The UN at eighty: the institution's long arithmetic

The world body marked its eightieth anniversary in the last week of October, and the marking brought the institution’s long arithmetic into view with the particular completeness that the round numbers command. The membership has grown from the fifty-one founders to nearly two hundred states, the wars that the institution could not prevent and the peace it has kept are both in the record, and the questions about its place in the year’s renegotiated order are the contemporary part of the accounting; the anniversary was the occasion for the weighing that the institution’s eight decades deserve, and the weighing was conducted in the speeches and the commentaries that the date generated.

The institution’s record is the part of the anniversary that the historians will weigh with the care that the decades require. The founding’s hopes, the charter’s promises, the peace and the rights that the document names, have been tested by the decades’ wars, and the testing’s record is the mixed one that the anniversaries always assemble; the institution has failed the tests that its founders could not foresee and passed the ones that the diplomacy could manage, and the mixture is the record that the accounting must hold. The record is the institution’s own, and the owning is the anniversary’s honest content.

The institution’s machinery is the part that the anniversary’s coverage tends to take for granted, and the taking is the mistake that the eightieth birthday corrects. The convening that the institution provides, the rooms where the wars’ negotiations are conducted, the mechanisms where the disputes are aired, the agencies that the needs have built, all of it is the machinery that the year’s diplomacy depends on, and the dependence is the institution’s quiet argument; the machinery’s value is the availability, the always-open rooms, the always-running agencies, and the availability is the value that the crises demonstrate. The machinery is the institution’s contribution, and the contribution’s scale is the anniversary’s measure.

The institution’s place in the year’s renegotiated order is the contemporary part of the accounting, and the place is the part that the year’s events have tested. The largest economy’s withdrawal from the climate agreement and its redefinition of the alliances have shifted the institution’s environment, the wars have tested its security role, and the trade conflicts have bypassed its mechanisms; the tests have been conducted through the year, and the institution has absorbed them with the particular resilience that the eight decades have built. The place is in motion, and the motion is the anniversary’s contemporary subject.

The institution’s future will be written by the members that its eight decades have gathered, and the writing will be conducted through the mechanisms that the anniversary has made visible; the charter’s promises will be tested by the decades ahead, the peace and the rights that the document names, and the testing will be the institution’s continuing work. The world body marked its eightieth anniversary with the record assembled and the questions weighed, and the marking was the demonstration of the institution’s persistence; the membership has grown, the machinery has run, and the accounting has been conducted with the particular care that the round numbers deserve; the institution’s long arithmetic is the record of what the world has built together, and the record’s continuation is the work that the anniversary’s ceremonies were designed to affirm.