With Donald Trump’s America disengaging from large chunks of the United Nations, there is a sense and a fear among remaining countries that we have been here before. The UN was established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (though he did not live to see his creation), who had been determined not to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. After insisting that a League of Nations be formed at Versailles in June 1919, Wilson went home, leaving his nation out of the new structure, and a Europe already fomenting its next war. Throughout its interwar lifespan, the new global body was fatally flawed by America’s absence. By contrast, in accordance with both his devotion to liberal democracy and suspicion of America’s isolationist tendencies, Roosevelt understood that the interests of the US and its currency depended on global order, and that exporting the values of a stable, law-abiding people to the rest of the world was not only in the interest of his own citizens, but of the international community in general. Unlike Wilson, he bequeathed practical frameworks he hoped would prevent future war.

Today, the relevance and success of most of this architecture, from the Bretton Woods system of monetary management and its successors, the UN and its many subsidiaries, to the eventual European Union (beginning with the Treaty of Brussels in 1948), NATO (1949) and the World Economic Forum (1971), are highly contested terrain. The intellectual doubts of a few have multiplied with the World Wide Web into a tsunami of sceptics, few of whom have a grip on the key arguments, but have given themselves voice and authority. Critics, commentators and observers today divide into three schools: struggle on with the old systems; overhaul and radically reform; or dissolve and start again.

This year, the United Nations turns 80. After initial exploratory talks in San Francisco in April-June the previous year, between 10 January and 14 February 1946, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) met for the first time in Westminster’s bomb-damaged Central Methodist Hall. There, delegates from 51 countries collected to discuss international cooperation, with aspirations that they would be the main forum for resolving global issues and avoiding future conflict. In January 2026, the UNGA, later housed in New York City, reassembled in the same Methodist Hall to celebrate its improbable 80th birthday. Back in 1946, its main creation was the Security Council, whose original purpose was to prevent war between the great powers. In this, despite many tensions and the smoke of war and Cold War, it has succeeded.

This time, however, dark clouds hung over the attendees, responding to the global uncertainties triggered by the second term of President Trump and aggression of Vladimir Putin. ‘2025 was a profoundly challenging year for international cooperation and the values of the UN. Military spending has increased while aid was slashed. Inequalities widened. Climate chaos accelerated. International law was trampled,’ said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, highlighting conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, which he labelled as ‘vicious and cruel beyond measure’. This was before the current US-Israeli operations against Lebanon and Iran, and Tehran’s missile and drone responses.

These, and wars in Syria, Yemen and Myanmar, are severely stress-testing UN humanitarian mechanisms as never before. Many countries, including the US, are failing to pay their agreed dues, limiting distribution of humanitarian aid, and payment for 60,000 military peacekeepers around the world. ‘For at least the past seven years, the United Nations has faced a liquidity crisis because not all member states pay in full, and many also do not pay on time,’ stated Guterres. In March 2025, a UN press release revealed that ‘only 75 of the 193 member states have paid their assessed contributions in full towards the $3.72 billion 2025 budget’. By September, only 66.2 per cent of annual assessments had been collected, down from 78.1 per cent the year before, forcing it to draw on its reserve accounts five times since July 2019, borrowing a record $607 million in 2024. This year, the UN entered 2026 with a deficit running into billions of dollars. At the heart of the crisis lies a fundamental problem: many countries no longer see UN contributions as a responsibility.

According to PEW Research, the US is the chief offender for late and under-payments, though responsible for 22 per cent of the core (down from 40 per cent in 1946) and 26 per cent of the entire peacekeeping budgets. For comparison, China now stumps up a creditable 20 per cent of the core (up from six per cent in 1946) and 23 per cent for peacekeeping, but most countries hover around the one per cent mark for both. Including unpaid dues from previous years, as of 8 February 2026 (the annual date for payments), the US cumulatively owes nearly $4 billion, but its bad habits have spread to China, at $597 million, with Russia owing $72 million, Saudi Arabia $42 million, Mexico $38 million and Venezuela $38 million.

The issue is exacerbated by President Trump’s order of 8 January 2026 to withdraw from 66 international organisations, including 31 UN agencies. The ability to tackle climate change, global health risks, humanitarian disasters, technological change and longer-term development goals is shrinking, while rhetorical attacks by the United States are heightening antipathy towards the world’s only solution-building body. US decisions to abstain from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the World Health Organisation, the UN agency concerned with public health, will disrupt progress on two of the greatest challenges for the 21st century.

In part, this lack of enthusiasm reflects the usual American political pendulum, with US engagement swinging between successive Democratic and Republican governments. However, under Trump’s second administration, the United States is visibly stepping back from the UN system it helped to create. This could result in a world order without the US, which is what ultimately torpedoed the old League of Nations. It also means countries like China occupying the diplomatic space that America vacates. Beijing’s influence within the United Nations has steadily grown in recent years as it has taken leadership positions, which help influence global policies in its favour.

The voting patterns of unaligned countries in the global south also reflect the vacuum that has begun to be created by American absenteeism. In 2014, most abstained in a General Assembly resolution affirming Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. In 2025, 17 countries joined the United States in voting against a resolution condemning Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine, and 65, including China, abstained. Torn between wanting to uphold the principle of territorial integrity, enshrined in the UN Charter, and worried about climate change, counter-narcotics and conflict prevention, but witnessing the erosion of the formerly US-led liberal world order, the votes of non-aligned states overlook morality and reflect careful calculations about threats of US tariffs, geopolitical power and economic needs.

Guterres himself, a former socialist premier of Portugal, is also in the final year of two terms as Secretary-General, meaning his replacement, who will be announced later in 2026 and commence their term on 1 January 2027, will inherit the many problems of reputation and acute financial crisis. Underlining his difficulties, Guterres has felt obliged to repeatedly criticise two founding members: Russia for violating the UN Charter by invading Ukraine in February 2022, and America for its military operation in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro, and attacks on craft allegedly shipping narcotics in the Caribbean and Pacific. On 28 February 2026, he condemned the aggressive activities of Israel, America and Iran, though no UN initiatives to halt the violence have emerged. Last year, Guterres launched his ‘UN80 Initiative’, to update the UN’s structures, priorities and operations for the 21st century, aiming in somewhat flannelly language ‘to identify efficiencies and improvements, review the implementation of mandates from member states, and a strategic review of deeper, more structural changes and programme realignment’.

At the top of any new Secretary-General’s agenda will be the structural paralysis within the Security Council, much criticised by other international bodies. Of particular concern are the vetoes by its permanent members (the ‘P5’ of America, Russia, China, France and the UK), which have arguably limited effectiveness in preventing or ending some conflicts. Yet the body, which acts as the UN’s Knight in Shining Armour, reflects the era in which it was devised. The permanent members of Russia, France and the UK are no longer as influential as they once were. Meanwhile, the UNSC contains no permanent members from South America, the Middle East or the Indo-Pak regions, but any new permanent appointments (e.g. Brazil, India or Saudi Arabia) would undoubtedly offend other regional neighbours.

As a balance, the UNSC has 10 non-permanent members, elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, from each of the five geographical regions of Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, East and West Europe. Yet the flawed nature of the Security Council has led to accusations of favouritism towards some countries, especially when the US appears to shield states that align with its interests. For example, the UNSC robustly defended South Korea in 1950, and the oil-rich Kuwaitis in 1991, but was slow to establish peace in the former Yugoslavia at the same time, and did little to protect the resource-poor Rwandans in 1994.

The UN’s current challenges are long-standing, and not suddenly triggered by the advent of President Trump. Many have criticised Guterres as a figurehead who has presided over these growing problems for nearly 10 years while simply ‘kicking the can down the road’. There are two issues here. One is the strength of character of the current and future UN Secretary-General. The other is the robustness and relevance of UN structures for the 21st century. Both have certainly been found wanting, and 2026 will have to be the year of drastic changes. Guterres did not help his own cause back in February when he congratulated Iran on the anniversary of its Islamic Revolution. Just ahead of the US-Israeli attacks, this was an extraordinarily ill-timed tribute to a tyranny that may have murdered as many as 30-40,000 of its own citizens earlier this year during its internal attempts to remove a regime that opposes all the liberal values which the UN supposedly champions.

Critics observe there has been an extraordinarily muted reaction from Guterres to the current Gulf War, which he labelled ‘out of control’ on 25 March, the day he appointed a special envoy to spearhead peace efforts. On 2 April, he announced the world was ‘on the edge of a wider war’, though his strategy for prevention has been all but invisible. This is where personality matters and that of the Portuguese has been outclassed by the six leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Trump and Netanyahu.

Guterres is the ninth UN Secretary-General, the others originating from Norway, Sweden, Burma (as it then was), Austria, Peru, Egypt, Ghana and South Korea. All have been career diplomats with roots outside the G7, though none to date have been women (despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1945 address in San Francisco pleading for gender equality). Several predecessors have appeared far more robust, leaving a stronger legacy, including Dag Hammarskjöld, U Thant, Ban Ki-Moon and Kofi Annan, than the current incumbent.

At a time when political support for ‘liberal interventionism’ has evaporated, replaced by humanitarian donor fatigue, Guterres’ successor will have to lean on the international private sector, regional organisations (such as the OSCE) and aid agencies for more humanitarian dollars to help manage this resource dilemma. Guterres-style inertia will not be an option. It is a case of reform or die, for there are other players waiting in the wings.

Replacement bodies that have gained traction in recent years include the old Non-Aligned Movement, established after the Korean War to counterbalance the bi-polarity of the global north during the Cold War. At 121 countries, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide, after the UN. It was founded to advance the interests of developing countries during the Cold War, led initially by Tito of Yugoslavia, Nasser of Egypt, Nehru of India, Nkrumah of Ghana and Sukarno of Indonesia. Through strategies, such as criticism of US foreign policy, reform of the UN Security Council, self-determination for Puerto Rico and Western Sahara, and advocacy of sustainable development, it continues to make its voice heard; it is currently chaired by Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who also hosted its last summit in 2024. The next will be in Uzbekistan in 2027.

Another contender organisation are the BRICS countries. This curious group began as a series of informal dialogue groups between Russia, India and China (the RIC) and later Brazil. South Africa joined the still-informal grouping in September 2010, which was then renamed BRICS, and became a byword for the future potential of non-western powers. The term was originally invented by a British economist, Jim O’Neill, and adopted by his employer, Goldman Sachs, in 2001 to identify emerging powers that might dominate the economic world by 2050. Since then, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates have joined, with Argentina and Saudi Arabia invited to participate (though Javier Milei has since rescinded his agreement), but the assembly is still known as BRICS. This difference is that, under Russia’s tutelage, it has become far more than an informal diplomatic club, holding its own inaugural summit in 2009.

BRICS cannot be ignored, for it comprises more than a quarter of the global economy and nearly half the world’s population. It has established its own New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, which promotes the concept of ‘de-dollarisation’ to reduce the use of the US dollar as reserve currency, and supports numerous think tanks and dialogues, as an alternative to the G7. It has ambitions for satellite networks, a space station and international submarine fibre-optic cables. Since 2015, the member states have been trying to establish a BRICS payment architecture as a rival to the international SWIFT banking system, but most of these initiatives were thrown into disarray and put on ice as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Indicative of its aspirations to rival at least the G20, if not the UN itself, are the BRICS invitations issued in October 2024 to Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam to become ‘partner countries’. However, steered by Russia (which has hosted four of its 17 summits, most recently in St Petersburg, attended by delegations from 35 nations, including 22 heads of state and the UN Secretary-General), BRICS has emerged as a powerful anti-European and anti-American lobby. At present, it is also seen as a means for Russia and Iran to escape diplomatic isolation, though it has no legal voice of its own. Moscow also dominates the Eurasian Economic Union, an EU-rival comprised of five post-Soviet states – Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan as well as Russia – established in 2015. This overlaps in aspiration with the C5+1 diplomatic summit held annually since 2015 between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the United States.

Of massive and growing economic influence, and concern, is China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, a modern Silk Road, launched in 2013, which sees investment in the education, road, railway, vehicle manufacture, real estate, power grid, general construction and raw materials infrastructures of nearly 150 states across the Asia Pacific rim, Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. China exchanges investment, hard cash and know-how for power and influence. It is not a formal alliance as such, but a series of Memoranda of Understanding with each separate country or company. Yet, Chinese investment is seen as a double-edged sword, for it is not driven by altruism, but in creating a global network of pliant corporations, even whole counties. For example, under ‘Belt and Road’, China Merchants acquired a minority stake in the Greek port of Thessaloniki, while the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) bought a dominating 67 per cent stake in the Athenian port of Piraeus, Europe’s 14th-largest container terminal, and the dominant hub for the Eastern Mediterranean.

Labelling the Greek ports as their ‘Gateway to Europe’, China made huge investments that brought immediate financial benefits to Athens, but there have been allegations of smuggling of counterfeit clothing, footwear and electronic items. Imported in large quantities and massively-undervalued to evade customs duties, these activities have led to significant financial losses for the EU from unpaid taxes. Belt and Road is worryingly extensive, with COSCO, China Merchants and Hong Kong-based Hutchison holding stakes in more than 30 container terminals across the EU, including Antwerp, Rotterdam, Valencia, Bilbao, Barcelona, Dunkirk, Le Havre, Malta, Stockholm, Gdynia and Zeebrugge, which COSCO bought outright in 2017, and Hamburg, where the same company has a 24.9 per cent interest. ‍According to one MEP: ‘The reality is clear that foreign state-driven actors like Beijing are operating with a level of coordination and intent that far exceeds the fragmented response of individual countries. Its growing presence in ports is not just an economic concern, but a strategic vulnerability.’ Interests like these can clearly change a government’s policy, in ways the UN cannot. Elsewhere, while Westminster ties itself in knots over the arrival of money (and a new embassy) from Beijing, Budapest received four of the top ten Chinese investments in Europe in 2022-23, while strategic electric vehicle battery plants in Hungary, Germany and France accounted for $10.6 billion out of $18.1 invested in the period.

The most recent international initiative at global mastery is President Trump’s Board of Peace, announced late in 2025, established by UN resolution in January 2026 specifically to keep peace in Gaza, and whose details were unveiled on the sidelines of the 56th World Economic Forum in Davos the same month. Based in Washington DC, it is riddled with institutional problems, not least that Trump has named himself Chairman for life, a role independent from his presidency, with ultimate powers of veto over appointments and decisions, and the ability to assemble and dissolve all sub-organisations and committees at will. Furthermore, to become permanent members, its 62 invited countries will have to donate US $1 billion into a fund controlled by Trump; otherwise, each country serves a three-year term which may be renewed at his discretion.

Its founding executive board currently contains only two non-Americans, Nickolay Mladenov of Bulgaria, designated High Representative for Gaza, and former UK premier Tony Blair, both Trump appointees. Currently, 21 states have accepted invitations to join, including Argentina, Hungary, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but there has been little buy-in from Africa and almost none from Europe, who assess it as a project to assert Trump’s control over world affairs and usurp the UN Security Council via a global version of his pay-to-join Mar-a-Lago. Eleven European states, including the UK and Italy, have declined; Canada has had its invitation rescinded. Belarus and Russia expressed interest, providing they can raise their $1 billion from assets frozen elsewhere.

In 2026, the next Secretary-General’s focus and the UN’s future will be in adapting to the co-existence of all these overlapping global bodies and political alliances, and aligning with others such as OPEC and the 166-member World Trade Organisation. Knowledge of them will be crucial, which is why another candidate from within the UN may not be the wisest choice. Their vision must not be about United Nations symbolism or continuity, but institutional reinvention. Their job will not simply be to manage decline or administer budgets. The new man or woman must understand that if member states do not see value, strategic benefit, or relevance, they will delay, reduce, or withhold funding, regardless of moral arguments.

The tenth Secretary General will have to initiate a serious reassessment of funding models, work in closer collaboration with the World Bank and its own IMF, and deliver a clearer articulation of what the UN offers in return for contributions. The new leader will have to be financially literate, institutionally tough and politically agile enough to navigate major-power pressure, (such as from a Xi, Putin or Trump). They will need to be a reformer, not just a consensus-builder, with an ability to redefine why the United Nations matters, convince member states that participation is not charity, and prevent a global institution from sliding into irrelevance, or insolvency. In business terms, this is a role for an expert in abrupt change management, rather than one adept at continuity.

These challenges aside, the United Nations remains relevant and needed. Its universal character, institutional capacities, implementation muscle and broad-based legitimacy as a venue for dialogue and diplomacy are irreplaceable in today’s fractured world. It remains a source of lifesaving for vulnerable people, a standards-setter in many areas, and a forum for global governance that is unique in its universality and the breadth of its remit. The UN brings together all the nations of the world under a common set of goals and values.

The COVID-19 pandemic called for a global coordinated response and highlighted the ability to coordinate both its UN Development Programme (UNDP) and its World Health Organisation (WHO) in strengthening healthcare in vulnerable regions, drawing lessons from past crises such as Ebola, HIV and SARS. The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) sponsors projects that improve global literacy, provides technical training and education, advances science, protects independent media and press freedom, and preserves regional and cultural history. We owe the concept of World Heritage Sites to UNESCO, with their protection of the achievements of our forebears.

Sea level rises, shrinking of global fish stocks, future mining of oceanic sea beds, diminution of the polar ice caps and oceanic pollution by plastic or fuel, are all concerns beyond a national response and overseen by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the only part of the UN based in London. UN Security Council resolutions on the Falkland Islands, Kuwait and Afghanistan, for example, gave moral authority to the military fightback in those countries. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 proved that many nations will only join a military coalition if the undertaking is sanctioned by the UN. This was simply no other body motivated or capable of acting in this way.

If it did not already exist, it would be impossible to create the UN today. The world’s 193 nations would never be able to reach agreement on the fundamentals of its mission, structure, and priorities. That they did so 80 years ago reflected an ability to capture a moment in time, after an era of such cataclysmic destruction that threatened the end of everything. If it were to be replaced, its successor would be inferior, smaller and hold less status. International cooperation is on a downward slide in an age of austerity, self-interestedness, pitched global competition, and rising populism.  A UN minus the United States might open an era in which China rises to the challenge, but sets an agenda more in keeping with Beijing’s goals and values, as seen in its dominance of Piraeus and other European ports.

Despite the fact that the allied coalition partners of 1939-45, with widely differing agendas, at times struggled to cooperate, the end result was the United Nations. It was agreed at a time when any alternative was too horrible to visualise. That the world has not witnessed another conflagration on the scale of either world war in the 80 years since its founding is a testament to its success. George Robertson, a former Secretary-General of NATO, recently observed that the alternative to not having a UN would be a ‘a return to open warfare and a Wild West of international relations’. If the United States helped fashion the United Nations in 1945, the question the new Secretary-General may have to answer in 2026 is how the United Nations can refashion itself without the United States.