The UN, 193 members strong, has indeed long lost its role as peacemaker-in-chief.
When I interviewed the Secretary General António Guterres in October 2016, on his first day in his first term, just hours after a rare unanimous endorsement by the Security Council, he promised “a surge in diplomacy for peace”.
For the past decade, the UN’s efforts were thwarted by the gridlocked Security Council, the growing number of spoilers and state sponsors in wars the world over, as well as the steady erosion in its own standing vis-a-vis the world’s most powerful players, including the United States.
“We must all welcome the activism of Mr Trump on ending wars,” says Martin Griffiths, a UN veteran who believes this new effort is “obviously a reflection of the failure of the UN Security Council and of the UN writ large.”
But the former Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator cautioned that “what we’ve learned over these last 80 years, through lots and lots of failures and clunkiness, we learned the value of inclusion, of being representative of the global community, not just the friends of Mr Trump.”
Guterres himself recently regretted that “there are those that believe the power of law should be replaced by the law of power”.
Asked in an interview with the BBC’s Today programme about Trump’s constant claim that he’s ended eight wars, he replied matter-of-factly “they are ceasefires.”
Some have already broken down.
The temporary peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo soon fell apart, Cambodia and Thailand started hurling accusations and more across their border, and India disputed Trump’s central role in ending its conflagration with Pakistan.