The U.N. Security Council’s Default Is Deadlock
In May 1954, less than a decade after the founding of the United Nations, then-Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold concluded an address to the University of California,...
On Gaza, the U.N. Struggles for Relevance
As the Israel-Hamas war rages on more than three weeks after it began, diplomats at the United Nations appear more focused on seizing the political...
What Can the U.N. Do Now?
When Foreign Policy sat down with the new president of the United Nations General Assembly, the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel five days earlier...
Zelensky: ‘War Crimes Must Be Punished’
UNITED NATIONS—It’s no small feat to steal a show as big as the annual September gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York...
Soft Power Is Making a Hard Return
Days before the recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the host country’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, who has been outspoken against Russia’s war in Ukraine,...
Russia’s Support Seals Belarus’s Fate at the U.N.
A particularly subtle Kabuki theater performance has been unfolding in recent weeks at the United Nations headquarters in New York, which has been gearing up...
Ukrainian U.N. Ambassador: Russia Is ‘Mold That Invades Your House’
Early last year, as Russia was chairing a late-night emergency session of the United Nations Security Council aimed at preventing its own country from invading...
Putin’s Pied Piper Plays the U.N.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign affairs minister, returned this week to his familiar stamping grounds at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where...
Macron’s China Trip Is a Fool’s Errand
French President Emmanuel Macron climbed the steps of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, on the edge of Tiananmen Square, trailed by an entourage of...
The U.N. Has Turned Turtle on the Ukraine War
UNITED NATIONS—The mood is anything but diplomatic here at the moment. High-level envoys attending sessions marking the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine...