Security Challenges Cloud UN’s Summit of the Future

Deadly conflicts in the Gaza Strip, Ukraine, Sudan, and several other regions continue to rage as the UN General Assembly prepares for its seventy-ninth round of meetings this September. These and other security challenges will weigh heavily on world leaders when they meet on September 22 and 23 for the Summit of the Future, billed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to revive multilateral cooperation. The summit is set to culminate in a consensus endorsement of a Pact for the Future by all 193 UN member states.

Arguably the most consequential area for debate will be the UN’s role in managing international conflict and promoting global peace. With the UN Security Council (UNSC) beset by tensions between its most powerful members at a level unmatched since the Cold War, meaningful progress will be hard if not impossible to achieve.

What are the top security challenges facing world leaders at the summit?

The state of international security is at its most perilous in decades. Between 2004 and 2014, approximately 637,000 people died from conflict. In the nine years since then, the world has seen more than 1.4 million conflict-related fatalities. An estimated 14 percent of the world’s population was living in an area of active disorder in 2023 and most conflict situations across the world are either deadlocked or worsening. As has been true at every multilateral forum in recent years, the fighting in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip will loom large over the Summit of the Future. The war in Ukraine’s colossal human cost and disruption of global food and energy supply are top-of-mind for world leaders as the conflict nears its third year without tangible progress toward a settlement.

The October 7 terrorist attacks last year by Hamas-led forces on Israel traumatized the Israeli people, and the country’s ensuing war with Hamas has been a catastrophe for the Palestinian population of Gaza, not to mention the associated increase in violence and political tension across the Middle East.

Another major conflict that receives less UNSC attention but adds fuel to the animosity among the major powers is the war in Sudan, where Russia and, to a lesser extent, U.S.-aligned Persian Gulf states are entangled in a deadly contest for natural resources and power.

How have growing rivalries on the Security Council affected its capability to address threats to peace?

These conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan have exposed the limitations of the United Nations and the imperatives for reform, not least its most important decision-making body, the Security Council. Though the UNSC is vested with the authority to respond to threats to international security, impose sanctions, and authorize peacekeeping missions on behalf of its member states, it can only function with the majority assent of its fifteen member countries, ten of which rotate in and out every two years, and five of which are permanent members (the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom). Since the United Nations’ creation, the five permanent members have the power to unilaterally veto any UNSC resolution. Not surprisingly, with tensions running so high between the major powers, the UNSC has been tragically unable to manage internal disagreement over the world’s most devastating ongoing conflicts. While Russia has protected itself from UNSC condemnations and sanctions related to the Ukraine war, the United States also protected Israel from UNSC efforts to condemn its prosecution of the war against Hamas for several months before finally changing its veto to an abstention on a resolution calling for a cease-fire in March 2024.

Other potential interstate wars would likely face similar problems. Were Israel and Iran to begin a full-scale war, the United States and Russia (and China along with Russia) would come to the aid of opposing sides. In the event of a Chinese clash with a U.S.-aligned state or treaty ally in the Indo-Pacific, the UNSC would be again unable to act. Currently frozen but highly lethal interstate confrontations, such as the delicate situation on the Korean Peninsula, would also put UNSC permanent members on opposite sides of deadly issues, were hostilities to resume. For much of the United Nations’ history, conflicts between states were relatively uncommon, and the UNSC could find ways to overcome or circumvent great-power tensions. This is now much harder with the increase in interstate conflict.

Is the only solution fundamental reform of the UN Security Council? How likely is this?

Proposals for UNSC reform are nothing new: middle-power countries and developing countries have long pushed for changes, especially to the Security Council’s permanent membership makeup, which remains a vestige of the 1945 balance of global power. The existing structure is deeply entrenched, and the most fundamental reforms—including the addition of new permanent UNSC members—won’t be likely in the foreseeable future. This reality can deeply harm efforts toward peace in crucial areas.

However, the Council has operated effectively during times of great-power competition before—notably during the Cold War, during which time the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the rest of the UNSC membership, supported resolutions to effectively halt hostilities during three different security crises in the Middle East. Prospects for conflict resolution in situations where the major powers’ interests directly clash, however, will likely have to be found outside the UNSC system for the near term, but there are other parts of the world where the Security Council can make a positive impact: in October 2023, the UNSC passed a resolution authorizing and providing support for a security mission to Haiti. China and Russia abstained but allowed the resolution to pass with the support of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and all ten temporary council members. The support mission, led by U.S.-aligned Kenya but staffed by security forces from several countries, was the international community’s first tangible response to a dire crisis in Haiti, where thousands have been killed and affected by malnourishment and disease since the state began a spiral toward failure in 2021.

Haiti is one example of an issue area where the UNSC can be an agent of change: certain situations of civil conflict. With the Summit of the Future’s specific focus on youth and future generations, the attending leaders should emphasize internal insecurity in certain African countries, as Africa will be home to over one-quarter of the world’s population by 2050. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, and Nigeria are all demographic giants contending with intractable, yearslong internal conflicts; urgent action by the UNSC can improve the security conditions under which hundreds of millions of children will be born in the next twenty-five years. Though not all of the world’s deadliest civil conflicts are without their entanglements in great-power politics—Chinese firms have mining interests in the DRC, while the United States provides security sector support to Nigeria, a state increasingly forced to reckon with growing Russian military presence in its neighborhood.

However, efforts to relieve human suffering, combat the power of Islamist militias and other non-state armed groups, and effectively monitor and support existing UN missions in certain civil conflict situations are always worth bringing to the consideration of the Security Council. The more the Summit of the Future can focus on the places where the UN peace and security system can effectively work around the tension between the major powers, the better.

Does the United States have enough clout and purpose to drive the reforms seen as essential for the Summit of the Future to reach its goals?

U.S. leaders have recently exhibited greater ambition to push for change: speaking this month at a CFR event, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced the Joe Biden administration’s endorsement of reforms including increased non-permanent and permanent UNSC representation for African countries; elected membership for small island states; and reengagement with UNSC-level tech negotiations with the ultimate goal of amending the UN Charter to address the risks posed by emerging technologies.

The critical reforms to peace and security infrastructure proposed for discussion at the summit are impossible without the participation of the United States, but the United States cannot drive them alone. Increasingly, various middle powers—some U.S. allies, some aligned with U.S. adversaries, and some on the fence—are asserting their interests and objectives more autonomously and loudly than ever before. Many of these middle-power states have an all-time high influence in their respective regions, edging out some of the political influence the hegemonic United States once had over various groupings and coalitions of states. This adds complexity to the process of building consensus and increases the number of voices heavily involved in reform dialogues, especially when it comes to the balance of power on the UNSC.

The United States can and should assume leadership as the United Nations pursues the betterment of its peace and security structure during and after the Summit of the Future, but a global effort will be required. The United States can no longer design and execute a vision for global order and security alone.

What can be realistically expected to come out of the Summit of the Future?

What ends up in the final draft of the Pact for the Future—the agreement that world leaders will discuss and sign at the Summit, facilitated by Germany and Namibia—remains to be seen. Last summer, Secretary-General Guterres laid out his leading priorities in this area: addressing strategic risks and geopolitical divisions, preventing conflict and sustaining peace, strengthening peace operations, preventing the weaponization of emerging domains in conflict, and bolstering international governance. The poor state of play between the major powers has, and will continue to, make negotiations for the pact more difficult in critical areas. One of Guterres’ long-demonstrated priorities, for example, is global nuclear disarmament. Due to Russia’s dismissal of UN efforts toward disarmament (Russia being in possession of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal), the pact will not contain substantive commitments on nuclear policy.

Where it does address peace and security, the pact should focus on commitments and areas of reform where UN member state consensus can make a measurable difference and where major powers’ interests either align or do not directly conflict. For example, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix recently argued in Foreign Affairs for reforms to the practices of peacekeeping, including enhancing cooperation with regional multilateral groups, increasing funding for the most effective missions, improving the process for developing mission mandates, and generally increasing planning and monitoring efforts for missions. Additionally, all states would ultimately benefit from addressing climate insecurity and environmental degradation, among other transnational issues. The Pact for the Future will be most effective if it stresses more practical areas of reform and progress and focuses on global conflicts and regions where the great powers will be most able to cooperate.