A new era of competing world powers has begun to overturn the post-Cold War era as geopolitical tensions soar, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in calling for new peacekeeping strategies and operations.
Guterres' bid to revitalize multilateralism that is at the heart of the United Nation's global problem-solving work runs through his dire assessment of the world's challenges in the “New Agenda for Peace” policy paper he presented on Thursday.
"We are on the verge of a new era. The post-Cold War period is over, and we are moving towards a new global order and a multipolar world," Guterres told diplomats. "This new era is already marked by the highest level of geopolitical tensions and major power competition in decades."
Guterres acknowledged that many of the U.N.'s 193-member nations "are growing skeptical of whether the multilateral system is working for them" as violations of international law become more common.
"Deep and, in some cases, justified grievances about double standards and unmet commitments are undermining cooperation. At the same time, the world faces new and developing threats that require urgent, united action," he said. "And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it even more difficult to address these challenges."
Guterres' policy paper updates the Agenda for Peace reform initative launched more than 30 years earlier by former U.N. chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali soon after the Soviet Union broke up and its Cold War with the United States ended.
Boutros-Ghali had envisioned a new and more activist world body anticipating and solving global issues through peacekeeping and preventive diplomacy.
The rise of 'strategic independence' and multipolarity
Ahead of Guterres' policy paper release, Richard Gowan, U.N. director for International Crisis Group, assessed how it updates Boutros-Ghali's vision. Gowan wrote that Guterres covered "a remarkable range of topics, from peacekeeping missions and women’s rights to climate change and cyber-security."
Guterres' focus on the future of multilateral security cooperation lays the groundwork for a U.N.-hosted "Summit of the Future" in Sept. 2024 at a time when there are "growing signs of flaws in the U.N.’s existing peace and security architecture," Gowan says.
Boutros-Ghali's policy paper in 1992 assumed that a united U.N. Security Council could increase global work on preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and post-conflict peacebuilding, according to Gowan. "Its vision of an activist, interventionist U.N. set the terms for policy discussions around the organization in the ensuing three decades," he wrote.
But the "conditions that shaped the 1992 Agenda no longer apply," Gowan notes. Today the 15-nation council – where China, France, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom all have permanent veto-wielding seats – is often deadlocked owing to the divisions in this increasingly multipolar world.
As a result, Guterres puts less emphasis on intervention forces and calls for more multilateralism to resolve tensions and restore trust among U.N. member nations.
"While announcing that the post-Cold War era is over, and acknowledging the reality of major-power competition, the paper does not declare that the world is embroiled in a new Cold War between the West and Russia or the U.S. and China," Gowan says.
"Instead," he says, "it envisions a world in which states of all shapes and sizes aim to achieve 'strategic independence,' and multipolarity rather than bloc politics is the order of the day."
Guterres said U.N. peacekeeping operations have contributed to saving millions of lives by helping to preserve ceasefires, protecting civilians from violence, and prompting warring parties to return to the peace table. No continent, he said, is in greater need of a new generation of peace enforcement missions than Africa.
"But longstanding unresolved conflicts, driven by complex domestic, geopolitical and transnational factors, and a persistent mismatch between mandates and resources, have exposed its limitations," Guterres conceded.
"Peacekeeping operations cannot succeed where there is no peace to keep," he said. "The fragmentation of conflicts, which often involve non-state armed groups, criminal gangs, terrorists and opportunists, has increased the need for multinational peace enforcement, counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations."
