UN debate swerves, slides, but scores

US President Donald Trump lambasted the United Nations on opening day for its failure to stop global crises in the midst of major regional wars, humanitarian disasters, looming security threats, never mind costly bureaucratic waste.

- John J. Metzler

But as the leader of the most prominent and founding UN member state, he then added that the world organisation isn’t living up to its potential, and scathingly challenged, “What’s the purpose of the United Nations?” The old rebuke, “You can do better!” Sometimes it works.

The 80th General Assembly, which was supposed to originally be a celebration of the UN’s founding in San Francisco in 1945, turned out to be a gloomy and plaintive session as most of us sadly expected. Founded from the ruins of the Second World War, the new multinational organisation would offer the brave new world a future of peace and security. Then postwar reality intervened.

Key crises confront the UN and the global community.

Ukraine's conflict, the largest war in Europe since World War II, devastates a central European country and, as importantly, imperils neighbouring states. Thus, beyond millions of refugees and massive human carnage, the war is spilling over into neighbouring Nato countries.