NEW YORK, Sept 21 – With the United Nations set to turn 80 next month, veteran diplomat Kishore Mahbubani said that the world body is both “a miracle” of endurance and “under threat”, and he urged major powers to recommit to the UN Charter and strengthen the organization as the planet’s “global village council”.
Speaking via video on Monday at a Vision China event held in New York, the former president of the UN Security Council said the 80th anniversary on Oct 24 should prompt sober reflection on the UN’s role in an increasingly interdependent world.
The UN’s survival since its founding in 1945 was itself a remarkable achievement, especially compared to the collapse of its predecessor, the League of Nations, said Mahbubani, who served as Singapore’s permanent representative to the UN.
But he cautioned that some major powers are “walking away from the commitments” they made under the UN Charter, leaving the institution under threat.
He argued that global crises of the 21st century — from the 2008 financial meltdown to the ongoing threat of climate change — prove that humanity lives in “one small global village” where no one nation can insulate itself from the problems of others.
The global financial crisis, which began in the United States, “almost brought the world economy down”, he said, adding that climate change, what he called one of humanity’s biggest challenges ever, is threatening “our small, fragile ‘Spaceship Earth'”.
Quoting the late UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Mahbubani said, “When we live in a global village, or in any village, we have to take care of each other, because if one house catches fire in the village, all the houses in the village will catch fire.”
The UN, founded after World War II, is anchored in a charter that affirms the sovereign equality and territorial integrity of states. Those principles, Mahbubani said, have helped prevent the invasion and occupation of smaller states. “For that alone, we should thank the UN Charter,” he said.
Rather than creating a new institution from scratch, Mahbubani urged nations to “build on the one that we have”. He praised China for launching its Global Governance Initiative ahead of the UN’s 80th anniversary, calling on all major powers to “loudly state” their intent to bolster the UN as the central platform for managing shared challenges.
Mahbubani also said Asia should assume a bigger leadership role, arguing that many Western governments are “unable to provide the leadership the world needs”. Asian countries, he said, tend to be “pragmatic and not ideological” in their approaches to global challenges, a mindset he regarded as essential for navigating a “multipolar, multi-civilizational” world.
“But to have such a dialogue among civilizations, it’s very important that we learn to treat each other with respect and try to understand each other better,” he said, urging participants at the Vision China event to generate new ideas from Asia to strengthen global governance and promote peace.
