This year marks the 80th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter. During these eight decades, much has been accomplished that calls for celebration. Yet, there is no denying that the United Nations is facing perhaps the greatest crisis of its 80-year history.

The difficulties confronting all parts of the UN system — not just the Security Council and the General Assembly — are many and varied. They are not, as several commentators have intimated, merely a case of states asserting their interests, seemingly unconcerned about the interests of the international community.

States have always made it their business to place self-interest at the heart of their decision-making. Nothing new in this. According to a major study, between 1945 and 2023, the US, the world’s pre-eminent military power, conducted more than 200 interventions, the vast majority without UN authorisation.

So, why is it that the UN is seen as increasingly impotent to control the rising use of military power? Largely because the hopes raised by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War have been rudely shattered.

Contrary to expectations, since the 1990s, the US has launched more military operations than it did during the Cold War years, even though in most cases the use of armed force did not achieve its aims.

More to the point, the last several years have seen a succession of armed conflicts — from Ukraine to Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, Myanmar, Syria and Israel-Palestine — and countless humanitarian crises fuelled by civil war, insurgencies, and the ravages of climate change.

With these have come the displacement of peoples on an unprecedented scale, now estimated to be in excess of 122 million.

The last few years have also witnessed the almost complete collapse of global arms control, a trend in the making over two decades, beginning with the US decision in 2002 to withdraw from the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, followed by reciprocal Russian announcements.

In 2019, the Trump Administration withdrew the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that banned ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500-5000 kilometres. Since then, the New START, CTBT, Vienna Document and Open Skies treaties have been derailed, suspended or discarded.

These dangerous developments, which the UN system, notably the Security Council, could neither prevent nor reverse, were indicative of the UN’s paralysis.

Here it is worth comparing the frequency with which the veto power was exercised in the Security Council in two five-year periods, 25 years apart.

In 1995-99, when the relative bonhomie of the post-Cold War period still prevailed, only five vetoes were cast. In 2024, when a new US-Russian cold war was in full swing and Sino-American relations were at a low ebb, 19 vetoes were cast.

How do we explain the trend? The last few years, it is true, have witnessed a marked souring of great power relations, but for a reason that is too often ignored. Though still the world’s pre-eminent military power, the US is no longer the dominant force in world affairs.

The relative decline of America’s economic and diplomatic clout is mirrored by Russia’s re-emergence and, importantly, China’s rise.

Simultaneously, the Global South is reasserting itself, with key countries playing a leading role, notably Brazil, South Africa and India. They often act in tandem with Russia or China in their bilateral relations, or through such blocs as BRICS and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation.

Not surprisingly, the United Nations is not well placed to navigate this challenging terrain. For we are dealing with a momentous power shift that is still in its infancy — a shift simultaneously geopolitical and civilisational — from the Global North to the Global South, from Occident to Orient.

The UN’s difficulties have been exacerbated by the antics of Trump’s America. The first Trump administration effectively crippled the World Trade Organisation by blocking appointments to its top court – the Appellate Body. Though it is not formally part of the UN system, the WTO complements and closely co-operates with several key UN agencies.

Over the last eight months, the Trump Administration’s “America first” trade strategy has imposed much higher US tariffs on many countries and sought to secure increased export market access for US products.

The repercussions will be most painful for the less developed economies of Asia and Africa. Tariffs ranging from 10 to 40% are likely to mean reduced access to the US market for their manufactured goods and higher global food and fertiliser prices, thereby deepening food insecurity. All of which will severely impede the UN’s Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.

Nor does Trump’s assault on the UN end there. His first administration withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, the WHO, the UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO. It opposed the Global Compact on Refugees, suspended funding of key UN agencies and imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Though some of these measures were reversed under Joe Biden’s presidency, the assault has since resumed with gusto. Reducing America’s engagement with international organisations, including the UN system, is now the order of the day. Its financial contributions currently stand at about one-third of last year’s outlays.

The US has threatened to punish South Africa for its refusal to withdraw its ICJ genocide case against Israel, and has imposed a series of sanctions against judges and prosecutors of the ICC.

These and other measures are all designed to demonstrate muscle and retrieve something of America’s former dominance – to “make America Great Again”. In this they are unlikely to succeed, but they are making it doubly difficult for the UN to safely navigate the ship through stormy seas.

Trump’s assault on multilateralism has been described as “ the death of the world America made”. It may be more accurately likened to a declining empire which, rather than age with grace, has chosen instead to throw a tantrum.

For its part, the United Nations can rightly claim a good many successes over its history. It developed the concept of peacekeeping, which has since stabilised explosive situations in many parts of the world.

It has been instrumental in expanding the body of international law and institutional infrastructure as constructive tools in global governance. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the UN Environment Program and its offshoot, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Development Program and the Sustainable Development Goals are just a few of the tools that have gained quasi-universal support.

Equally impressive is the UN’s oversight of the decolonisation process in the 1960s and 1970s, and the remarkable growth of human rights law that followed the adoption of the Human Rights Declaration of 1948. A series of conventions, covenants and treaties dealing with torture, racial discrimination, the rights of children, women and sexual minorities have made the dignity of the human person a focus of national and international attention.

The critical question is: can these laudable achievements, and the skills and institutional know-how that underpin them, provide the basis for a re-energised United Nations? What will it take for a renovated UN system to heal the deep fractures, instabilities and uncertainties that presently threaten the collapse of international society?

It is to these questions that we must next turn our minds.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.