In 1795, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant published Perpetual Peace, envisioning a world governed not by empires but by laws a federation of nations built on the principles of justice, reason, and restraint. A century and a half later, in the aftermath of two world wars, humanity attempted to realize that vision through the creation of the United Nations. It was meant to be the world's moral compass a guardian of peace and a referee between the powerful and the powerless.
Eighty years on, that dream has eroded. What was once designed as an impartial institution safeguarding the rules of international order has increasingly become an instrument of geopolitical convenience legitimising interventions, excusing impunity, and mirroring the inequalities it was meant to correct. From the endorsement of Israel's statehood in 1948 to its paralysis over decades of occupation and bombardment in Gaza, the UN's record reflects not balance but bias. Its silence during the Iran-Iraq war, its sanctions regimes that disproportionately harm southern economies, and its inability to prevent humanitarian catastrophes from Yemen to Sudan all reveal a deeper structural failure.
The organization that was supposed to transcend power politics has been subsumed by it. The veto system, designed to preserve postwar stability, has instead institutionalized hierarchy. The "international community" too often means the North Atlantic community and the rules-based order operates more as a slogan than a shared reality. When the United States or its allies act unilaterally, the UN provides moral cover; when nations of the Global South demand accountability, it invokes procedure and delay.
The recent activation of the "snapback mechanism" against Iran underlines this imbalance. While Western states frame it as the defense of non-proliferation norms, for much of the world it embodies the erosion of multilateral legitimacy. A body that once claimed to represent all humanity now appears captive to the interests of a few. This perception not just in Tehran, but across the Global South has fueled a quiet but profound search for alternatives.
As Amitav Acharya argues in The End of American World Order, the post-1945 system was built on the assumption of a singular center of gravity a world revolving around Washington. That assumption no longer holds. The twenty-first century is defined by what Acharya calls "multiplex order": overlapping regional powers, plural sources of legitimacy, and competing institutional visions. ASEAN, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are not rebellions against the UN; they are responses to its obsolescence. Together, their member states represent a share of global GDP surpassing Japan's and an increasing capacity to shape the world's economic and political agenda.
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The irony is that even within the West, disillusionment with the UN is growing. When Israel's ambassador theatrically tore up the UN Charter in the General Assembly and threw it into a trash bin, it was not an isolated act of defiance it was a symptom of a deeper contempt. For powers accustomed to impunity, international law matters only when it restrains others. For those on the receiving end of that double standard, the UN's authority has become hollow.
The question, then, is whether the United Nations can still reclaim its founding purpose to serve as a legitimate arbiter rather than a stage for power. The answer may no longer lie within the institution itself. The redistribution of economic, technological, and political power now underway across the Global South is gradually creating a world that no single bloc can dominate. As regional powers assert their autonomy, they generate the very balance that the UN was meant to uphold but failed to enforce.
This is not a call to abandon multilateralism, but to rescue it from monopoly. The spirit of Kant's Perpetual Peace a moral order grounded in law rather than force requires a diversity of participants, not the dictates of one. A credible international system must reflect the realities of the present century, where legitimacy flows from cooperation, not coercion.
The future of global governance, then, depends on a paradox: the weaker the West's monopoly on power, the stronger the prospects for a truly universal order. When economic and political influence are distributed more evenly, the incentive to preserve shared rules will grow. In that moment, even those who once weaponized the UN for dominance may rediscover its necessity as a neutral arbiter.
Eighty years after its founding, the United Nations stands as both a monument and a mirror a reminder of humanity's highest aspirations and its persistent failures. The challenge for the world's emerging powers is not to reject that legacy, but to reform it through example. Only when the Global South achieves the strength to demand fairness, and the West the humility to accept it, can Kant's dream of perpetual peace move from philosophy to practice.
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