The UN is an abject failure at stopping war. Could Australia help it escape Trump’s America?

September 20, 2026 — 1:30pm

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In New York, the United Nations General Assembly is gearing up for its big annual session, starting on Tuesday. Which foreign leader will the United States prevent from attending (last time it was Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority) along with the judges it has blacklisted from the UN’s International Criminal Court?

Benjamin Netanyahu is always made welcome, but this year might he be arrested by order of the city’s new Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani? Will Vladimir Putin, the truly evil emperor responsible for over half a million deaths, have the effrontery to attend an organisation with a UN Charter purpose to “end the scourge of war”? At a Chatham House seminar last week on the subject “what is the UN good for?”, the most agreed answer was to run the Universal Postal Union.

Of course, there are a number of well-run UN agencies, mostly headquartered in Geneva and Vienna and Nairobi. They are necessary – indeed indispensable – for international co-operation on climate, health and nuclear proliferation. But the primary purpose of this organisation is world peace. In this regard, it is an abject failure as its Security Council watches passively while hundreds of thousands of civilians are killed by bombs, drones and bullets in the 56 armed conflicts (involving fighting by 92 UN member states) currently being waged across the world.

The reason for its failure is no secret. The design of the international order, which dates back to 1945, leaves the........

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