Historian Reinhart Koselleck reminds us that history moves in the gaps between the space of experience and the horizon of expectation. The time of the United Nations is, perhaps, this suspended interval: between a past that still supports us and a future that we have not yet been able to define. In a world in which the symbolic air of coexistence seems, at times, polluted with cynicism, indifference and hypernationalism, the organization remains an unparalleled experience, an institutional attempt to preserve the minimum necessary trust between States. A tired lung, to be sure, but still breathing the fragile oxygen of dialogue.
In conflicts like no Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Bosnia e em many others, it has been observed that the international response mechanism works intermittently: exhalations of moral indignation alternate with pragmatic inspirations of realpolitik. Thus, between ethics and interest, the institution slowly transforms into a space emptied of credibilitywhere cooperation weakens and the rhetoric of solidarity is repeated like a ritual without tangible impact.
If the first decades were animated by the hope that diplomacy could replace violence, our time reveals the opposite, that is, the return of weapons with impunity. What was previously called international community it has become a group of States that prioritize immediate interests to the detriment of commitment, peace and human dignity that they should share.
Still, if we look closely, we could say that the UN has not become irrelevant, but is going through a process of anthropological mutation. To continue to survive, it needs to recover its homeostatic function: not to impose peace, but cultivate the plural breathing of humanity. This requires structural transformations, both in the Security Council, in the issue of voting, and also in financing. But, above all, it requires a metabolic change, capable of to generate a new way of thinking, reacting and coexistir.
Last weekend, o “Financial Times” published an interview with Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wongwhich consider the arrival and post-american era as a historical interregnum, in which the old rules no longer operate and the new ones remain to be written. Wong reflects that we cannot wait for order to be reestablished passively and it is necessary to act, invest in the common good, strengthen links between States and recognize interdependence as a vital condition for coexistence.
At this juncture, in which United States leadership is undergoing a profound transformation, it becomes urgent restore multilateralism in a way that reflects the reality of multipolarity. The United Nations need to adaptitself and, to this end, decentralize itself, creating polycentric models of mediation with effective power in other parts of the world, such as Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. This does not mean replacing New York or Geneva, but recognizing that the world has changed and that it is necessary to rebalance the system, include more voices and reform the social contract of humanityin order to reconcile interests and, above all, prevent wars from prolonging and becoming eternal.
Estis centers must integrate local actors, representatives civil society, community leaders and, above all, women, whose participation is decisive in rebuilding the social fabric after conflicts. In this sense, by working in partnership with regional blocs, countries with mediation power and with the UN itself, they could intervene in the resolution of crises in a closer, contextual and effective way, returning legitimacy and human sensitivity to the peace process.
In light of this scenario, the diagnosis is evident: the concept of global governance is experiencing a bifurcation, in which it either adapts to new forms of action or loses relevance. As the poet Han Bo wrote, contemporaneity inhabits the temporary, and the line of Greenwichanxiously, realizes that the ethos of our societies has gone into self-immolation. While we wait, mediocrity blooms and the monsters become unstoppable.
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