Trygve Lie, first secretary general of the United Nations, between 1946 and 1952, is credited with a famous statement that still sounds like a tarot omen.
“This is the worst job in the world”, said the Norwegian politician when he handed over to his successor, Dag Hammarskjöld.
Lie had held office when the embers of the Second World War were still burning, with the beginning of the division into antagonistic blocs that continues today on the board of international geostrategy.
In his time, moreover, the UN endorsed a decision that is the germ of the main nucleus of the global tension of the present: the creation of the State of Israel and the nakba, or mass displacement of Palestinians.
Maybe it was because Lie saw the future in a crystal ball or maybe it was because he could read coffee grounds, but his hunch proved accurate.
Looking in the rearview mirror, the Swedish Hammarskjöld, in the exercise of his mandate, died in 1961 in an air accident flying over Katanga, during a peace mission in the Congo. His death remains a focus of conspiracy theories. Everything indicates that it was not the victim of an accident, but that the plane fell due to the impact of a projectile. They were against him.
Turning to the present, the Portuguese António Guterres does not get rid of the premonition that his first predecessor pronounced.
It is not risky to say that, of the eight predecessors, none had to live through such turbulent times. Guterres faces, after the disaster of Nazi Germany, the first war conflict in Europe (with permission from the Balkans) due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, at the same time, another front in Gaza between Israel and Hamas that has the potential ‘ignite the Middle East and beyond.
Between one thing and another, the fatalists say that we are one step away from the third world war, without forgetting North Korea, the African crises, terrorism or the suspicions that China will invade Taiwan.
And what does Guterres do, the leader of an organization that arose so as not to fall back into the mistakes of the past? “The UN is in a coma”, say the critics in view of the inability to stop the two full-scale wars underway today. Ukraine and Gaza are two conflicts that exceed the regional limits of others already registered under the operational radius of the United Nations.
“When a man makes any merit in this life, it is usually for something he has not done”, wrote George Orwell. This sentence applies to Guterres, but changing one word. The demerits of others are fully attributed to him as his failure.
You have to go back to Lie and his tiptoeing over the coals. From those ashes arose the original sin of the UN, which consisted in attributing the right of veto to the five permanent members of the Security Council, the executive arm of the organization (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China), without this being able to be updated after the planet went round so many times since then.
If the Council presents a resolution to withdraw Russian invading troops from Ukraine, Moscow exercises its veto. If there is a mass call for a ceasefire in Gaza, Washington blocks it.
In view of the inheritance of this fate, the secretary general is only allowed to make speeches to raise awareness among countries, as a right to rebeccaria. But even so it is not safe from reprimands.
Russia (with the acquiescence of China and the complicity of members of the so-called Global South), accuses Guterres of having taken sides in favor of the West. And even more harsh has been the response of Israel, a country that he angered, to the point of asking for his resignation, because the Secretary General regretted the attack by Hamas on October 7, but he also criticized the disproportionate Israeli retaliation and said that what has happened does not arise out of nowhere, but rather from a long occupation of Palestinian territories.
Guterres, appealing to an extraordinary resource, forced the Security Council to another vote on the ceasefire. This initiative, according to diplomatic sources, upset the US because it meant they were once again like the bad guys in the movie, right next to Russia with Ukraine.
Revenge came last week. Israel released a report accusing twelve members of the UN aid agency for Palestine, UNRWA, of having collaborated with Hamas in the attack four months ago. Washington immediately cut funding to this agency, despite the fact that the UN immediately fired those involved (two are missing and one died) without waiting for the outcome of the open emergency investigation.
About twenty countries, all from the West (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden) have followed in their footsteps. Spain refused, as did the European Union.
UNRWA has long been a target of Israel. But the United States has realized that they sinned by going too fast. They want to cling to an excuse to back down because they recognize, as Guterres says, that Gaza without this agency will be a disaster with even more powder for the conflict.
