The UN’s early leaders were keen to remind the world that the body was “not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell”. But with US President Donald Trump sending a message to the Nobel Committee through Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store that he was no longer obliged to think of the world purely in terms of peace, it can now be argued that we’ve come full circle.
The UN’s current leadership is the first to acknowledge that it stands shredded of influence in the face of the pressure meted out by Washington. When Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed a celebration of the institution’s 80th birthday at the weekend, he reflected that its members first met above a bomb shelter.
He also reminded that many of its earliest staff carried the scars and permanent disabilities of war – such as the British mandarin Brian Urquhart, who bestrode post-Second World War diplomacy with a limp resulting from a parachute that failed to open.
Mr Guterres further reflected that 2025 left the global body with nowhere to hide following a profou
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