Bhopinder Singh | UN’s journey: From Purpose To Pageantry

There was a time when the United Nations was not merely a venue. It was a stage upon which the architecture of the world was contested, dismantled and occasionally reinvented. Its great speeches carried the weight of historical rupture, i.e., decolonisation, nuclear annihilation, revolution, sovereignty, racial equality and national liberation. Their protagonists arrived not merely to occupy a lectern but to announce that something in the world had changed.

Jawaharlal Nehru's interventions at the UN in 1948 came from a newly independent India wrestling with sovereignty, peace and the end of imperial domination. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower delivered “Atoms for Peace”, proposing an international framework for peaceful nuclear energy, an initiative that contributed to the creation of the IAEA.

Then came 1960. The colonial empires were cracking, newly independent African and Asian states were entering the Assembly, and Washington and Moscow were competing for influence. Nikita Khrushchev put colonial independence squarely before the General Assembly. Fidel Castro then spoke for 269 minutes, the longest timed General Assembly speech in UN history, attacking imperialism and American interventionism. Patrice Lumumba embodied Africa's emergence as a political subject. In 1964, Che Guevara presented Cuba's revolutionary internationalism before the world.

These were not speeches written to fill television slots. They were arguments about the world. In 1974, Yasser Arafat presented the Palestinian national cause directly before the international community. His appeal that he had come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun became one of the defining rhetorical moments in the history of Palestine at the UN. And in 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered perhaps the great UN speech of the dying Cold War, outlining a radically altered Soviet conception of international relations.

The world order was changing, and the UN podium was where that change was being spoken aloud. And then something changed. The UN did not suddenly become irrelevant. It remained indispensable in humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, refugees, development, international law and diplomacy. But its institutional reach became increasingly misaligned with geopolitical power. The organisation was designed after the Second World War. Since then, came decolonisation, the nuclear revolution, China's rise, globalisation, technological disruption and renewed great-power rivalry. Yet its institutional skeleton remains remarkably familiar.

The speeches changed. The world changed. The institutional bargain changed far less. So every September the ritual continues. Leaders arrive. Motorcades move. Flags rise. Speeches are delivered. Cameras flash. And then comes the choreography. A delegation walks out. Another applauds. A leader delivers a “thunderous” rebuttal. Cameras capture a gesture. Newsrooms dissect facial expressions, seating arrangements and who appeared to glare at whom. The spectacle becomes the story. The substance becomes the transcript. And the transcript disappears.

The problem is not that nothing happens at the UN. It is that its capacity to compel the most powerful actors increasingly depends on those same actors accepting constraint.

The vocabulary has become predictable e.g., “Deep concern”, “Strongly condemn”, “Call upon all parties”, “Reaffirm our commitment”, “Rules-based international order”, “Multilateral cooperation”, etc. None is meaningless. But endless repetition has drained such phrases of political voltage.

The problem is not rhetoric. It is rhetoric divorced from consequence. The old UN speeches were powerful because they represented incompatible visions of the future. America and the Soviet Union contested rival systems. Newly independent nations demanded the destruction of colonialism. Revolutionary movements challenged existing states. Palestine demanded recognition. Africa demanded emancipation. Nuclear powers confronted the possibility of civilisation's destruction. There were stakes. Today, much diplomatic language is negotiated until nobody can object, and, in the process, nobody is particularly moved. Meanwhile, the world outside moves faster than the chamber itself. Wars do not wait for communiqués. Great powers do not necessarily wait for Security Council approval. Technology does not wait for conventions. Geopolitics certainly does not wait for the next General Assembly speech.

And the media has discovered an easier product. Instead of asking what a speech changes, it asks what a leader looked like while delivering it.

Instead of examining whether diplomacy alters power, it reports the walkout. Instead of asking whether a resolution will be implemented, it reports the applause. The UN becomes content. Delegations become performers. Domestic political machinery takes the footage home. Our leader “slammed” them! Their leader was “stumped”! The chamber erupted! The world is watching!

Except that the world may not actually be changing. That is the deeper crisis.The United Nations does not suffer from a shortage of speeches. It suffers from a shortage of consequences. Its original promise was not that humanity would endlessly talk to itself, but that sovereign states could construct mechanisms through which conflict might be prevented, aggression contained and common problems collectively addressed. That promise has never been completely fulfilled. Nor has it completely failed. The UN remains indispensable and inadequate at the same time. The podium remains. The flags remain. The microphones remain. The cameras remain. The applause remains. What is increasingly uncertain is whether the institution still possesses the political power to make the world outside that chamber pay attention. The question is no longer whether the UN can produce another speech. It is whether it can once again produce history.