Where are today's global statesmen?

New Straits Times

5 hours ago

With wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza, the world needs a credible mediator and arbiter like never before.
But just when the United Nations (UN) needs to get into the act, it is absent, bordering on irrelevance, instead.
It is, of course, not the UN's fault that it is exposed as not fit for purpose.
The UN Security Council (UNSC) is tasked with being the global forum to deliberate on political disputes among member states. So war becomes unnecessary.
Indeed, only the UNSC is authorised to approve the use of force against recalcitrant nations.
The United States did bring the case for invading Iraq to the UN but the subsequent attack was never sanctioned by the UNSC.
Russia's case for the invasion of Ukraine was never presented before the UNSC.
It is, of course, a fact that in both Iraq and now Ukraine, the invading countries — the US and Russia respectively — are permanent members of the UNSC, each (along with China, the United Kingdom and France) wielding a veto.
Faced with the prospect of a US veto over the Iraq war and a Russian one over Ukraine, the UNSC is thus rendered toothless when one of the warring parties carries a veto.
In the case of the Gaza war, Israel is generally understood to be backed by the US, which will shield it with a veto should the UNSC attempt to send a peacekeeping force into the territory.
In fact, even getting an effective UN-sanctioned humanitarian mission into Gaza right now is problematic.
Is it any wonder, then, that the humanitarian disaster in bombed-out Gaza has increasingly bothered the conscience not just of individuals the world over but even governments traditionally close to Israel?
But if global institutions such as the UN seem increasingly toothless, we need also ask difficult questions about dispute-resolution and peace-settlement mechanisms in our own backyard.
Asean seems unable to put any dent in the intractable political crisis in Myanmar.
Another crisis is brewing between Thailand and Cambodia over a border dispute, which has been deliberated upon and decided in the latter's favour, twice.
As this crisis seems to be going from bad to worse, Malaysia as the current Asean chair is hoping the offer of its good offices will be taken up.
It is disheartening to witness the international trend where nations both big and small revert to the belief that might is right.
Where are today's global statesmen who will come forward as they did after the devastation of the last world war, to reform world institutions if not create a new global architecture really fit for purpose, lest we descend collectively and perhaps inexorably into another world war?