The war in Ukraine, now in its fourth month, has caused many of us to challenge key beliefs previously taken for granted. Europe, in turns out, isn’t some special region of the world immune to the depravities and brutalities of armed conflict. The European Union, an organization often referred to as a slow-moving, bureaucratic machine, can actually come together with resolute action when the circumstances call for it. And Russia’s Vladimir Putin, depicted in the past as a strategic genius with an uncanny ability to exploit his adversaries’ failings, is in actuality a bad gambler who has dug his country into a massive geopolitical hole.
Yet one widespread belief continues to prevail and may have gotten stronger since Russian forces began pummeling Ukrainian cities on Feb. 24: The United Nations, the world’s answer to combating the threat of war, is ineffectual at best and irrelevant at worst.
Ask Ukrainian policymakers what they think of the world’s preeminent multilateral institution, and you will receive a collection of passionate denunciations and angry diatribes. On April 5, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the United Nations Security Council point-blank that it failed to do the job the U.N. Charter prescribed for it: maintaining international peace and security. Zelenskyy’s frustration was fueled by Russia’s veto of a Security Council resolution more than a month prior, which called for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. Even U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres acknowledged the Security Council is “paralyzed” on Ukraine, unable to do much to end the bloodshed.
