The United Nations General Assembly met two weeks ago in New York for its annual extravaganza. Heads of state and ambassadors from the world’s nations made speeches on important issues affecting humanity. Representatives of high-level committees working on key issues presented proposals on everything from anti-microbial resistance and rising sea levels to the Sustainable Development Goals. The General Assembly voted on key matters, including a new “once-in-a-generation” U.N. document representing a global pact to safeguard future generations from present-day existential threats.
Yet every time the General Assembly meets, criticism and skepticism about the U.N. as an organization abound from a variety of quarters. Some conspiracy theorists cast the U.N. as a creeping form of world government, bent on turning Americans into “vassals” of global environmental totalitarianism or drafting U.S. citizens to go off and serve as cannon fodder under foreign military commanders. Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump’s record of derision and efforts to cut U.S. contributions to the U.N. taps into these concerns.
Of course, the U.N. is actually nothing close to a world government: It can barely pass a resolution much less disarm a tyrant or keep a superpower from doing what it wants. But that, in turn, leads to a different chorus of criticisms from other actors, who argue that the Security Council is unrepresentative and bows to the great powers, and that the organization overall is wasteful and inefficient. All this is true, but these are features, not bugs: The very decentralization and inefficiency that is the source of current criticisms and calls for reform help the U.N. not only survive, but be remarkably effective at what it does.