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In the course of the latter For four years at the United Nations, The international community has witnessed an alarming trend of closer cooperation between Russia and China that pays an important threat to the “rules -based order” that the United States helped to design in 1945.
This increased and renewed level of cooperation offers an unprecedented dilemma for the United States and like-minded partners: how to maintain the existing order, warts and all, when two permanent members of the UN Security Council now work feverishly to undermine it.
For many UN observers, China And Russia has now come to the shared conclusion that the UN has become a Washington and its allies aid to use regularly to destabilize their regimes and reduce their global influence. Consequently, the United Nations has become a critical battlefield in the current era of “Great Power” competition.
During my two-plus year as the American ambassador who is responsible for the cases of the UN Security Council, I saw first-hand how these two authoritarian powers spread repeatedly and energetically lies that claim:
American ambassador to the Conference on Disarm Entry Robert Wood attends a press conference in the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, April 19, 2018. (Reuters/Denis Balibouse)
- The UN bureaucracy is mandatory for the “West”;
- That the US and Europe continue to exploit countries in “colonial” fashion;
- That the US uses unilateral sanctions to impose its will on the rest of the world;
- And that the international financial system, led by the Western, continues to subject the global have-nots.
By spreading these false storylines, Russia and China hope to convince Development of countries that the UN and the associated mechanisms do not represent their views and values ​​and that a fundamental overhaul of the multilateral system is urgently needed.
It is not as if there have been no warning signals. Since the unprecated aggression war of Russia against Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 and the robust international conviction of it is determined to throw away the current order, even so far that there is no such thing as a rules-based order.
It violates the resolutions of the UN -general meeting about Ukraine and Tart repeated calls from UN member states to withdraw his troops from the country. Almost daily the inflamed rhetoric and nuclear sabel-ramming uses in the UN Security Council to threaten and intimidate countries that are opposed to his war against Ukraine, his illegal military cooperation with North Korea, his flagrant interference in democratic elections of their own regails.
Although this kind of imminent Russian behavior is not new, when viewed in the context of his “no-limits partnership” with China, a budding authoritarian super power, the world must seriously cancel.
Since 2016, Beijing has a ruthless campaign to make the UN again in its own authoritarian image. It has worked diligently to insert in official UN document language that promotes its own domestic ideological and political priorities, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Security Initiative.
It has given priority to the financing of the placement of young Chinese nationals in the Junior Professional Officers program of the UN, which trains and develops future UN officials. Through this program, the primary goal of Beijing is not only to develop a framework of Chinese nationals with UN expertise, but to sow the multilateral system with Appatchiks that are exclusively aimed at promoting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
Russia and China worked at the UN to undermine the American influence with Global South. File: During a joint press conference with De Wit -Russian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks after their conversations in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia, Thursday 13 March 2025. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Playing the long game, China, such as Russia, also tries to devaluate the importance of human rights, individual liberties and the role of civil society in the UN that are great, clipping away of international norms and norms that the United States and the vast majority of the UN Lid States want to retain. Instead of withdrawing from UN institutions such as UNESCO and the WHO, the new administration must double its involvement in these authorities to prevent China from dominating critical areas such as AI and reactions to future pandemies.
In meetings of public and closed doors of the Security Council, I had many verbal collisions with Russian and Chinese diplomats to substantiate their propaganda and false stories that, if often enough, start to resonate with states that are not fully familiar with the history and facts related to a certain issue.
To pursue the worldwide south, Russia and China usually point to the growing economic inequality, the war in Gaza, reportedly unfair restrictions on access to leading technologies, and what they claim is the instability of democracies as proof that the order -based order is the wave of the future.
Although most countries in Global South do not subscribe to these views, it would be incorrect to say that there is no growing support for this way of thinking. The call of the BIDEN administration for reforming the UN Safety Council and the “Pact for the Future” of the UN Secretary -General Guternes, a blueprint for the VNA, tried to meet part of the requirements for change that are geomed by developing countries.
But if Russian and Chinese propaganda become mainstream in the worldwide South discourse about the UN, demands will demand a fundamental overhaul of the order-based order will certainly become louder and the support for the UN can seriously weaken as we know it.
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Friends of the United States also warn that the current political departments in Washington and between Washington and his allies Russia and China prevail in this struggle. In order to effectively meet the moment in this evolving, competing strategic landscape, the Trump administration must leave the anti-Un attempt and instead use the unique convenient power of America to renew and strengthen alliances at the UN.
Chinese and Russian diplomats acknowledge privately that a comparative advantage that the US has compared to their countries are our historical, values ​​-based alliances. No matter how important alliances are, they cannot be a single street.
The US has the right to expect that partners will not work to undermine its critical security interests. Nations should not expect that they are constantly against the UN votes against the US policy priorities without being taken into account. It is important that each party understands the expectations of the other.
Since 2016, Beijing has a ruthless campaign to make the UN again in its own authoritarian image.
The US must also actively involve the UN press corps. This was something that I undertook religiously at the UN headquarters, and made sure that I could be processed as well as possible in the US report. This must be a priority. If we do not consistently push the American story, our opponents will fill the emptiness and define that story in ways that damage our global status and interests.
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In the past 79 years, the United States has invested considerably in building the UN and the wider international system. Let us not waste this huge investment. Let us make the UN suitable for the goal, ensure that it continues to realize the basic principles of his charter – protecting human rights, saving future generations from the scourge of war, promoting a more just world. We must collaborate with like -minded countries, organizations and peoples to help survive and thrive in what will undoubtedly be an intense era of strategic competition.
We never have a moment.
