the UN looks less like a guardian of peace and more like an arena for posturing. This is especially the case today. The UN has failed to bring an end to the war in Ukraine - indeed, even a Security Council-ratified 2015 Minsk Agreement wasn’t enough to prevent the war, as western powers - via the admissions of Merkel and Hollande - ultimately confessed to their original insincerity and disdain for the UNSC. As for the unfolding genocide in Gaza, widespread opprobrium has been undermined by the US exercising its veto power on multiple occasions, to stymie any capacity of the UN to bring Israel to heel.
Yet such judgments about today’s failures run the risk of romanticising the past. They imply that the UN was once more effective in warding off instability than it is today, when in fact its limitations are consistent features of its history. If the UN struggles to prevent conflict in 2025, it is because it has always been structured by the prevailing distribution of material power in the global order. Its apparent failings are not simply contemporary failings, but structural constraints present since its founding. Research published by American scholars Duffy Toft and Koshi in their 2023 book Dying by the Sword, shows that the US initiated 2.4 military interventions on average each year between 1946 and 1990; and that between 1991 and 2019, this increased to 3.7 interventions per year on average. The UN could do nothing about this.
Understanding this prolonged incapacity requires a shift from the ahistorical assumptions of realist international relations theory, where institutions are futile in the face of anarchy and state self-interest, to a historically grounded analysis of how economic and military power has been distributed since 1945. It also requires a recognition that the UN was designed as a state-centric organisation in a world where increasingly many of the most pressing challenges operate at transnational scales. As pivotal as nation states are, global challenges are of an order of complexity magnitude that a one-dimensional institution like the UN is ill-suited to the kinds of pragmatic coordinations necessary to address them. Only then can we see both why the UN was hamstrung for most of its life, and why today’s shifting conditions may allow for a renewal of multilateralism rather than its abandonment.
Historical Material Conditions and the UN’s Constraints
The UN was not created in a vacuum of sovereign equality, despite its ambitions as cemented in its charter, but in a world marked by overwhelming asymmetries of economic, military and political power. Its design and functioning have always reflected those asymmetries.
1. Post-War Settlement and U.S. Economic Primacy (1945–1950s)
The UN’s foundation coincided with an extraordinary moment in global history: the unprecedented dominance of the United States. Emerging from the devastation of the Second World War with its industrial base intact and expanded, the U.S. accounted for nearly half of global industrial production by 1945. Its financial institutions underpinned the Bretton Woods system, and its military power, bolstered by the atomic monopoly (until the Soviets gained nuclear capabilities in late 1949, was unrivalled.
The UN Charter reflected these realities. While the preamble and General Assembly embodied universalist ideals, the Security Council institutionalised hierarchy. The five permanent members, each endowed with veto power, codified a structure that placed the U.S. and its wartime allies in privileged positions. The UN was never intended as a neutral world government or governance architecture with global purview; it was born as a forum where hegemonic power could be dressed in multilateral language.
2. Cold War Bipolarity and Security Council Paralysis (1950s–1989)
The onset of the Cold War narrowed the UN’s scope even further. With Washington and Moscow locked into ideological, military and economic rivalry, the Security Council was paralysed by frequent vetoes. The Korean War was a rare exception, authorised only because the Soviet Union was boycotting the Council at the time.
For the next four decades, the UN was largely excluded from questions of “high politics.” Direct East–West confrontation was managed outside its structures, while proxy conflicts proliferated in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Far from preventing wars, the UN was relegated to a reactive role, dispatching peacekeepers in frozen conflicts, coordinating humanitarian aid, and seeking to set norms around human rights and development. And on that front, the sense of western liberal superiority that came with unbridled political and economic power cast its shadow, as western ‘values’ were pushed as ‘universal’ values. As for the UN’s security function, it was circumscribed by bipolar rivalry.
3. Decolonisation and the Expansion of Membership (1960s–1970s)
The decolonisation wave transformed the UN numerically. Dozens of new states from Asia and Africa joined, shifting the balance of voices in the General Assembly. This expanded the UN’s legitimacy as a global forum, but also introduced fractures. Many of these new states lacked economic sovereignty, remaining dependent on former colonial powers and global financial institutions.
Nevertheless, they used the UN as a stage to press for systemic change. The Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 championed calls for a New International Economic Order, arguing for reforms in trade, investment and finance to redress structural inequalities. But these aspirations clashed with entrenched power in the Security Council and in Bretton Woods institutions. The UN became bifurcated: the General Assembly radical in voice, the Security Council conservative in function. The organisation was again hamstrung, not by “anarchy,” but by the material asymmetries of the world economy.
The UN was a state-centric institution, and was designed to represent sovereign states as the sole agents of international order. Yet the very problems driving decolonisation - structural dependency, unequal terms of trade and cross-border capital flows - were transnational in character. The UN was structurally ill-equipped to address the economic dimensions of sovereignty, ensuring its General Assembly rhetoric often outpaced its practical effectiveness.
4. The Unipolar Moment and Liberal Hegemony (1991–2008)
The end of the Cold War prompted renewed hopes for a more functional UN. With Moscow weakened and Washington ascendant, perhaps the UN could finally act decisively. In practice, however, the 1990s saw the U.S. instrumentalise rather than empower the UN.
The Gulf War of 1991, for instance, was fought under UN authorisation, but it was overwhelmingly a U.S.-led operation. In Kosovo in 1999, NATO acted without UN approval. And in Iraq in 2003, the U.S. dispensed with UN legitimacy altogether, launching an invasion despite Security Council opposition. In this period, the UN was often used as a legitimising veneer for American primacy, but was otherwise ignored when it constrained hegemonic will.
This coincided with an extraordinary record of military activism. Far from preventing wars, the UN was sidelined by the very hegemon that claimed to uphold a “rules-based international order.” The notion of the “rules based international order” increasingly replaced the idea of international law, which effectively saw the dilution of the UN functionally as American primacy dictated terms.
5. Multipolar Transition and Parallel Multilateralism (2008–present)
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 marked the symbolic end of uncontested U.S. primacy. Since then, China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, and the growing voice of the Global South have eroded unipolarity. Economic sanctions and tariffs, once formidable instruments of U.S. coercion, are increasingly blunted by South–South cooperation and diversified supply chains.
Meanwhile, a lattice of new multilateral institutions has emerged. BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), regional trade compacts, and financial arrangements outside the dollar system are present, active and growing. These bodies do not replace the UN, but they demonstrate that states can cooperate to address collective problems without relying solely on UN structures. Tellingly, the UN has recently formalised cooperation with the SCO (by way of a General Assembly resolution of September 5, 2025), acknowledging the relevance of these parallel mechanisms.
This reflects a broader reality of fragmented governance: global problems are in practical terms now managed by a patchwork of overlapping institutions and regimes, rather than by a single hierarchical authority. The UN is therefore less a world government (a normatively debatable proposition in any event) than one node in a dispersed governance ecology. Its weakness, in this light, is not only a function of historical U.S. dominance but also of the structural dispersal of authority in a transnational era.
Realist Critiques and Their Limits
Realist thinkers like John Mearsheimer describe the UN’s record as evidence of the “tragedy of great power politics.” For them, transnational institutions cannot overcome the anarchic logic of international relations, where states pursue survival and power above all else. Others, like Patrick Porter in his False Promise of Liberal Order, argue that while the liberal order is hypocritical - enforced by force rather than consent - it is nevertheless “as good as it gets.”
There’s doubtless some resonance in these arguments, as they clearly peel away the normative pretences of western liberal claims of global governance. Yet, these arguments are not entirely convincing because they suggest that transnational collaboration is the exception that proves the rule; the rule of global anarchy. Such arguments rest on ontological assumptions of anarchy and ahistorical notions of state rationality, in which a certain conception of rationality is derived from the ontological conditions of anarchy itself. In this framework, states are driven to maximise power through zero-sum lenses, in which survival (the ends) can only be achieved by overpowering others (means). Mearsheimer goes so far as to argue that states will prioritise survival over prosperity, as if these two objectives are mutually exclusive.
This means-end schema is not, however, a ‘natural’ given set-up. The pursuit of survival can just as easily be conceived through the lens of cooperative security, in which security and prosperity are configured as symbiotic. Game theory offers a lens that leans on a similar ‘rational choice’ foundation as mainstream realist theories, but which suggests that agents (in this case, states) can optimise their aims (survival) by way of collaboration (positive-sum) rather than zero-sum actions. In repeated interactions with communication, cooperation tends to emerge; defectors eventually find themselves excluded. Multilateralism is not futile, but path-dependent. The real problem is not anarchy but asymmetry: when one power is dominant enough to ignore rules, institutions wither. When power is more balanced, cooperation becomes rational and sustainable.
The UN’s weakness is not proof of institutional futility. Rather, it reflects the material conditions under which it has operated: U.S. hegemony after 1945, Cold War bipolarity, the asymmetries of decolonisation, and the distortions of unipolarity all constrained the potential of the UN to function.
What makes the UN appear weak is not just the balance of power, but the misfit between a state-centric institution and a world where governance problems - financial flows, ecological disturbances, pandemics and cyber-security to name but a few - are transnational in scope. Realism misses this structural transformation.
The Multipolar Present and Prospects for Renewal
Today’s world presents new possibilities. The U.S. is no longer able to act with impunity across the entire globe and in all facets of global affairs. Military balances are more contested; economic power has shifted toward Asia; and the Global South is increasingly capable of withstanding Northern pressure.
This new context is giving rise to a multipolar multilateralism. Institutions like BRICS and the SCO embody the spirit of collective security and cooperation envisioned in the UN Charter, but in more flexible and less hierarchical forms. They show that states have strong incentives to collaborate on energy, finance, security and infrastructure outside the U.S.-dominated frameworks. ASEAN has shown that consensus-based trans-national institutions can survive and play constructive roles in mediating divergent interests; and often doing so by transforming divergence into alignment.
The concept of governance mosaic becomes central to how we can think about new models of international governance in the 21st century. The UN should not be seen as failing simply because it is not the sole arbiter of global order. Rather, it functions as part of a wider lattice of institutions, each addressing specific dimensions of transnational governance. The challenge is to reform the UN so that it plays a central, coordinating role within this mosaic, rather than being bypassed altogether.
The UN itself needs reform if it is to remain relevant. The Security Council’s structure, which excludes Africa, India and Latin America from permanent membership, is unsustainable. The veto system entrenches paralysis. Reform will not come easily, but without it the UN risks being overtaken by the very multilateralism it was meant to champion.
China’s recently announced Global Governance Initiative offers one important avenue forward. It signals a commitment to multilateralism, neutrality and shared security - principles consistent with the UN Charter, but often neglected in practice. By linking UN reform to broader patterns of institutional innovation, the GGI highlights the possibility of a revitalised multilateralism that does not throw the UN baby out with the bathwater.
Revivifying the UN through a Lattice of Multilateralism
If global governance is best understood as a multilayered mosaic rather than a centralised hierarchy, then the UN’s future lies not in becoming something it was never meant to be, that is, a supranational authority like the European Union - but in embracing its role as the legitimising apex of a wider lattice of institutions.
This means that UN reform, while necessary, is not sufficient. Even if the Security Council were expanded, veto power revised and representation made more equitable, the UN would remain a state-centric body limited by its structure. The real innovation will come from how the UN interacts with the multiplicity of specialised, functional and regionally grounded multilateral bodies that already populate the global order.
Unlike the European Union, whose supranational institutions have eroded member-state sovereignty in fiscal and monetary matters among other things, the new multilateralism should be, and must be, sovereignty-respecting. The point is not to subsume national autonomy under a single authority, but to create durable mechanisms for coordination, alignment and problem-solving where national action alone is insufficient and where the benefits of collaboration and coordination are evident.
The architecture of this lattice is already visible: BRICS coordination on finance and trade; the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on regional security and increasingly on economic infrastructure (energy and transport in particular); ASEAN on economic integration; and African Union initiatives on development. There are others, of course. Each addresses specific domains, preserves national sovereignty, and offers functional problem-solving capacities. What they lack is universal legitimacy and obvious connective tissue.
Here the UN can play a role. By providing normative legitimacy, convening authority and cross-institutional coordination, the UN can transform what is currently a fragmented patchwork into a more coherent governance ecosystem. It does not need to command or centralise; it needs to legitimate and link. In this sense, the UN’s renewal will not come through becoming more like the EU or the ECB - bodies that strip states of economic sovereignty - but through enabling a layered, plural and sovereignty-respecting lattice of multilateralism.
This vision of revivification situates the UN not as a failed world government, but as the keystone institution in a broader arch of multilateral cooperation. Its strength will lie not in monopolising governance but in orchestrating legitimacy across multiple scales and functions.
Conclusion
At 80, the UN remains deeply flawed. It has failed to prevent wars, been sidelined by hegemonic powers and proven resistant to reform. Yet it is also the product of its times, shaped by the material distribution of power since 1945. To dismiss it as futile, as many realists do, is to miss the historical specificity of its limitations; and the reasons for its ostensible creation.
Today, those conditions are shifting. Unipolarity has given way to a nascent multipolarity with China a focal node with enabling capacity and the heft to act as a bulwark against a retreat to western unilateralism. The Global South has gained greater autonomy. Parallel multilateral institutions have demonstrated that cooperation is possible. These trends create opportunities not for the abandonment of the UN, but for its renewal.
The UN’s difficulties are not only about great power politics but also about institutional design. A state-centric body cannot on its own govern transnational processes. But in a lattice of overlapping institutions, the UN can still play a useful role. More than 190 states have invested in it. To discard it now would be to squander eight decades of political capital. The challenge, instead, is to reform the UN, to align it with the realities of a multipolar world, and to embed it in the wider governance mosaic that already operationalises collective security and cooperation.
The UN has always been constrained. But in a world of shifting power, it may yet find new life. Its future will depend not on clinging to the past, but on adapting to the material realities of the present.