INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - BREAKING NEWS - ADVANCED (C1 – C2)

How the World Lost

Faith in the UN

1. grapple with (v) a) something that does not produce the desired results or outcome

2. rudderless (adj) b) a period of time when someone is not having much success or
making progress
3. fruitless (adj)
c) the basis or foundation upon which something is built/established

4. hash out (phr v) d) cause someone to become annoyed or upset

5. face off (phr v) e) engaged in a struggle or close encounter

6. sharp-elbowed (idiom) f) to discuss or work through something in detail, usually in an

attempt to reach a resolution or understanding
7. ruffle sb feathers (phr)
g) to put forward or introduce an idea or plan for consideration or
discussion
8. undercut (v)
h) an official instruction or command from an authority
9. fitful (adj)
i) something or someone as lacking direction, guidance, or control
10. float (v)
j) having a boldly assertive manner intended to establish an
11. dog days (n) advantage

k) something that occurs irregularly, intermittently, unsteady manner

12. heyday (n)

l) a state of lack of activity or lack of success

13. mandate (n)
m) to meet an opposing group to argue or compete
14. doldrums (n)
n) a period of great success, activity, or influence
15. footing (n)
o) to weaken or diminish the effect or influence of something else

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How the World Lost Faith
in the UN
Regaining It Will Require Accepting a
Diminished Role for an Age of Competition
1 Ever since 1947, when the UN General Assembly
voted in favor of partitioning Palestine into Jewish
and Arab states, the organization has grappled with
crises in the Middle East. In recent decades,
discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the UN
have featured the same basic dynamic: the United
States uses its veto to block criticism of Israel at the
Security Council while Arab states rally developing
countries to defend the Palestinians. The debate at
the UN in the weeks after Hamas’s October 7 attack
on Israel has largely followed this familiar pattern.
The United States has blocked the Security Council
from calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, but it
could not stop a resolution passed in late October by
a huge majority in the General Assembly demanding a
“humanitarian truce.”
2 Yet diplomats at UN offices in New York and Geneva
say that this crisis feels different—and that its effects
could spread beyond Israel and the Gaza Strip to the
UN itself. Their warnings are in part a reaction to the
brutality of Hamas, the rising death toll in Gaza from
Israel’s bombardment, and the risks of regional
escalation. But widespread pessimism about the UN’s
future also reflects a loss of confidence across the
organization. Skepticism about the efficacy of an
institution designed to reflect twentieth-century
power relations and deal with postwar problems is
hardly new. Over the last year, however, the UN has
seemed more rudderless than ever, unable to respond
to crises ranging from violent flare-ups in Sudan and
Nagorno-Karabakh to the coup in Niger. Security
Council diplomats say that tensions between Russia
and the West over Ukraine—the topic of scores of
fruitless UN debates since the Russian invasion of
Ukraine in February 2022—are undermining
discussions of unrelated issues in Africa and the Middle
East. In September, UN Secretary-General António
Guterres warned at the annual General Assembly
meeting that a “great fracture” in the global
governance system was looming.
3 The war between Israel and Hamas threatens to deal
the coup de grâce to the UN’s credibility in responding
to crises. Soon, national governments and UN officials
will face a reckoning. They must confront the question
of how the UN can contribute to peace and security at
a time when the common ground among great powers
is shrinking by the day. Since the end of the Cold War,
states and civil society organizations have called on the
UN to deal with conflicts large and small as a matter of
habit. But now the institution appears to be running up
against its geopolitical limitations.
4 A UN fit for the current age will need to scale down its
ambitions. On security matters, the organization
should focus on a limited number of priorities and
hand off the reins of crisis management to others
when it can. Certain international problems will still
require the kind of coordination that is only possible at
the UN. Even when competing countries seem to
abandon diplomacy, the institution remains a place
where adversaries can hash out their differences and
find opportunities to cooperate. Rather than let
current conflicts tear the institution apart, national
governments and UN officials alike must work to
preserve its most vital functions.
STARTING TO SPIRAL
5 The crisis of confidence in the UN has been building
since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the
weeks afterward, diplomats worried that tensions
between great powers would paralyze the UN. At first,
it looked as if their fears were misplaced. Russia, the
United States, and its European allies engaged in fierce
debates over the war in Ukraine, but they grudgingly
continued to coordinate on other matters. The Security
Council, for instance, managed to impose a new
sanctions regime on the gangs terrorizing Haiti and to
agree on a new mandate for the UN to work with the
Taliban government in Kabul to deliver aid to suffering
Afghans. Both Russia and the West seemed willing to
use the UN’s most powerful body as a space for
residual cooperation.
6 Meanwhile, the United States and its allies rallied
considerable support for Ukraine in a series of votes in
the General Assembly to condemn Russia’s aggression.
Until the early months of this year, many diplomats
hoped that the UN would retain its capacity for joint
action even as many of its members faced off over the
war in Ukraine.
7 By the spring, this fragile balance started to break
down. Russia has acted as a spoiler at the UN with
increasing frequency. In June, Moscow schemed with
the government of Mali—which had turned to the
Kremlin-backed Wagner private military company for
security assistance—to force UN peacekeepers to
withdraw from Malian territory, ending a decadelong
mission. In July, Russia vetoed the renewal of a
Security Council mandate, in place since 2014, for UN
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aid agencies to deliver aid to rebel-held parts of
northwestern Syria. Moscow also pulled out of the
Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered by the UN
and Turkey in July 2022 that had allowed Ukraine to
export agricultural products without Russian
interference.
8 The war in the Middle East has underlined this
increasingly sharp-elbowed approach to UN
diplomacy. During past eruptions of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, including the outbreak of violence
in Gaza in May 2021, Russia and China refrained from
criticizing the United States’ involvement too loudly at
the UN. This time, China has once again avoided the
controversy, limiting its comments to calls for a cease-
fire. But Russia has gone out of its way to take
advantage of the situation. After the United States
vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for
humanitarian assistance to Gaza in mid-October,
Russia’s ambassador to the UN lamented the
“hypocrisy and double standards of our American
colleagues” and implied that Washington might be
fueling the war to boost U.S. arms sales.
9 If Russia is ruffling feathers at the UN, the United
States’ unconditional support for Israel has caused
greater diplomatic damage. The effects are clearest in 12
the General Assembly, where the coalition of states
that previously backed Ukraine has splintered over
Gaza. On October 27, the General Assembly passed a
resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” between
Israel and Hamas, with 120 yeas, 14 nays, and 44
abstentions. The United States voted against the
resolution, citing the text’s failure to condemn Hamas
for its atrocities. European countries were divided,
with some voting in favor, some against, and some
abstaining. The fallout was predictable. Diplomats
from developing countries privately indicated that they
might reject future UN resolutions in support of
Ukraine in response to the lack of Western solidarity
with the Palestinians.
10 This latest divide is likely to undercut the United
States’ recent push to improve its relations with the
global South at the UN. The Biden administration has 13
called for reforms to the Security Council that could
give powers such as Brazil and India a greater voice in
the body, and it has promised to work with the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund to deliver
much-needed financing to debt-laden developing
countries. Before the current conflict, Washington had
made tentative headway with the latter gestures: poor
countries may appreciate the kind words, but they are
still waiting for the cash. Now, the Biden
administration’s position on Israel and Gaza may undo
what fitful progress it had achieved.
SITTING ON THE SIDELINES
11 The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have not just
aggravated diplomatic frictions between UN member
states. They have also put enormous pressure on the
UN’s leader, Guterres, and the institution’s entire
conflict-management system. Without unified support
from the Security Council, Guterres and the UN
Secretariat, which has day-to-day oversight of UN
peace operations, have struggled to keep the
organization’s conflict management work on track. In
trouble spots such as Sudan, Mali, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, governments and warring
parties have refused to work with UN mediators or
demanded the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers,
conscious that they are unlikely to face any real
penalties for doing so. The organization has managed
to maintain its humanitarian presence in places such as
Afghanistan, but it faces growing shortfalls in funding
for this work as many Western donors trim their aid
budgets while spending considerable sums on military
and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.
Guterres has found himself caught in the diplomatic
crossfire over events in the Middle East. After he said
that Hamas’s attack on Israel “did not happen in a
vacuum” in a speech before the Security Council on
October 24, Israel called on Guterres to resign and
reduced its cooperation with UN humanitarian
officials. Guterres denied any suggestion that his words
could be interpreted as justification for what he called
Hamas’s “acts of terror,” and the Israeli response
ended up giving Guterres a boost as other countries,
including the United States, rallied to his defense. But
the way the comment spiraled into a diplomatic
incident underlined just how vulnerable UN aid
operations are to political discord. That vulnerability
has been tragically clear on the ground, as well: nearly
100 UN employees have been killed in Gaza since the
war began.
Depending on the length and scope of the war
between Israel and Hamas, the UN’s presence in the
region may expand or shrink. If hostilities end
relatively quickly, UN relief agencies will play a
significant role in recovery efforts. In one post-conflict
scenario that has reportedly been floated as a
possibility by U.S. and Israeli officials, the UN could be
asked to administer Gaza after the Israeli military
clears Hamas from the territory. Conversely, if the war
lasts long enough to spread across the region, it could
put the UN’s long-standing peacekeeping presence in
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southern Lebanon and in the Golan Heights at risk.
When Israel last launched an operation in southern
Lebanon, in 2006, the Security Council came close to
shutting down the UN mission there but reversed
course after the Lebanese government objected.
Today, a widening war that draws in Hezbollah and
Iran could not just force the withdrawal of UN
peacekeepers but also threaten the organization’s
humanitarian and diplomatic work elsewhere in the
Middle East, such as in Iraq and Yemen.
LOWERING AMBITIONS
14 No matter how the wars in the Middle East and
Ukraine end, trends at the UN point to problems
ahead. The diplomatic disunity and operational
vulnerabilities that plague the organization now will
likely persist or worsen as global divisions widen. The
UN is not about to return to the dog days of the Cold
War. In 1959, the Security Council passed just one
resolution. Since the start of 2023, despite the poor
state of relations among its permanent members, the
council has passed more than 30 resolutions to update
the mandates for various UN peace operations and
sanctions regimes. But the UN is also far from its post–
Cold War heyday, when the body regularly authorized
peace operations, mediation efforts, and sanctions
packages in response to emerging conflicts.
15 There may not be a clear path for the UN to reclaim its
former role as an all-purpose platform to address the
international crises of the day, but the organization can
still make the best of a diminished role. UN officials
already appear to recognize their shrinking mandate.
In July, Guterres released the UN’s “New Agenda for
Peace,” which played down the organization’s
peacekeeping missions and instead urged UN members
to focus on new security threats, such as artificial
intelligence. Even here, it is unclear how much
influence the UN can have: the big players in artificial
intelligence, particularly the United States and China,
may not want the organization to preside over the
regulation of AI technologies.
16 But there seems to be an appetite for the UN to
maintain its role of promoting global security, even if it
takes on a more limited operational involvement in
conflict than it has in the past. Rather than deploying
its own forces, the UN could support other crisis
managers, namely regional organizations and even
individual countries. This model is already being
tested. In October, for example, the Security Council
authorized Kenya to lead a multinational security
assistance mission in Haiti. The United States is also
working with several African countries on proposals for
the UN to fund African-led stabilization missions on the
continent, in the hope that these forces will be more
motivated than UN peacekeepers to fight militias and
insurgents.
17 Although the United States, China, and Russia now find
themselves at loggerheads at the UN over many issues,
the Security Council could yet settle into a new
equilibrium. It can still serve as a venue for defusing
conflicts among great powers and tackling a small but
significant subset of crises in which those powers share
an interest in cooperation—a scope of action that
recalls the UN’s function during the Cold War. The
major powers are unlikely to agree on much, but there
are cases—including the Security Council’s March 2021
agreement that the UN Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan should remain in the country to deal with
the Taliban—in which Washington, Beijing, and
Moscow still have reasons to work through the UN.
18 Even with the Security Council in the doldrums, the
wider UN system can still play a substantial role in
international conflict management. UN relief agencies
have unique capacities to mitigate and contain the
effects of violence, and they continue to operate
despite their current budgetary headaches. UN officials
are also looking for ways to work on conflict
prevention that do not rely on Security Council
oversight, such as harnessing funds from the World
Bank to support basic services in weak states. In a
period of geopolitical tension, the UN may not take the
lead in resolving major crises, but it can do a lot on the
margins to protect the vulnerable.
19 The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as
tensions between China and the United States, are
making international cooperation both more difficult
and more vital. In recent weeks and months, many UN
officials and diplomats have worried that the
organization is in free fall. But if it updates its
diplomatic and security roles to adapt to new global
realities, the UN can still find its footing.
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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - BREAKING NEWS - ADVANCED (C1 – C2)

Essay topic: Discuss the challenges faced by the United Nations in navigating the current
geopolitical tensions and crises, along with the prospects of adapting its role to effectively
address global security concerns. Consider its evolving role, potential strategies for mitigating
diplomatic relations, and how to enhance conflict management in an increasingly divided
world.

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