UN at 80: why we need a new, sustainable internationalism

The United Nations is not the forum where the Ukraine war is likely to be ended and a new peace agreed. This is not only the tragedy of Ukraine but of the ailing and ageing UN system itself.

The World Trade Organisation is not the forum where the US-China trade war will be resolved and a new rules-based trade order agreed. A more fragmented, regionalised trade order seems more likely.

A century ago, in the inter-war years, the League of Nations failed after a period of shifting geopolitical power, pandemic, cultural anxiety, economic collapse and the rise of populist politics that dismissed experts and replaced fact with propaganda.

Is the UN destined to go the same way? It would be tragic to see history repeating itself.

After all, if the UN was not there, we would need to reinvent it. A world of two hundred nations needs a meeting place to discuss the big global challenges.

Across the developing world, millions are well aware of how important the UN has been, in conflict prevention, peace building, food aid, refugee protection and human rights promotion. Imagine the plight of the world’s children without UNICEF or trying to fight global health crises without the WHO.

Yet the traditional champion of the international rules-based system, the US, appears to have lost patience with the never-ending negotiations and compromises that the multilateral system is based upon. Big powers prefer to throw their weight around.

It is precisely because of the danger that big powers pose to others that we need a system of global cooperation, even one as flawed as the UN. It can never solve all the world’s problems but, we certainly have little chance of solving any of them without a place like the UN that puts global problems on the global agenda.

A place that gives a voice to tiny nations, like our neighbours in the Pacific, when they are pleading us to support them in their existential fight against climate change rather than using them as pawns in big power political games.

We are going to need the UN like never before, if we are to find a way to stabilise a new power balance, as we shift from a US-dominated world to one that accommodates the rise of the developing world. To be sure, this shift is underway and it’s consequential.

At the birth of the UN, five allied powers gave themselves seats at the top table. The only way to reinvigorate the UN for the next 80 years will be to adapt to a greater diversity of voices and to ensure the new big powers are stakeholders and not outsiders. A place where each is respected and heard, no matter how different our views may be.

If the global economy is fracturing, it’s good news for us in Australia that most of Asia is likely to remain economically interdependent. To be sure, Asia has its security dilemmas just as much as any region, but Asia’s successes just might contain some lessons for reconstructing the UN.

East Asia, in particular, has become deeply intertwined with the global economy and it has built an impressive collection of overlapping agreements to keep the region open and connected, an alphabet of agreements including APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) and CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership). The region has learnt the benefits of cooperation despite vast differences in political systems, economic development, social and cultural outlooks.

Rather like multiculturalism works within Australia, we’re going to have to deal with the reality of a more diverse world and find ways to live and prosper together, rather than imagining we are destined for conflict. Diversity, multipolarity and complexity are much better understood in Asia than in the traditional big powers, which for centuries have sought to impose their values on other countries.

The old “us” versus “them” thinking came from experience of world wars and cold wars and was understandable in its time. Now we face global challenges from climate change, technological revolution and the reality that a diverse, developing world now outnumbers the old powers on every measure.

In my book, A New Era of Risk, I argue that we appear in the 2020s to be slipping back into binary thinking, that one “side” can win. But the confusion of the present will pass. To build trust and to avoid conflict, I propose a new, sustainable internationalism grounded in realism that nations will compete, yet committed to new, pragmatic international cooperation.

A revitalised UN will need to tolerate and indeed be committed to diversity rather than an expectation that one world view can prevail over all others. Indeed, instead of a conviction that one world view should prevail.

We are going to need new rules and norms that work across political and cultural divides and find a global sense of purpose in addressing tomorrow’s global challenges, rather than fighting yesterday’s battles. Let’s hope by the UN’s centenary in 2045 we are on the way to more inclusive, pragmatic solutions, because the faltering status quo is simply not sustainable.

This article was first published in the Hobart Mercury, September 25, 2025

David Morris, PhD, is a former diplomat and adviser to the United Nations. His book A New Era of Risk: Why We Need a New, Sustainable Internationalism to Manage the Rise of China was published by Ethics Press in 2025.