The 81st United Nations General Assembly has once again turned New York into the great stage of world politics. Nearly 130 heads of state and government have debated about Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, the climate emergency, the regression of human rights, and the reform of the multilateral system. Artificial intelligence has gained centrality, and the indebtedness of developing countries has reappeared as one of the major obstacles to the 2030 Agenda. But, beneath the agenda, the underlying question was another: whether the world will continue to be governed by common norms or by the law of the strongest.
The Assembly has been held at a moment of extreme weakness for the Organization. This deterioration is not only explained by its limitations: it also responds to a deliberate strategy by those who wish to weaken it. Donald Trump and other populist leaders present it as a slow, useless institution captured by globalist bureaucrats. It is not an innocent criticism, but a battle for the narrative: if multilateralism is presented as an extreme ideology and not as a method of coexistence, it becomes easier to dismantle it.
Trump expressed it bluntly. He proclaimed that “whoever wins superintelligence, wins”, labeled any international oversight of AI as a “globalist plan,” and described the International Criminal Court as an institution “full of evil people,” inviting other countries to abandon it. Pedro Sánchez defended the opposite position: he denounced a “planned and coordinated demolition attempt” of the multilateral order and called for reforming the Security Council and abolishing the veto power.
Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews coined the concept of “isomorphic mimicry” based on a phenomenon in nature: species that imitate the appearance of others to survive, without possessing their capabilities. Translated to institutions, it describes those that retain the forms of a functional organization without producing the results that justify their existence. The UN runs that risk. It continues to hold summits and approve resolutions with the formal equality of its 193 States, but many of its decisions are not executed and real power remains concentrated in a few. With an important difference compared to the cases studied by these authors: here it is not the institution that lacks capacity, but its most powerful members who empty the form of content.
The Assembly offered eloquent examples. For the second consecutive year, United States denied the visa to Mahmoud Abbas and to high-ranking officials of the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinian president had to intervene through a pre-recorded video that the Assembly had authorized by 152 votes to three. Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court since 2024, arrived in New York flying over the airspace of States parties to the Rome Statute, such as France, Italy, or Greece, which had the obligation to execute it. The rules still exist, but their application increasingly depends on who violates them.
It was also António Guterres' last opening as secretary-general. His speech sounded like a final warning: "The fault lines of our world are widening. The cracks have become chasms." Guterres raised four major tests for the exercise of power: war and peace, inequality, climate, and artificial intelligence. It was, formulated from the podium, the question that hovered over the entire Assembly: whether power will be governed by law or by force.
The United Nations does not always work; too often, they also do not let it work
And it projects onto his succession. According to the leaked results of the third indicative vote of the Security Council, held on September 18, Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica) leads the race with nine votes of support, five against, and one without opinion, followed by Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett (Guyana), with eight supports. None has consolidated. In 2016, Guterres never dropped below eleven supports in any round.
The procedure requires nine votes from the fifteen members of the Council and no veto from the United States, China, Russia, France, or the United Kingdom. In upcoming rounds, colored ballots could be used to reveal if the rejections come from a permanent member. The incentive is perverse: the great powers do not seek the most capable or independent candidate, but the one acceptable to all of them; a secretary-general of minimums.
In the case of the United States, the dilemma is even more concerning. After cutting its funding, abandoning international organizations, attacking the International Criminal Court, and promoting a Peace Board that was born with the endorsement of the Council for Gaza but now aspires to a parallel role, Washington seems to have two options. The first, to promote a sympathetic candidate. Among the possible last-minute contenders are Nickolay Mladenov, former special coordinator of the UN for the Middle East and now high representative for Gaza linked to the Peace Board chaired by Trump.
The second, to successively veto the candidates with the most merits or autonomy and prolong the blockade. This paralysis would reinforce its narrative: a UN unable to function, replaceable by smaller and more controllable mechanisms. If the Council were to reach December 31 without a successor, the Organization would enter into an uncertainty it has not experienced since 1950, when the Soviet veto led the General Assembly to extend the mandate of Trygve Lie. According to the practice of regional rotation, the position would correspond to Latin America and the Caribbean, which has only held it once, with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. And, after eight decades, there is a legitimate aspiration for a woman to hold it for the first time, as the Assembly itself has encouraged. But neither merits, nor geography, nor gender equality are guaranteed against the veto.
The United Nations does not always function; too often, it is also not allowed to function. But the alternative is not a more efficient world, but one without shared rules. The results of indicative votes should be public, and permanent members should explain their vetoes. The UN cannot alone prevent the law of the strongest from being imposed. The minimum is that it is not that law that chooses its Secretary-General.