October 24 marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, the day in 1945 when 51 countries ratified its Charter. Eight decades later, the UN still has a special kind of legitimacy in global affairs. It remains not only a platform for addressing issues ranging from war and peace to nuclear non-proliferation, climate change and pandemic response, but also the only organization that brings together all states recognized by international law. In an increasingly turbulent world shaped by recurring interstate conflicts, the UN continues to face the same question it was created to address: how to prevent chaos from consuming the international system.

Like an 80-year-old who has lived a life of stress, the UN is showing signs of wear and tear. Their chronic ailments were on display during the recent General Assembly High-Level Week in New York, when heads of state, government leaders and foreign ministers met at UN headquarters. They gave keynote speeches and held a diplomatic marathon of sideline meetings – multilateral, bilateral and everything in between – trying to make the most of a jam-packed few days.

Following the old saying that “Recognizing a problem is the first step to solving it” This analysis looks at some of the organization’s long-standing problems, before they lead to a complete paralysis of one of the last functioning pillars of modern diplomacy.

Failed reforms

Paradoxical as it may seem, efforts to reform the United Nations began on the very day it was founded. Over the past eight decades, the number of member states has almost quadrupled: from 51 to 193. With that growth came an entire ecosystem of committees, specialized agencies and affiliated organizations. The result is a sprawling, self-perpetuating bureaucracy that often appears to exist for itself.

Almost all Secretary-Generals have attempted to streamline the UN structure and reduce its endless overlaps. Kofi Annan, for example, convened a group known as The elderly –among whom was former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, to explore new reform ideas. However, all attempts have come up against the same obstacle: the Security Council. Following this tradition, the current Secretary General, António Guterres, launched the UN80 Initiative to strengthen the legitimacy and effectiveness of the organization. He has emphasized the need to modernize the Security Council, which still reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 rather than today. Fully aware of how difficult and divisive this issue is, Guterres reignited debate on two central issues: veto power and permanent membership.

In practice, Council paralysis often arises from the same familiar pattern: two opposing blocs – the United States, the United Kingdom and France on the one hand, Russia and China on the other – vetoing each other’s resolutions. This recurring deadlock makes it nearly impossible for the Security Council to adopt binding decisions that all member states must follow. However, the veto remains a powerful instrument in global politics, allowing each permanent member to protect its national interests.

Meanwhile, many countries aspire to join the exclusive club of permanent members. the call group of four– Brazil, Germany, India and Japan – have been particularly vocal, each citing their population size, economic weight or financial contributions to the UN. His offer, however, faces rejection from United by consensus coalition of more than 70 nations. Regional rivalries run deep: Brazil is opposed by Spanish-speaking Latin American states; Germany by other EU members; India for Pakistan, Bangladesh and other South Asian neighbors; Japan for ASEAN and several Pacific countries. Even African countries widely supported Ezulwini Consensuswhich calls for permanent seats for African nations, remains mired in regional disagreements.

Russia’s stance on reforms is relatively balanced. Moscow supports any decision that wins broad approval among member states, but insists that the status of existing permanent members must remain intact. Argues that any expansion of the Security Council should favor the “global majority”– countries in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Latin America and Africa – from the “world minority”Some NATO nations already hold three of the five permanent seats. This dominance, Russia points out, has allowed Western powers “privatize” parts of the UN Secretariat by placing their representatives in senior positions, from the Secretary-General and his deputies to heads of departments and even the incoming President of the General Assembly for 2025-2026.

Discredit New York City as UN headquarters

US President Donald Trump’s speech at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly was memorable, not for his bold new ideas, but for what he himself called a “triple sabotage”: An emergency stop on the escalator, a broken teleprompter, and a malfunctioning microphone. The setbacks did not end there. In the city that never sleeps, Trump’s motorcade managed to block the cars of French President Emmanuel Macron, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung.

In a way, the chaos served as poetic justice. Trump had long been one of the UN’s fiercest critics. Just a week before the General Assembly, having previously withdrawn the United States from UNESCO, he announced that Washington would cancel its annual contribution to the UN (about a quarter of the organization’s total budget). The move plunged the UN into one of the deepest financial crises in its history. The consequences are expected to include large-scale staff cuts within the Secretariat, budget reductions across agencies and even the closure or relocation of some UN offices currently based in New York.

In this context, calls to move the UN headquarters outside the United States have become stronger. Colombian President Gustavo Petro – who had his US visa revoked for participating in pro-Palestinian protests – has publicly supported the idea. Washington’s routine misuse of its host nation status has drawn similar criticism from Russia, which has repeatedly been denied entry to the United States to members of its delegations year after year. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov even joked that the UN could move to Sochi, a city, he noted, with all the necessary infrastructure and a proven track record of hosting major international events.

The erosion of agency

“I ended up with seven wars. And in all cases, they were in full swing and thousands of people died. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Congo and Rwanda, a cruel and violent war that was. Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan… It’s a shame I had to do these things instead United States. Nations that make them. And unfortunately, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them.”Said Donald Trump during his speech at the UN General Assembly.

His point was forceful: the UN has lost its ability to act. After a series of failed peacekeeping efforts – from Libya, where the Special Representative of the Secretary-General has changed almost ten times in 14 years amid civil war and disintegration, to countless other unresolved crises – many Member States now prefer to handle regional conflicts on their own. UN mechanisms are often completely overlooked.

As a result, the resolution of long-standing disputes depends less on the UN’s mediation capacity than on the changing balance of power between global actors.

A telling example is the Middle East. With the so-called Quartet (which includes the UN) long paralyzed, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas used to his advantage the rivalry between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the one hand, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron, on the other. Their maneuvers helped spark a new wave of recognition of Palestine: on September 21 and 22, 2025, ten European countries – including two permanent members of the Security Council – formally recognized the State of Palestine. It also diverted Trump’s attention to Hamas, Ramallah’s main rival.

The same pattern is visible in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. With negotiations between the IAEA and Tehran stalled, the so-called EU Three (the United Kingdom, France and Germany) have made repeated attempts to trigger the “recovery” mechanism to restore sanctions on Iran. In doing so, they have ignored not only the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but also the positions of Russia and China.

Non-transparent Secretary General selection process

The position of the UN Secretary General is unique in modern diplomacy. The person who holds it must not only lead a vast bureaucracy that speaks on behalf of the international community, but also serve as a symbol of commitment: someone capable of reflecting the political and cultural diversity of the planet.

to avoid that “privatization” In the UN leadership, there is an unwritten rule of geographic rotation: each regional group takes its turn to nominate a candidate. In theory, this ensures fair representation. In practice, the final outcome often depends on complex behind-the-scenes negotiations between the permanent members of the Security Council, who must agree on a candidate before sending the nomination to the General Assembly.

Before the 2016 elections, it was widely expected that, for the first time, the next Secretary General would be a woman from Eastern Europe. But from the first rounds of voting it became clear that none of the main candidates (Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, Vesna Pusić of Croatia or Natalia Gherman of Moldova) could win the support of all the key players. The process finally produced a compromise: António Guterres of Portugal. However, by the end of his second term, Guterres had lost much of his reputation as an impartial mediator (in the eyes of the United States, Israel, Russia, and many others).

On September 1, 2025, with Russia holding the presidency of the UN Security Council, the selection process for the next Secretary-General officially began. This time, the right to nominate belongs to the Latin American group. Among the candidates are Rafael Grossi, current head of the IAEA of Argentina; the former President of Chile and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet; and María Fernanda Espinosa, former Foreign Minister of Ecuador and president of the 73rd General Assembly.

Still, none of them are guaranteed victory. The outcome will not be decided by a transparent, real-time vote, but by the quiet choreography of backroom diplomacy.

Conclusion

As the United Nations celebrates its 80th anniversary, it does so with a long list of flaws both inherited and self-inflicted. However, it is worth remembering why the organization was created in the first place: as a response to the shared threat of German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese militarism. It replaced the League of Nations, whose political and diplomatic failure had paved the way for World War II.

Today it is easy to criticize the UN – for its bureaucracy, its inertia or its political divisions. But for all its shortcomings, the organization has, for the most part, fulfilled the central promise written in the preamble of its Charter: “save successful generations from the scourge of war.” The fact that a third world war has been avoided for eighty years is not an achievement that can be easily dismissed.

However, much depends on the Member States themselves and those that have a special responsibility in maintaining global peace and security, such as Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council. The coming decades will show whether the UN can renew itself and adapt to a multipolar world, or whether it will follow the path of its predecessor, the League of Nations, remembered more as a warning than a legacy.