How to Save the UN From Irrelevance

United Nations Headquarters, New York City, June 2021 Andrew Kelly / Reuters RAFAEL MARIANO GROSSI is Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. More & Download Print unlock this feature or Sign in. Save Sign in and save to read later Copy This is a subscriber-only feature. or Sign in. Chicago MLA APSA APA Chicago Cite not available at the moment MLA Cite not available at the moment APSA Cite not available at the moment APA Cite not available at the moment This is a subscriber-only feature. or Sign in. The UN cannot be expected to prevent or end every war, but working toward that end is its core task. It can again become a capable, impartial, and present broker for peace. Failing to be in the room where it happens creates disillusionment and puts the UN on a path to irrelevance. Institutions that cannot explain where they add value become vulnerable to indifference, and indifference in the current climate is not a passive condition—it is actively eroding the UN’s finances and political will. The UN has a liquidity crisis, which, at its core, is a crisis of confidence in the institution . The most immediate action that the international community can take to address this crisis of confidence is in its choice of the next secretary-general, for which I am contending. History suggests that a more active secretary-general, who goes into the field to prevent conflict and who is present at tables where diplomatic solutions are negotiated, can be effective, even in a deeply divided world. NATIONS FOR PEACE The United Nations should focus on reducing the conditions that produce crises rather than mainly responding to their consequences. Doing so requires a renewed focus on facilitating peace, development, and human rights as mutually reinforcing priorities. Throughout the Cold War, UN secretaries-general supported member states in preventing conflict and finding paths to de-escalation when it occurred. As the historian Thant Myint-U wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, the quiet diplomacy of his grandfather, U Thant, as secretary-general helped end the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s. The man who filled that role two decades later, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, facilitated diplomatic solutions for conflicts in Cambodia and Central America. As history has shown, secretaries-general can build off-ramps from which exhausted belligerents can exit a conflict and establish conditions that help prevent a future crisis. To measure up to this task, the next secretary-general will need to be a facilitator, preserving communication, conveying messages, clarifying positions, and working persistently across divides to reduce the risk of misunderstanding and escalation.