In the heart of Muir Woods just north of San Francisco Bay, there is a plaque honoring U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a redwood grove. The plaque marks the spot where, on May 19, 1945, delegates and diplomats of 46 nations convened for a memorial service honoring the late president, who had died just over a month earlier. Germany had surrendered, the war with Japan still raged, and the world had gathered in San Francisco for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. Amid the intense work of laying out the most important institution of the postwar international order, they gathered under majestic redwoods to honor Roosevelt as the “chief architect of the United Nations, and apostle of lasting peace for all mankind,” the plaque reads.
In the heart of Muir Woods just north of San Francisco Bay, there is a plaque honoring U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a redwood grove. The plaque marks the spot where, on May 19, 1945, delegates and diplomats of 46 nations convened for a memorial service honoring the late president, who had died just over a month earlier. Germany had surrendered, the war with Japan still raged, and the world had gathered in San Francisco for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. Amid the intense work of laying out the most important institution of the postwar international order, they gathered under majestic redwoods to honor Roosevelt as the “chief architect of the United Nations, and apostle of lasting peace for all mankind,” the plaque reads.
For the hikers and tourists who pause to read it, the plaque is a reminder that the United Nations was born on the West Coast of the United States, overlooking the Pacific. Now, as wars in Europe and the Middle East give the U.N. its greatest stress test since the end of World War II, it is time for the U.N. to get back to its roots. It is time for the U.N. to move back to California.
The U.N. today is a moribund, conflicted, and besieged institution. The Security Council is divided and ineffective. Superpowers stand isolated in the General Assembly, as Russia does over its invasion of Ukraine and as the United States does over the Israel-Hamas war and its own embargo of Cuba. Resentment is growing among countries in the global south over their lack of representation on the Security Council. Most damning of all, the U.N. has proved incapable of preventing or resolving armed conflicts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it best in his address to the Security Council in April 2022: “Where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee?”
Ideas for reforming and renewing the U.N. are as numerous as the problems besetting it. Many focus on reforms to the Security Council’s membership. U.S. President Joe Biden committed U.S. support for “increasing the number of both permanent and nonpermanent representatives of the Council,” including for “countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.” The African Union’s official position insists on two permanent African members with full veto power, a position gaining ground with European states such as France and Germany. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for abolishing permanent seats altogether. The only thing agreed on is that something needs to change.
But whatever other reforms are made to the U.N., nothing would jolt it quite like a move. So, for your consideration: The U.N. should relocate its headquarters to San Francisco as part of a literal return to its founding principles. A Pacific headquarters for the U.N. would also be a powerful manifestation of the U.N. moving away from its structural bias for Europe. Moving the U.N. back to San Francisco would be the perfect way to underline other necessary reforms and symbolize a renewal of the institution.
As laid out in Charlene Mires’s excellent book Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations, New York was chosen as the headquarters of the U.N. largely out of sympathy and convenience for Europeans, many of whom were disgruntled at having lost out to the United States on hosting the U.N. in the first place. Though European states led by Britain and France were opposed, most of the rest of world—including countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil, China, Iran, Mexico, and the Soviet Union—voted for locating the U.N. headquarters in the United States, both out of convenience and as a symbolic break with the failed League of Nations, which had been based in Geneva. “The Old World has had it once, and it is time for the New World to have it,” future Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko said. Many of these same states also favored keeping the U.N. in San Francisco versus moving it to New York. A shorter flight across the Atlantic was to be Europe’s consolation prize.
Today, the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly shuts down Manhattan every September. The only thing moving slower than the gears of international order is the gridlocked traffic all around Turtle Bay. But just because the U.N. ended up in New York doesn’t mean it has to stay there forever. Key U.N. functions and offices are already based in Bonn, Copenhagen, Geneva, The Hague, Paris, and Rome. Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna are already unofficial co-headquarters with New York.
Looking through the list of major U.N. offices, there is a clear lack of representation for the Indo-Pacific, which since 1945 has only grown in economic and political importance. Many of the arguments made back then for keeping the U.N. in San Francisco have only gained strength. Putting the U.N. in San Francisco would symbolically place the Pacific at the center of the world, which it already is in terms of population, trade, and GDP. A San Francisco location would be more convenient for the rising superpowers of China and India as well as major developed democracies such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea. A California location would be more convenient for much of Latin America. Back at the world body’s founding, many Arab countries favored San Francisco over New York as well.
Granted, for African and European states, the move to San Francisco would be inconvenient. But unlike in 1945, when European diplomats had to take trains across the United States to reach San Francisco, direct flights from Europe to California are not only possible but routine. And the inconvenience to some countries would always be at least equaled by the greater convenience for others, particularly in East Asia and the Western Pacific. It is the latter region that is today the center of gravity of the world’s population, economy, and international diplomacy.
California is clearly more than capable of hosting major international gatherings, as indicated by the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in 2022 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in San Francisco in 2023. Moving a major hub of international diplomacy to the West Coast would be particularly healthy for the U.S. foreign policy establishment. While the Bay Area is not exactly the American heartland, it would still be good to get U.S. diplomats out of the Acela corridor. As the U.S. state with the largest Latino and Asian populations, the largest tech, entertainment, and agricultural industries, and the ports that are essential to trans-Pacific trade and global food security, California is well suited to playing a larger role in international diplomacy. As the fifth-largest economy in the world (and gaining rapidly on Germany, the fourth-largest), California is more capable of claiming the mantle of “capital of the world” today than ever.
At this point, let’s acknowledge the many other obvious flaws with this proposal. It would be expensive. It would alienate many U.N. staffers attached to New York. It would require confronting San Francisco’s own entrenched housing crisis. There is no great demand from any U.N. member state to do so. From a U.S. perspective, perhaps the most serious reason not to revisit the location of the U.N. is simply that it could open up the can of worms about whether the U.N. should be in the United States at all. One can imagine Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Lagos, Mexico City, Cape Town, Mumbai, and even Shanghai or Beijing all making a run at it if the headquarters question was tabled once again. It would be a big and disruptive change whose possible consequences are unpredictable.
But precisely because it is such a big change, a move of the U.N. headquarters would be a dramatic and tangible sign that things are really changing. While other reforms, such as adding global south representation to the Security Council or making General Assembly votes more binding, would be more substantively significant, a change of location would represent a clear break with the status quo. Though it may be as sappy as a memorial to FDR in a redwood grove, returning the U.N. to San Francisco would manifest a commitment to renewing the world body’s founding ideals.
California is equidistant from Beijing and Berlin; even New Delhi is closer to California than to New York. In terms of travel time, everything east of Islamabad would likely prefer San Francisco—including India, China, and Indonesia, representing three of the four most populous countries in the world. Giving the U.N. a direct physical stake in the reality that the Pacific Ocean is now the center of the global economy and international affairs would be a good thing. Chipping away at the Eurocentric instincts still dominant in international diplomacy would be a bonus.
The Pacific is where the world’s only nuclear weapons have been used in wartime. The Pacific is where the climate crisis most pressingly threatens the survival of U.N. member states. The Pacific is where the relationship between the 21st century’s two most important global actors will play out, whether as peaceful diplomacy or armed conflict. In other words, the Pacific is where the origins and future of the United Nations lie. Go west, young U.N., and grow up with the century.
Just don’t expect the traffic to improve.
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