Is the UN failing, or are nations?

The Z Factor

They often say in cricket that wicketkeepers and umpires have the two most thankless jobs. No one ever notices you when you do things right. They only talk about you when you fail.

Australia’s Adam Gilchrist effected 905 dismissals behind the wickets in international cricket. He went a record number of years without missing a game for his country. Then, in 2008, he dropped a catch off India’s VVS Laxman, and was done. “I reckon it’s a good reason to retire,” Gilchrist later said.

You might say the same for the United Nations. As world leaders meet at the UN General Assembly this month, everybody is talking about how the UN is passé. Wars are back. Disasters are ravaging. People are dying. Wasn’t the UN supposed to stop all this from happening? What’s the point of having it if it can’t?

The thing about wars is that you only see the ones that are afoot — not the ones that have been avoided. There are scary skirmishes on the high seas every other day that are talked of only behind closed doors. Prisoner swaps have made it possible for innocent hostages to return home. Wily transactions have managed to transfer humanitarian aid amidst geopolitical gridlocks.

All that said, the UN does seem faulty, but it’s not the UN’s fault. When the UN was set up after World War II, it was meant to be a place where people could talk before they fought. The hope was that the talking would prevent the fighting. Nations would give and take behind closed doors and call off missile strikes at the last minute.

But nobody wants to talk anymore. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, only the United States was represented by a President or Prime Minister at this week’s UN General Assembly session. All the other leaders chose not to attend the “parliament of man”.

In the UN Security Council, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a momentous appearance. Yet, as he spoke, Russia’s Foreign Minister was missing. When Russia’s Foreign Minister spoke, Zelenskyy was missing.

Diplomacy always requires compromises — to look the adversary in the eye, consider the immense human costs of confrontation, and find a way to meet in the middle. But in a world of nationalistic hysteria, compromises are unpopular. Gusto and bravado are seen as hallmarks of national power. Peace deals can kill political careers.

Yet, blaming the UN for failing to stop wars is a bit like blaming the meeting room after failing to sign a deal. The UN is but a neutral ground for conflict resolution. The real problem is that nobody wants to be seen to be resolving conflict. Wars are no longer as personally costly to leaders as they used to be when kings and princes had to jump on a horse and rush into battle with a sword in hand. Instead, wars increasingly keep politicians in power — either by distracting public attention away from domestic problems or by soothing the misplaced and unresolved ego problems of nationalists.

To revive the UN, the world’s people must revive the art of compromise. They must be willing to give and take with other nations in the pursuit of peace. It would take nothing short of a global cultural revolution — to make peace cool again.

But in the absence of that, the UN’s meeting halls fulfill at least one function: They let the world’s nations and their leaders deflect blame that must lie with them onto a neutral world body rather than look themselves in the eye.