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In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Biden proposed building a “more effective and more inclusive U.N.” by “bringing in new voices and new perspectives.”
What he should have said instead is that the U.N. has lost its way, and it will need to be seriously reimagined if it is to remain relevant.
To be sure, the creation of the U.N. system to reconstruct global order after World War II was inspired, and its specialized agencies, such as the Food and Agricultural Organization, have done important work for decades.
A flag of the United Nations flies at its campus in Bonn, Germany, on Sept. 28, 2024. (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
Today, however, the U.N. suffers from a fundamental flaw: it gives too much power to revisionist autocracies like China and Russia that want to tear down the U.S.-led global system. Beijing, Moscow and other revisionist authoritarians use their influence in the U.N. to turn the institution against its founding mission.
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The list of abuses is long.
Russia chaired a U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine as it was launching an invasion of that country. China continues to prevent the World Health Organization from investigating COVID-19’s origins, making a future outbreak more likely.
Russia and China also use their seats in the U.N. Security Council to weaken sanctions efforts against the illegal nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. The U.N. Human Rights Council includes repressive regimes – such as China – ensuring that these countries escape scrutiny for their barbaric human rights records.
And employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel.
These are only the most prominent examples.
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Nevertheless, the proceedings last week demonstrate that many still believe the U.N. remains the best possible forum to bring countries together to address shared global challenges.
This is wishful thinking.
Biden is right when he says we are at an inflection point in history, but we will only rise to this challenge if the United States and its allies can revitalize and adapt multilateral institutions to reflect new realities.
Instead of Biden’s platitudes about global cooperation, the next U.S. administration should acknowledge that America’s adversaries have transformed the U.N. into another arena for competition between free nations and an axis of revisionist autocracies.
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They should use speeches at the General Assembly to call out the bad behavior of U.S. adversaries, such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, and encourage close allies to join in the condemnation. They should be unrelenting in opposing this axis’ threats to their neighbors, their unfair trade practices and their abhorrent human rights abuses.
They should unrelentingly defend U.S. allies, like Israel, from unfair attacks, and acknowledge that the U.N. is becoming even more obsessively antisemitic.
In both 2022 and 2023, the number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel exceeded the combined total of those condemning all other countries. Yet, the body refrained from condemning Hamas after the abhorrent Oct. 7 attack – even after it fired nine UNRWA employees for likely involvement in an act of war.
To counter the U.N.’s capture by cynical autocracies, Washington and its allies should use their diplomatic weight to place U.S. and allied officials in leadership institutions in key U.N. bodies, including the Human Rights Council.
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The United States provides one-third of U.N. funding, giving it enormous potential influence if it is willing to use it. But the U.S. should move from mandatory assessments to voluntary contributions in order to prioritize programs that advance U.S. interests and defund others.
In addition, Washington should advance multilateralism by selectively routing around the U.N. system in favor of institutions that include America’s democratic allies and exclude authoritarian regimes such Russia and China. These groupings, like the G-7 and NATO, are often the only places where genuine international cooperation happens today.
Finally, there is no need to cling to the preexisting system. After WWII, there was an explosion of creativity as Washington and its allies invented new bodies from scratch. The world needs a new burst of such innovative thinking now to design the multilateral frameworks necessary to meet contemporary challenges.
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Priority should be given to frameworks that bring together U.S. allies in North America, Europe and the Indo-Pacific. NATO, the Quad, AUKUS, IP4 (Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea), and the American–Japanese–Korean trilateral pact are promising steps in this direction.
Last week’s U.N. proceedings show that hope for multilateral cooperation remains alive. But to transform that spirit into effective governance, Washington will need to reimagine the U.N. and other global institutions to return them to their founding mission of promoting peace, prosperity and freedom.
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Matthew Kroenig is vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center, a professor at Georgetown, and a former Pentagon strategist. Dan Negrea is a former State Department special representative for commercial and business affairs and an Atlantic Council distinguished fellow. The authors write only in their personal capacity and not on behalf of any person or organization.
