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UN chief: Superpowers need to recognize their influence has narrowed
‘Iran, Ukraine wars prove global power relations have changed’
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world’s most powerful states need to recognize that their influence has narrowed, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine and the US war with Iran.
“I think it’s time for superpowers to understand the limits of their power,” he said. “The weight of different countries has changed, and that inevitably will be having an impact in the way power relations are established,” Guterres told the Financial Times.
“If you look at what happened in recent times, the capacity of superpowers to impose their will or their strength or their force in several situations has been severely limited.”
“Look at what happened with Russia and Ukraine,” he said, referring to the full-scale invasion in 2022, which Moscow expected to last for a matter of days.
“Look at what’s happened with the US and Iran,” Guterres added, referring to the US and Israeli war on Iran. The US hoped Tehran would capitulate when it attacked in February, but six months later Iran’s establishment is holding out and has closed the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy waterway.
In Guterres’s decade in charge, the UN’s profile as a mediator in global crises has waned. Some former and current officials argue he and the UN made a mistake in his second term by being less visible in the world’s war zones, as his focus has appeared to shift from mediating conflicts to broader societal challenges, such as combating climate change.
Guterres concedes it has been hard to mediate in the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran. The UN’s decision-making body, the Security Council, had been “practically paralyzed”, he said, as the US and Russia, two of its five veto-wielding powers, have blocked it while pursuing their goals.
“A sense of impunity is now prevailing,” he said. “Our leverage is dramatically diminished” by the fact that there is not a Security Council able to tell countries that “they must behave [or] they’ll be punished”.