On the eve of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the post-World War II global order is in disarray — and the United Nations is clearly no longer part of the solution. With former President Donald Trump now favored to return to the White House, the United States may finally be able to address a critical question: Will we continue clinging to a bloated, corrupt and impotent international institution?
Today is United Nations Day — a day meant to celebrate the founding of an organization dedicated to safeguarding peace and security. Instead, the world is reckoning with wars in Europe and the Middle East and growing instability in the Far East. The UN’s inability to adapt to the evolving threats of the 21st century — from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the growing influence of authoritarian regimes — has exposed its fundamental weakness.
It also demonstrates that Trump’s past critiques of the UN were not misplaced. Decades of missed opportunities, moral contradictions and structural dysfunction signify the need for significant reform — or full-on defunding. Such actions are not an outright rejection of multilateralism, but a recognition that the current system is broken — and we have seen this all play out before.
The current global turmoil, spiraling beyond the control of the very institution designed to manage it, echoes the League of Nations‘ catastrophic failure to confront fascist aggression in the 1930s. The League, established after World War I to maintain global peace, proved incapable of preventing aggression by expansionist powers like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Following its collapse, the world descended into a period of widespread conflict, culminating in World War II.
Like the League of Nations, the UN has proven to be helpless against modern-day expansionism. With China backing Russia militarily and economically, the idea that the UN serves as an impartial arbiter of peace is laughable. The League of Nations failed because it lacked enforcement power and moral clarity. The United Nations has failed for the same reasons, and we are on the precipice of a third World War.
At the center of the UN’s dysfunction is the Security Council, crippled by Russia and China’s vetoes, which have made meaningful action impossible and shielded violators from accountability. Russia, an expansionist aggressor, continues to occupy a permanent seat, even as they employ Iranian drones to devastate Ukrainian cities and North Korean troops prepare to join its offensive. These failures are not isolated incidents but part of a decades-long pattern. From the massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia to Somalia’s collapse, UN peacekeeping missions have repeatedly ended in catastrophe. The UN is paralytic — a relic incapable of enforcing peace or punishing those who threaten it.
Worse still, the UN’s actions increasingly contradict its stated values. Reports indicate that UN peacekeepers in Lebanon took bribes from Hezbollah, compromising their mission by allowing surveillance against Israel. Meanwhile, the organization has awarded Saudi Arabia — a regime notorious for the brutal oppression of women — the chairmanship of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2025. The irony is staggering, and the hypocrisy is undeniable. Far from being a beacon of global governance, the UN now enables the authoritarian regimes it was meant to oppose, eroding trust and betraying the principles it was established to protect.
A rejection of the UN is not isolationism but a necessary confrontation with reality that the international organization has become an obstacle to peace, not a guarantor of it. This is further evidenced by Secretary-General António Guterres’ participation in the BRICS summit — an organization openly challenging the Western-led world order. Leading members of BRICS, like Russia and China, are intent on rewriting the rules of global governance with the intent to dominate.
The 2024 election will determine whether the West continues its slow descent into irrelevance or embraces the painful but necessary changes required to restore global order. The world has split along ideological lines, and the threats posed by our enemies will not be countered by resolutions or hollow declarations. Diplomacy without power is worthless. To survive, the West must act decisively by abandoning outdated institutions which no longer represent their interests and build new alliances rooted in shared values, mutual investment and military strength.
This United Nations Day, we should not celebrate a broken institution. Instead, we must confront its failures and prepare for the future. A second Trump presidency will bring the necessary pressure to tear down the obsolete structures of the past and replace them with a stronger, clearer order — one that prioritizes accountability, strength, and action. Change is no longer optional; peace demands it.
Meaghan Mobbs, PhD, is the Director of the Center for American Safety and Security at Independent Women’s Forum.
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