Is the United Nations still relevant?

The question of whether the United Nations remains relevant is a genuinely contested one, and reasonable people disagree. Here's a balanced look at the arguments on both sides.## Is the UN Still Relevant?

There's no simple yes/no answer—the UN's relevance looks very different depending on which part of the organization you examine. Here's the honest picture:

The case that it's failing

The Security Council—the body with actual enforcement power—has been largely paralyzed on the era's defining conflicts. In 2024, permanent members cast eight vetoes on seven draft resolutions, the highest number since 1986. On Gaza specifically, the US has vetoed multiple resolutions calling for a ceasefire, while Russia has continually used its veto to block Security Council action on Ukraine despite its invasion being a clear breach of the UN Charter.

The output numbers tell the story starkly: in 2025, vetoes decreased to four—two US vetoes on Gaza and two Russian vetoes on Ukraine—but the Council's output continued to decline, adopting only 44 resolutions, the lowest number since 1991. Meanwhile, the world isn't getting more peaceful—2025 recorded 65 state-based armed conflicts, the highest number since records began in 1946.

Financially, the organization is also under strain: the United States owes roughly $1.5 billion in unpaid assessments, arrears that have since climbed above $2 billion, while Secretary-General António Guterres has warned bluntly of a "race to bankruptcy," proposing a 15 percent cut to the UN's regular budget for 2026. The structural problem underlying all this is widely recognized: every reform plan crosses a permanent member's red line, and the result is paralysis, vetoes, and eroding credibility.

The case that it still matters

Despite the gridlock, the UN retains functions nothing else replicates. When the Security Council stalls, the General Assembly has stepped in—for instance, after a US veto on Gaza, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire in Gaza in an emergency session. More fundamentally, the UN General Assembly remains the one place on earth where all nations, large and small, rich and desperately poor, speak with equal formal standing, and scholars have observed that if the UN did not exist, it could never be created today; it was only possible because of the cataclysmic shock of the Second World War.

The Council isn't entirely dead either—analysts note the council remains a place where compromise is possible, including on the big issues, when the major powers choose to engage.

What's actually at stake

The debate at the UN itself has shifted from existential to practical. As one recent UN report framed it: a recurring question was not whether the United Nations should exist, but whether it can produce results. Reform proposals abound—expanding permanent seats to Africa and Latin America, restructuring the veto—but as one analysis bluntly put it, the choice before the UN is between reform on terms its members negotiate together and irrelevance on terms the powerful dictate.

My take

The UN isn't "irrelevant," but it's increasingly bifurcated. It remains indispensable for things that don't require great-power consensus: humanitarian aid delivery, peacekeeping missions, health coordination (WHO), refugee support (UNHCR), climate negotiations, and as the only truly universal diplomatic forum. But as a mechanism to stop major wars between or involving powerful states—which is arguably its founding purpose—it has been functionally sidelined whenever a P5 member's interests are directly at stake. Whether that counts as "irrelevant" or just "limited by design" depends on what you expected it to do in the first place.