How self-absorbed leaders and a broken United Nations threaten global peace

Simon Hobson

In 1997, as a 17-year-old A-level politics student, I stood at a model United Nations general assembly and launched a clumsy attack on the German delegation. My speech, poorly researched and pompous, was less about policy and more about teenage bravado.

But even then, my performance was more statesmanlike than the most recent ramblings delivered by the President of the United States at the real UN.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 to save future generations from war, uphold human rights, and provide a forum for peaceful dialogue. Yet from the start, the UN was shackled by the veto powers granted to the five permanent members of the Security Council: the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom.

Designed to reflect post-war geopolitical realities, the veto has long outlived its purpose.

Today, it obstructs consensus and allows powerful nations to paralyze the institution. If the UN is to survive, the veto must go.

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Rebuke and reform

Donald Trump’s contempt for international cooperation has laid bare a deeper truth: the UN must be reformed if it is to remain meaningful. The United States has always held the organisation at arm’s length, ensuring it could not act without American consent and its cash.

But Trump’s presidency is pushing that cynicism into outright aggression. To preserve its credibility, the UN must be a place where all nations’ voices carry equal weight, where the powerful are rebuked when necessary, and where votes on resolutions are not held hostage by the self-interest of five countries.

Reform is not optional. If the UN remains stuck in 1945, it will become irrelevant. Its charter, its purpose, and even its headquarters in New York require rethinking.

The world needs a 21st century UN: one where democracy, not vetoes, decides outcomes; one where governments, organisations, and citizens alike can turn for justice, peace, and dialogue.

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There’s a hole in the roof

The case for reform is not abstract. After the Cold War, between 1989 and 2008, national leaders squandered a rare moment of calm.

Instead of rebuilding societies to meet people’s needs for housing, food, energy, and education, they pursued a neoliberal economic model that enriched a few while leaving most people to cope with stagnation and insecurity. The refusal of UK governments to embrace electoral reform and devolve real power has only deepened this disillusionment. Into this void step the demagogues.

Narcissistic worship

History shows what happens when people, searching for meaning in hard times, fall for scapegoats and easy fixes.

In the Weimar Republic, economic turmoil and weak leadership opened the door to the Nazis. Today, the same dynamics give rise to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Nigel Farage. These figures, like the authoritarians of the past, target migrants, minorities, and dissenters. Their narcissistic grip on populations is broken only at great cost.

My grandfather knew this well. At 20, he fought in the Second World War as a dispatch rider with the 1st Battalion, The Welch Regiment.

He rarely spoke of it, but when I told him about my participation in the model UN, he opened up. He recalled racing across the Egyptian desert on a Norton motorbike under fire, and the terror of parachuting into Sicily at night.

He looked at me, pale, and said simply: “It is good that you are learning about the UN. We must never let that happen again”.

Lest we forget

Today, as war consumes our European neighbours in Ukraine, genocide is executed in Palestine, and as China threatens Taiwan, my grandad’s words feel urgent. The UN was created to prevent humanity from repeating its worst mistakes. Yet unless we reform it, unless we strengthen its democratic core and strip away the veto, we risk the UN becoming an ineffectual talking shop. The result of which could be that we are sleepwalking into the global war to which my grandfather hoped humanity would never again subject itself.

We must decide, before others decide for us. We can allow narcissistic leaders to blame migrants, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people, and anyone who challenges them. Or we can resist. We can reject them at the ballot box. We can take the time to understand the other. We can demand that the UN fulfils its original promise: a safe space where nations resolve conflict, defend human dignity, and act in the interests of all humanity.

The penny must drop now. We must act now for change to happen now. If it doesn’t, the next generation may be left telling their own war stories from the global conflict of the 2030s. That is a future we cannot afford.