What is the point of the UN?

When all this is over, we will have to hold a grown-up and perhaps very difficult conversation about the United Nations. No institution is perfect, or has supernatural powers to stop war or despotism, and perhaps nothing could have dissuaded Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. But the UN’s failure to prevent one fifth of its permanent security council from overrunning another member state should give us pause. There are the hard realities of realpolitik, of course, but there is also the question of endemic institutional failure. It may be that we will either have to change how we think about the UN or change the UN itself.

In a session of the Security Council held overnight, António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, made a direct plea to the Russian dictator in the way only a boomer could:

‘I have only one thing to say, from the bottom of my heart: President Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine.