Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd: How to Fix the United Nations

Author:
Kevin Rudd

The UN is still important, but it needs to be reformed for a new age

In an age of a fracturing political support for the European Union, the re-birth of American isolationism, the growing international political confidence on the parts of both Russia and China, the daily threat of violent jihadism and a chronically weak global economy, deep questions have arisen about the long-term durability of what we continue to blithely refer to as the “post-war global order.”

The uncomfortable truth is that many of the assumptions underpinning the current order are under profound challenge. Geopolitically, U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia relations are more unstable than they have been in a quarter of a century, even as Russia-China relations have rarely been closer. Geoeconomically, despite the Chinese economic slowdown, China remains on track to surpass the U.S. as the biggest economy in the world sometime next decade—the first time since the reign of Britain’s King George III that a non-western, non-democratic, non-English speaking country has occupied this position.

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