Back to Basics at the U.N.

Both the U.N.’s current secretary-general, António Guterres, and its member states have downplayed peace and security in discussions about the organization’s future. They believed that, in a period of big-power competition, the U.N. was better positioned to help broker agreements on issues like climate change, artificial intelligence, and pandemic response.

But this bet has proven to be a bust. Inevitably, the same pressures that have stymied multilateral conflict resolution efforts continue to make cooperation in other arenas harder. As a result, there is no alternative but for the U.N. to get back to basics. More than 80 years after it was founded, in the shadows of multiple wars from Iran to Sudan, the organization needs to once again show that it is serious about its founding mission of solving conflicts.

Four candidates have thrown their names into the ring for secretary-general so far: Rebeca Grynspan, Rafael Grossi, Michelle Bachelet, and Macky Sall. Others may enter the race later in the year. Each person will need to demonstrate how they would tackle fundamental questions of peace and security. By doing so, they could breathe life into an institution perceived by many as irrelevant and declining, as severe financial pressures and a complex political landscape threaten the organization’s very existence.

It won’t be an easy task. The U.N.’s credibility has been repeatedly undermined by divisions among the Security Council’s permanent members. The United States and Russia have brazenly acted in seeming defiance of the U.N. Charter—most recently with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. decapitation operation in Venezuela, and the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. It is no secret that, under the weight of major-power divisions, diplomats have found it much harder to work through the Security Council to end wars or even mitigate their dire consequences.

As a result, the U.N. has found itself on the sidelines of high-profile peace efforts while its blue-helmet operations around the world have struggled to achieve their mandates. But rather than concede the organization’s core function, the next secretary-general should double down on it and reprioritize peace. There are three steps that could help.

First, candidates will need to reestablish the U.N.’s geopolitical credibility and boost the secretary-general’s profile as the world’s diplomat-in-chief. Contenders for the U.N.’s top job must demonstrate that they can work with the permanent members, which is crucial at a time when both Washington and Moscow have kept the U.N. at an arm’s distance.

Beyond simply appealing to these countries to halt their involvement in major wars, the secretary-general needs to work with them to keep the Security Council as a functioning space for diplomacy, especially in cases where they share some interest in de-escalation. Doing so will require candidates to publicly defend the U.N. Charter and call out major powers when they violate it while also using back-channel diplomacy to keep communication open with these same transgressors.

Candidates will also have to show that they understand how the global distribution of power has changed over the past decade and what that means for peacemaking. Middle powers are playing an increasingly important role, both in driving conflicts and resolving them. As a result, next secretary-general will need to show that they are ready to work with coalitions of middle powers, even more so when the Security Council is deadlocked.

Second, contenders should already be thinking about ideas on the U.N.’s contributions as a conflict management actor. The  Black Sea Grain Initiative, spearheaded by Guterres in the middle of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, showed how the U.N. can leverage its legitimacy and technical expertise to address material concerns of all countries, even during a major war. More recently, Guterres lobbied for a U.N. coordination mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz modeled after the Black Sea deal.

Unfortunately, creative and bold initiatives like these have become the exception rather than the norm lately. Guterres’s successor should reset an institutional culture that has grown overly cautious. They can spearhead this change by promoting diplomatic initiatives with or without explicit instructions from the Security Council. Past secretaries-general have embraced this responsibility.

The U.N.’s best-known leaders even managed to conduct quiet diplomacy even in the depths of the Cold War. In the 1960s, for example, U Thant helped mediate the end of the Cuban missile crisis. In the 1980s, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the U.N.’s first leader from Latin America, worked discretely with major powers on peacemaking efforts in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and the Persian Gulf.

This approach inevitably increases the risk of political blowback on the U.N. Guterres became personally involved in peace efforts in Cyprus and Libya early on in his term, but his efforts lost momentum after being forcefully rejected by the parties involved. Still, his successor should not be deterred. The U.N.’s credibility depends on being able to take political risks and put ideas on the table when no other actor can.

The next secretary-general will also need the entire organization’s support to turn this vision into a reality. Much will depend on who they select to join their cabinet. A strong and diverse collection of advisors should provide independent and critical advice while also marshaling ideas from across the entire system.

Finally, the best candidates will have to persuade the U.N.’s membership to continue investing in the organization’s peace operations. The U.N.’s peacekeeping footprint has decreased by nearly 56 percent over the past decade, with more cuts on deck. Security Council diplomats struggle to agree on what political roles the U.N.’s uniformed and civilian missions should play, leaving them susceptible to the whims of the host governments.

For all their flaws, though, U.N. missions support peace processes and protect civilians when few others can. Experiences with creating and maintaining non-U.N. led missions in Gaza, Haiti, and Somalia—places where countries are skeptical of deploying troops and funding is in short supply—also show how hard it is to replicate U.N. operations. It is true that the next secretary-general will need to think of ways to focus U.N. operations around a more limited and prioritized set of tasks. But if these kinds of endeavors simply cease to exist, the last safety net available to some of the most vulnerable people in the world will disintegrate—and the credibility of the U.N. with it.

As the race to become secretary-general carries into the summer, both member states and the candidates will prove what kind of organization they want the U.N. to be. At one of the most difficult points in its history, the ability to tackle war and promote peace, more so than other considerations of gender and nationality, should help to identify the top candidate for the job. With a leader who is prepared to position themself at the helm of the world’s top peacemaking organization, the U.N. has a chance to secure its relevance and legacy—and offer some hope to an increasingly fractured world.