New World Disorder: will a US-China cold war and Covid-19 finally kill off the United Nations?

It’s not just Trump and the World Health Organization’s flawed initial response to the coronavirus that have left the global body on life support

Asian discontent over a Security Council based on the ‘victors’ of World War II that ignores Japan and India has left it struggling for relevancy

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US President Donald Trump addresses the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Photo: EPA

Published: 12:00pm, 24 Oct 2020Updated: 6:42pm, 27 Oct 2020

When the United Nations celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2015, then secretary general Ban Ki-moon sought to emphasise that the organisation’s inadequacies – plentiful as they were – did not outweigh its successes.

Were there no UN for the world’s nations to sit down and discuss issues, “I’m afraid to tell you the world might have been much bloodier, much more tragic”, Ban said in a press conference.

At the time, the response might have placated critics. The UN was by and large achieving its founding objective of “keeping generations from the scourge of war”, and despite its numerous dysfunctions, it remained the engine of multilateralism.

Its major backers, especially top donor the United States, were vested in the idea of the UN.

Fast forward five years to the UN’s 75th anniversary – being marked on Saturday as UN Day – and there are more questions than answers about the direction of the world body and its 15 specialised agencies.

Washington’s concerted retreat from the post-war global order under the “America First” leadership of President Donald Trump, along with the strain on the UN arising from the US-China strategic rivalry, are fuelling the latest crisis of confidence in the body.

The US-China rivalry is putting a strain on the UN. Photo: Shutterstock

In interviews with This Week in Asia, former top UN officials and other commentators cited these factors – along with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) flawed initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic – as key reasons for their uncertainty over the future of global governance.

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