An Oblong Media Unlimited Investigative Reflection
As the United Nations quietly turns 80, one would expect a grand chorus of reflection, recommitment, and reverence for the world’s most significant institution for peace, justice, and human dignity. But there is mostly silence, and where there is noise, it is often critique cloaked in hypocrisy. The truth is sobering: the UN is not failing the world. The world, particularly the West, is failing the UN.
For eight decades, the United Nations has been the custodian of peacekeeping, international law, humanitarian development, multilateral diplomacy, and the fragile ethics of global accountability. Its Charter remains the most Gandhian document ever signed by the governments of the world, a declaration that peace must be pursued by peaceful means. And yet, in a time when its guidance is most needed, the UN is underfunded, undermined, ignored, and slowly suffocated by the very powers that once shaped its birth.
At the heart of the problem lies the refusal of most member states, especially the powerful ones, to live up to their obligations. Nationalism, militarism, and a compulsive addiction to war-preparedness have replaced international solidarity and diplomacy. States spend 300 to 400 times more on their militaries than they do on the entire UN system. In 2024 alone, global military spending reached an eye-watering $2.7 trillion, yet the UN can’t get member states to pay even half of its modest $3.5 billion budget for 2025. That’s not a funding gap, it’s a declaration of contempt.
Western powers, particularly the United States, have long acted as both patrons and saboteurs of the institution. They marginalize it when it suits their hegemonic agendas, then invoke its legitimacy when convenient. NATO, which claims to be built on UN principles, has for years been in a state of permanent violation of international law, beginning with its illegal bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. It has since operated far outside its treaty framework, engaging in offensive military expansions, triggering proxy wars, and invoking “collective defense” while ignoring the UN’s peacekeeping mandate.
The UN’s relative weakness is not the result of outdated ideas or bureaucratic bloat, as critics often claim. It is the direct consequence of deliberate political sabotage and chronic underfunding by member states, especially those in the West who fear a truly empowered, multipolar world order. The United States and its allies promote a “rules-based international order” which is, in reality, an elite-imposed framework that excludes the UN and mocks the concept of shared global governance.
Ironically, the West’s obsession with dominance comes at a time when it is in irreversible decline, economically, ethically, culturally, and politically. It no longer possesses the moral authority or vision to lead the world. Yet it clings to control, rejecting any meaningful reform of the UN Security Council, opposing global disarmament treaties, and blocking democratizing efforts such as the establishment of a global people’s assembly or an independent UN peacekeeping force that operates outside of NATO command.
The West does not want a stronger United Nations. It wants a neutered one, one that smiles politely while global power is exercised through sanctions, drone wars, financial colonialism, and regime change operations.
In contrast, countries like China, despite their shortcomings, offer an alternative vision of global governance. China’s adherence to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, its support for UN-mandated multilateralism, and its Belt and Road Initiative stand in alignment with core UN values: mutual respect, equal partnership, and development as a path to peace. Though still lagging behind on its peacekeeping contributions, China’s global outlook appears more in sync with the original spirit of the UN Charter than anything emanating from Washington, London, or Brussels today.
As the UN marks its 80th anniversary, there is an urgent call for a rebirth, not just in operational efficiency or administrative reform, but in collective moral clarity. It is time to strip away the diplomatic theatre and face the reality: without massive shifts in political will, especially from the dominant powers, the UN will continue to limp along, overburdened with expectations, starved of resources, and disrespected by those who fear its true potential.
Let us not delude ourselves. A future without a functioning, empowered, and reformed United Nations is a future of unrestrained militarism, digital colonialism, and permanent war economies. The silence surrounding this milestone is not accidental, it is a reflection of how far we have fallen from the dream of 1945.
If humanity is to survive the century, we must reclaim and reinvest in that dream. Not as a nostalgic nod to the past, but as a strategic leap toward a world where power is restrained by law, not law bent by power.
The UN can still be that institution. But only if the world, especially its loudest, most arrogant actors, stop treating it like a relic and start enabling it to be the moral compass it was meant to be.
The 80th anniversary of the United Nations should not be a whisper in diplomatic hallways. It should be a global turning point. A reckoning. A reawakening.
Whether that happens or not will depend entirely on who still believes in peace, and who profits too much from war to ever allow it.
By the Editorial Board, Oblong Media Unlimited
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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