In 1945, as the Second World War was still raging, delegates from 50 countries gathered in San Francisco for the founding conference of the United Nations. Their core purpose, according to the soaring rhetoric of the UN Charter, was ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind’. The Charter was unanimously adopted and signed on 26 June.

There were high hopes for this new organisation, especially from the US, which had always been its biggest champion. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, claimed that the UN held the key to ‘the fulfillment of humanity’s highest aspirations and the very survival of our civilisation’.

Yet there were also plenty of dissenting voices. The organisation had been set up with a rotating membership on its executive body, the Security Council. But the five most powerful nations of the time – the US, the USSR, Britain, France and China – were granted not only a permanent seat but the power to veto any proposal that they disagreed with.

Many of the smaller nations of the world found this very difficult to accept. As Egypt’s foreign minister pointed out, the veto allowed the Big Five to ‘sit as both judge and jury’ in any matter that affected themselves. The Colombian delegate, Alberto Lleras Camargo, pointed out that while the Big Five were the only ones strong enough to police the new system, equally ‘it is only the great powers which can menace the peace and security of the world’.

Some commentators questioned the very concept upon which the UN was founded. In 1946, the Hungarian-American intellectual, Emery Reves, published a scathing critique of the organisation that became an international bestseller. Nationalism was the root cause of all wars, he argued in The Anatomy of Peace: by making the organisation answerable to the world’s nations, rather than directly to its people, the UN was simply falling into the same trap all over again. Reves was not at all surprised that the Big Five had been able to bully the others into allowing them special privileges. ‘All great powers behave like gangsters,’ he wrote. ‘And all small nations behave like prostitutes.’

In the years since, almost all the doubts of 1945 have been borne out. Most of the Big Five have used the protection of the veto to embark on their own wars, much to the impotent rage of the vast majority of other UN members. The British and the French invaded Suez in 1956, the Soviets invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan (1956, 1968 and 1979), and the Americans embarked on a series of adventures in Central America in the 1980s. The pattern has continued into the 21st century with the American-led invasion of Iraq (2003), the Russian invasion of Georgia (2008) and the current Russian war in Ukraine, all of which were carried out without Security Council approval – and without its reprimand. When push comes to shove, the Big Five have proven themselves more or less free to fight wars whenever they want.

As have their allies. Another feature of the Security Council veto is the way that it has consistently been used to prevent sanctions against any nation that is under the protection of one of the great powers. Thus, the Soviet Union always protected Cuba, China still protects North Korea, and America prevents any sanctions against Israel. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of each case, this has produced a system of double standards, where some nations are punished for threatening the peace, while others seem able to get away with it.

As far as its core mission is concerned, the UN’s track record over the last 80 years has not been good, though the Permanent Five’s veto has at least provided a pressure valve that allowed the great powers to remain engaged with the international process, rather than walking away from the negotiating table, as happened so often in the prewar League of Nations. If the organisation has not always been successful in preventing small wars, it has at least played a role in preventing another world war.

Away from the great power interests, there have been some more tangible successes. In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, the UN helped smooth the path to independence in Indonesia and a number of African states. At varying stages it has managed to maintain precarious armistice agreements on the Indian subcontinent, in the Middle East, and on Cyprus. It retaliated strongly to Communist aggression in Korea in the 1950s, and in the 1990s it forced Saddam Hussein’s troops to withdraw from Kuwait.

In other spheres of life its achievements have been even more remarkable. After the Second World War, and throughout the 20th century, the UN cared for millions of refugees – feeding them, clothing them, finding them new homes, and caring for their psychological needs. UN agencies have helped to wipe out smallpox throughout the world, improve labour standards, extend education and improve the rights of women. Each time we telephone abroad, or post an international letter, or fly to another country, we are making use of international agreements that have been brokered and regulated by agencies of the United Nations. These things might seem less impressive than the attempt to achieve world peace, but they, too, are a part of the urge to build a better, more united world.

The most striking thing about the United Nations today is how anachronistic it all seems, particularly the structure of the Security Council with its five permanent members. Even in 1945 it was plain that Britain and France would never again be the great powers they once were: nowadays they are no greater or smaller than a dozen other nations. Today’s Russia is a mere shadow of the former Soviet Union, and while China wields huge economic power, it has still not achieved the rank of political superpower.

The one constant over all this time has been the United States, which has always been both the world’s greatest power and the UN’s biggest supporter, and which still provides more than a fifth of all UN funding. In recent years American patience with the organisation has been waning. In February 2025 President Trump instructed the State Department to carry out a comprehensive review of all US involvement in multilateral organisations, including the UN.

All are agreed that the UN system is in desperate need of reform, but nobody can agree on what that should look like. Each of the Permanent Five wants the UN to align more closely with its own national interests, while many of the other nations argue that it is the membership structure of the Security Council itself that needs to change. Since none of the Permanent Five is willing to relinquish their special privileges, it is difficult to see how any meaningful reform is possible. And so the UN looks set to limp on into the future, hamstrung by the very history that brought it into existence in the first place.