Mohamed Chebaro’s answer to “is the UN still the place for deals?” is “not really”: wars, climate, AI, and great-power splits have left leaders treating the founding anti-war ethos as optional, so moral authority fades and the house looks like a talking shop. He still asks: if not the UN, what stops a “law of the jungle”?

Record since 1945 is mixed. Global South critics call it Western medicine; defenders say it mirrors state discord. The P5 veto once capped Cold War war; he says it has blocked action on Palestine–Israel, Ukraine, Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, and Gaza ceasefires. He treats Russia’s Ukraine war and the U.S. strike on Iran in February as Charter breaches by the same members.

Money: U.S. used to pay ~1/5 of the core budget, ~1/4 of peacekeeping, often ~1/3 of some relief; Trump-era cuts plus European aid cuts and no emerging-power fill-in squeeze WFP-style work (South Sudan, Afghanistan). Next SG faces AI rules, climate bills, and trust. Clubs (G7, BRICS) absorb deal-making; ending the 81-year body is no longer unthinkable.

Amid unprecedented global challenges, from wars, epidemics, climate change and artificial intelligence’s existential threats to humanity to superpower discord splintering the world order, many ask whether the UN is still a necessary space for global deal-making. The short answer is: not really.

But the reality raises another question: If not the UN, then what else could solve the problems of increasingly intransigent super- and medium-sized powers amid a rise in ethnonationalism and so-called patriotism, including calls for the erosion of multilateralism, the rule of law and the rules-based international order?

The world is in an era in which political leaders believe less and less in the ethos of the UN, which was founded to help protect the planet and its........

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