As 2023 ends, ambassadors and international officials at the United Nations do not have much to celebrate. The organization was having a hard year even before Hamas attacked Israel in October. The Security Council has struggled to respond to shocks such as the war in Sudan and the coup in Niger. Russia and the Western powers have continued to spar over Ukraine. Now the war in Gaza has grabbed center stage, sparking furious debates in the Security Council and General Assembly. These arguments have taken a heavy toll on generally phlegmatic diplomats, with many asking if the U.N. can recover from the crisis.
The sense of frustration percolating around the U.N. contrasts with a marginally more positive mood a year ago. In late 2022, diplomats were relieved that Russia’s all-out aggression against Ukraine had not driven all multilateral engagement into a ditch. Despite high tensions, Moscow and the West managed to maintain a minimum of cooperation on most other files at the United Nations.
That modus vivendi has since eroded. Russia has become more disruptive in the Security Council. It vetoed the renewal of a mandate for U.N. agencies to deliver aid to the areas of northwest Syria outside government control in July, although Damascus unilaterally agreed to let these deliveries continue. Moscow also backed a push by the government of Mali to expel peacekeepers from its territory. Most tellingly, it pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres helped engineer in 2022 to allow Ukraine to export its agricultural products. Russia is still not systematically blocking Western initiatives at the U.N., but it is likely to use its blocking power more often as its war with Ukraine drags on.
Meanwhile, the wider U.N. membership has shifted its attention away from Ukraine over the course of 2023. In 2022, the General Assembly passed five special resolutions on the war, all condemning Russia. This year, non-Western countries insisted that the U.N. spend less time focusing on European security and more on their concerns, such as international debt and other economic pressures they are facing. The U.S. and Ukraine’s European allies have to some extent accepted this call. When leaders gathered at the U.N. for its annual high-level meeting in September, they focused most of their attention on the Sustainable Development Goals.
If Western powers hoped that they could charm the Global South, however, the war between Israel and Hamas has upended their calculations. The atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7 shook diplomats from all over the world. But the ensuing war’s massive humanitarian toll and U.S. refusal to support a cease-fire in Gaza over the past two months, coupled with European states’ divided response to the war, has alienated the majority of U.N. members. Diplomats who previously backed Ukraine in the General Assembly have indicated that they will not do so in future out of frustration over the West’s lack of solidarity with the Palestinians. Kyiv quietly dropped a planned resolution commemorating the Holodomor—the Soviet-era famine in Ukraine manufactured by Josef Stalin—as it became clear it would not secure strong majority support in the General Assembly.
Western officials talk wearily about the need for a “recovery period” after the hostilities in Gaza end. Some are more pessimistic and say they believe the damage of recent months is well-nigh irreversible.
Russia has seized on the situation in Gaza to take attention away from its aggression and brutal campaign in Ukraine and put the spotlight on U.S. obstructionism. Western officials talk wearily about the need for a “recovery period” after the hostilities in Gaza end to rebuild relationships with the rest of the U.N. membership. Some are more pessimistic and say they believe the damage of recent months is well-nigh irreversible.
In private, both Western and non-Western diplomats confide that they worry about the U.N.’s broader credibility. Many say their political superiors in their capitals view the organization with mounting skepticism, given its repeated breakdowns over Ukraine and Gaza. African states in particular have grown increasingly willing to challenge the U.N. Security Council’s right and ability to deal with peace and security issues on the continent. When Sudan collapsed into fighting in the spring, the African members of the council insisted that the U.N. should hang back and allow regional mediators to lead on peacemaking efforts. While the Security Council still devotes more time to Africa than any other global region, its leverage there is waning.
Stuck in the middle of this gloom is Guterres. The secretary-general devoted much of the first half of this year to vainly trying to persuade Russia to stay in the Black Sea Grain Initiative. He has spent the last quarter of 2023 concentrating on the war in Gaza, pressing for a cease-fire. A typically cautious operator, Guterres has become unusually outspoken over the Middle East, annoying the U.S. and leading Israel to call for his ouster. He has, however, won praise from much of the rest of the U.N. membership and U.N. officials for his positioning.
Looking beyond the immediate crisis, however, Guterres has no easy pathway to pulling the organization’s divided members back together. He has announced a “Summit of the Future” in September 2024, which he hopes will be an opportunity for leaders to agree on ways to overhaul the international system to deal with 21st-century challenges. The process leading up the summit could allow states to rebuild trust around areas of common interest. Optimistic observers note that U.N. negotiations can still deliver results. Diplomats agreed a treaty on protecting the oceans in March, for example, and agreed on the need to “transition away” from fossil fuels at this year’s U.N. COP28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai. But some potential topics for discussion in the run-up to next year’s Summit of the Future, such as reforms to the U.N. Security Council and World Bank, are controversial and could actually create further divisions.
There may be other openings for diplomatic reconciliation at the U.N. in 2024. Once hostilities in Gaza are over, for example, U.N. agencies are likely to have a major role in addressing the devastation there through tasks such as reconstruction and removing unexploded ordnance. If the Security Council is able to adopt a united position in support of these efforts, it might ease if not erase some of the bad feelings that have built up among U.N. members.
Even if temperatures cool around the U.N., though, diplomats acknowledge that strategic tensions between the main powers in New York will remain high. And all are aware that there will be a U.S. presidential election next fall, with a real possibility of former U.S. President Donald Trump returning to the White House in 2025. That, U.N. insiders say, could be the biggest threat to multilateral cooperation of all.
Richard Gowan is the U.N. director of the International Crisis Group. From 2013 to 2019, he wrote a weekly column for WPR. Follow him on Twitter at @RichardGowan1.