{"text":[[{"start":5.76,"text":"Halfway down the front page of The New York Times on October 20 1959 was a small news item under the headline: “Deadlock at the UN”. It was a story that could have run every day but one that year."}],[{"start":18.76,"text":"The UN Security Council was at such an impasse it agreed on just one — hardly world-shaking — resolution during all of 1959, to set up a sub-committee to probe an alleged cross-border raid into Laos."}],[{"start":31.16,"text":"Such cold war memories are a salutary reminder that the current sense of siege at the UN is far from new. But as it steps up its hunt for a new leader the outlook appears uniquely bleak."}],[{"start":42.08,"text":"Whoever takes over from two-term secretary-general António Guterres on January 1 faces a battle not just over the UN’s relevance but ultimately its survival. At stake is the very idea of a global body that shapes the rules for the world, from peace and security to fighting climate change."}],[{"start":58.32,"text":"“It’s the paradox of the UN,” says Thant Myint-U, a former high-ranking UN official whose grandfather, U Thant, succeeded the dashing Swede Dag Hammarskjöld as secretary-general in 1961. “The UN has never been so sidelined in the management of global crises. But it still has this hidden superpower, the ability of the secretary-general to mediate on behalf of the only universal organisation the world has.”"}],[{"start":83.52,"text":"The UN is assailed by a host of crises. The most perilous is over its authority. It has been increasingly ignored by Russia and the US. It is also questioned by many other countries given that its structures reflect the power dynamics of 1945, when it was founded, rather than the world today."}],[{"start":100.56,"text":"The Security Council is the world’s pre-eminent maker of international law, but has been deadlocked in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and various big-power stand-offs of the preceding decade. While in the immediate post-cold war era the number of resolutions it passed surged, they have fallen markedly in recent years, reflecting the faltering record of the international legal order."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":123.36,"text":"Adding to the UN’s woes, Donald Trump, the US president, has set up a would-be rival, the Board of Peace, with ambitions for Gaza and beyond. While Trump’s innovation has achieved little to date, a plethora of global groupings now compete for leaders’ time, with the Group of 20 leading economies arguably a more effective gathering for consequential decisions than the UN General Assembly."}],[{"start":147.6,"text":"The very idea of multilateralism, the underlying principle of the UN, is in steep decline. So low is the UN’s stock as a mediator that its voice has been all but unheard in the wars over Ukraine, Gaza and Iran."}],[{"start":161.76,"text":"Then there is the lack of money. After three decades of expanding its ambitions, the UN faces a financial black hole as America and other countries slash their funding. The institution’s demoralised bureaucracy and many of its agencies are, officials concede, in need of sweeping reform."}],[{"start":179.16,"text":"“I don’t see it [the UN] in immediate danger [of dying],” says Rafael Grossi, the Argentine head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a prominent contender to be the next secretary-general. “I see it as more of a slow death kind of thing. The UN has been drifting into irrelevance . . . without a meaningful contribution to recent crises or interstate wars.”"}],[{"start":200.76,"text":"He notes “a sense of frustration with its dismal record in terms of the other things it is supposed to have shifted to: social agendas, climate change”."}],[{"start":209.92,"text":"Rebeca Grynspan, a former Costa Rican vice-president and the current frontrunner to succeed Guterres, says a priority has to be to stop the debate over the UN’s future going “from scepticism to fatalism”. She adds: “Much of the criticism comes from people that want the UN to succeed and are honestly worried about its future.”"}],[{"start":229,"text":"Saving the world from hell"}],[{"start":230.68,"text":"In the eight decades since the UN was born at the end of the second world war, its nine secretaries-general have had to try to find a way to manoeuvre around the desires of the P5, the five permanent, veto-wielding Security Council powers — the US, China, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), the UK and France. All too often the task has proved beyond them, as is the case today."}],[{"start":252.63,"text":"The UN’s defenders highlight that it has fulfilled its founding mandate to prevent another world war, but in recent years its role as a mediator has been eclipsed. Since resuming office last year, Trump has in effect ignored Guterres."}],[{"start":265.62,"text":"“The old Hammarskjöld maxim was that the UN is not to take us to heaven but to save us from hell,” says Lord Malloch-Brown, a former head of the UN Development Programme, and the UN deputy secretary-general in 2006, the last of the 10 years when Kofi Annan was in charge. “There was a brief sunlit time after the cold war when everyone thought the UN might be an agent to change the world. But it’s resorted to a much more pragmatic norm — which it’s been in for most of its life.”"}],[{"start":294.68,"text":"However, today even that “pragmatic norm” is hard to deliver or maintain. In the past two decades the UN has formally had three “pillars”: security, development and human rights; all are now tottering."}],[{"start":307.88,"text":"Senior UN officials see Russia as the primary blocker on the Security Council. But America too bypasses the body at will; it did not even go through the motions of seeking a UN resolution before attacking Venezuela in January or Iran in February. China, the second largest funder of the UN after the US, is supportive in public of the multilateral order but frequently sides with Russia to block western-led resolutions."}],[{"start":333.46,"text":"As for development and human rights, the Trump administration has cut American funding and stopped backing many agencies — leading to a budgetary crisis and the axing of thousands of jobs. “Morale is almost non-existent,” says one UN official, though many true believers in the UN also accept the critics’ arguments that its programmes and agencies are duplicative and need radical change."}],[{"start":356.04,"text":"“Many of the US requests for reforms are not unreasonable,” says one UN humanitarian worker. “We have to be honest: it’s damaging for us to be arguing how to save some parts of the UN which we know should not exist. Some of the Trump criticism is valid.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":372.6,"text":"Guterres launched a detailed reform plan for the UN’s 80th anniversary last year but it has met institutional resistance. Staff say many of the cuts ended up targeting people on weak contracts rather than long-serving underperformers."}],[{"start":385.64,"text":"Into this quagmire have stepped seven candidates aspiring to run the UN. As much in hope as expectation, ex-UN officials see this as a chance to take a hard look at what the institution does and revive its momentum."}],[{"start":400.4,"text":"Thant Myint-U hopes a stripped-down UN might rekindle the spirit of the era of his grandfather, who took over after Hammarskjöld was killed in a mysterious plane crash over southern Africa while mediating in the Congo’s civil war."}],[{"start":415.84,"text":"But he concedes the next secretary-general’s potential as a mediator is far less than in the time of U Thant. “Take the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. It took my grandfather almost two days to get to the frontline to see Ayub Khan [the then military leader of Pakistan].”"}],[{"start":434.76,"text":"In a reference to the then leaders of the Soviet Union, the US and the UK, he adds: “In today’s world he [Khan] and India’s leader Lal Bahadur Shastri would have been WhatsApping Brezhnev, LBJ and Harold Wilson at the same time.”"}],[{"start":435.26,"text":"Straw polls and survival"}],[{"start":452.4,"text":"Before anyone can take on such missions, they have to prevail in a labyrinthine selection process."}],[{"start":457.64,"text":"Ultimately it will be decided by votes in the 15-member Security Council. But the only ones that really count are those of the P5. Each has a veto — which intensifies the frustration of many of the UN’s 193 member states, which are pushing for a rethink of the Security Council to reflect the world order of today."}],[{"start":478.16,"text":"In preliminary “straw polls” — and in due course in the voting this autumn — Security Council members are asked if they “encourage”, “discourage” or have “no opinion” of specific candidates. The results of the first such poll suggest the next secretary-general will be a Latin American, in line with the understanding in the UN that it is that region’s “turn”."}],[{"start":499.64,"text":"Grynspan, a 70-year-old economist whose Jewish parents left Europe after the Holocaust, came first with 10 “encourage” votes. She is broadly seen as the preferred candidate of the General Assembly and would, if successful, be the first female secretary-general."}],[{"start":514.28,"text":"A latecomer to the race, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana’s 52-year-old UN ambassador, came second but led in a snap opinion poll of her fellow UN diplomats after a hustings. Grossi, 65, was third in the straw poll."}],[{"start":529.64,"text":"The other four candidates are now outsiders: Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s former foreign minister, who came fourth; the former Senegalese president Macky Sall; Olara Otunnu, a veteran Ugandan UN official; and Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":546.08,"text":"When the process moves to voting, the P5 use red ballots to distinguish them from the other members’ white ballots. One red “discourage” dooms a candidacy. Two factors, however, could upend the race: the late emergence of a strong candidate and the stance of America, which traditionally has the casting vote."}],[{"start":564.28,"text":"Malloch-Brown recalls how for much of 1996 it was assumed that Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the incumbent, would be reappointed for a second term: “Everyone seemed willing to give it to him — other than Madeleine Albright.” Behind the scenes, the then US ambassador to the UN backed Kofi Annan, who emerged as victor only at the end of the year."}],[{"start":584.8,"text":"A decade later America again played the pivotal role. In a memoir John Bolton, the then US ambassador to the UN, describes a carefully planned stitch-up by Washington on behalf of South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon."}],[{"start":598.08,"text":"Grossi was seen by UN diplomats earlier this year as a plausible “US candidate”, with a pitch focusing on security and a tilt away from development. But a perceived proximity to Trump would not endear him to member states — nor to staff. “It would be hard for him to get internal momentum,” cautions a UN official."}],[{"start":617.3,"text":"Last month the New York Post reported Trump favoured Gianni Infantino, the head of Fifa, as his candidate. But even before the uproar over Infantino’s failed bid to sell off parts of Fifa to the private sector, diplomats saw this as fanciful."}],[{"start":631.28,"text":"For America, the overarching issue is how to balance its usual wish to have a pliant secretary-general alongside its desire to have someone who will implement reform — and take charge of global crises that it has no interest in overseeing."}],[{"start":643.6,"text":"“There are some things in line with the president’s foreign policy that we want the UN to do,” Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, said recently, citing the crises in Haiti and Gaza. “I am focused on that . . . and cutting the rest,” he told The Alex Marlow Show, a podcast that focuses on America First politics."}],[{"start":663.84,"text":"His prescription goes to the heart of the dilemma facing the next secretary-general — what issues to focus on to ensure the UN stays relevant and survives."}],[{"start":673.08,"text":"Making up with the US"}],[{"start":674.6,"text":"The role of the UN head has always been a balancing act implicit in the title, between “secretary”, focusing on managing, and “general”, focusing on the world. Most current and former officials think the institution’s next leader has to prioritise the latter, not least to show the UN is still in the game."}],[{"start":692.6,"text":"For Thant Myint-U, author of a new biography of his grandfather, it is a matter of returning to the basics of the UN’s early years. “The essential role is mediator-in-chief,” he says. “When the secretary-general was mediating successfully in the fifties and sixties, the political office was never more than a dozen people, a small fraction of the number today."}],[{"start":712.04,"text":"“We need someone who is able to gracefully fall flat on their face and get up and try again,” he adds. “You have to assume a SG will fail nine out of 10 times; it’s about persevering, personally crafting and keeping alive the UN option for ending a war.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":727.28,"text":"A frustrated senior UN official says the next secretary-general has to try to pull off peace deals in the wars that are out of the headlines, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The official echoes criticism of Guterres by former officials that he has spent too much time in his New York HQ. (His backers say mediating became impossible given the disregard of the big powers.)"}],[{"start":749.08,"text":"There seems little doubt his successor will seek to start with a bang."}],[{"start":753.6,"text":"Grynspan, the head of Unctad, the UN’s body on trade and development, talks of the need for cool-headed diplomacy. She cites her record in overseeing the Black Sea grain deal of 2022, an agreement between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN to export grain through a maritime corridor."}],[{"start":771,"text":"“The UN needs management,” she says. “We try to do everything under the sun. We have to partner more.”"}],[{"start":777.96,"text":"Grossi likes to cite his record in meeting Vladimir Putin after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine as a sign of his determination to mediate at all costs. “If I become SG you will see me shaking hands with people who may be doing very bad things,” he says."}],[{"start":793.92,"text":"Developing economies and smaller states fear a new secretary-general will cut back on programmes aimed at combating climate change and poverty. The debate, says Malloch-Brown, echoes divisions at the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, “between universalists who saw it remaking the world in its own image and realists who saw it as a useful forum to sort out conflicts”."}],[{"start":816.12,"text":"He calls for a rethink of development funding, moving away from the traditional donor-driven model of direct grants and giving multilateral development banks greater say."}],[{"start":825.6,"text":"A new secretary-general, he adds, has to put aside internal restructuring at first, and instead “build authority and momentum” by prioritising mediation. “The reform programme has run into a lot of difficulty. Such efforts can swallow up a new SG.”"}],[{"start":841.4,"text":"Many concede that the idea of reforming the Security Council is unfeasible in the medium term, since the P5 retain vetoes while potential new members compete with each other. The next secretary-general is likely to be more focused on how to refashion ties with America."}],[{"start":857.04,"text":"One potential area of co-operation is humanitarian aid, overseen at the UN by its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":865.31,"text":"The agency’s head, a former British diplomat, Tom Fletcher, has earned plaudits for finding a way of working with the Trump administration and ensuring the US has not abandoned aid. The administration closed down its own development agency USAID after taking office in January 2025 but last December gave $2bn to OCHA, albeit with strings attached."}],[{"start":887.42,"text":"“There is a recognition that when it comes to the most dangerous humanitarian work, we are in places they don’t want to be and where they need someone,” says Fletcher. “They [the Trump administration] have been on quite a journey. This time last year the funding situation was pretty bleak. Now we have over $4bn of direct humanitarian funding.”"}],[{"start":906.76,"text":"“A lot of people are writing off the next two years as a story of slow UN decay,” he adds. “But if we can find the mojo and patience to get some wars ended and millions of lives saved, that narrative can be turned around.”"}],[{"start":920.24,"text":"As the succession race comes to a head, anticipation at the UN is intensifying over what a fresh approach could yield."}],[{"start":926.96,"text":"“The next SG needs to think differently,” says Esther Judah, a former UN aid worker. “Guterres became leader when the UN depended on solid multilateral policies. The world has changed.”"}],[{"start":936.92,"text":"But the UN has seen false dawns before. Faint optimism that it might earn a place back on the front pages is tempered by an awareness of its constraints. “We are only as strong as we are allowed to be by the members,” notes one official ruefully. “And most important, the powerful ones.”"}],[{"start":958.48,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1786844348_2513.mp3"}