The United Nations, an institution tasked with maintaining global peace and security since its inception, has struggled to assert its relevance amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the crisis in Gaza.
On the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival, historian Thant Myint-U, author of Peacemaker (2025) and grandson of Burmese diplomat and former UN Secretary-General U Thant (1961-71), spoke about some of these issues.
He explored why the UN appears paralysed today, what has been lost by forgetting its most effective postcolonial moment, and why India’s historical role in shaping global peace institutions carries renewed importance in a fractured geopolitical order.
The UN was set up in 1945 by the Americans, the Russians, and the British as a way to continue the wartime alliance. Because of the Cold War, that never really worked. In many ways, the UN institutions are institutions for an era that never happened.
In the 1950s and 1960s, countries of Asia and Africa, including India and Burma (Myanmar today), which had become independent, reshaped the UN and made it into a much more effective instrument for peace and security, especially through the role of the Secretary-General.
Over the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of that was gradually weakened and undermined from many sides, not least by the Americans. In the 1990s, when the US was the post-Cold War superpower, it did not invest in the UN.
Today, while the UN still does many good things on the periphery, on the central question of war and peace, it is not effective.
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Could the UN have acted differently in recent conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine?
If we look at each specific conflict, it is very difficult to know what difference the UN could have made, even if the Secretary-General had acted differently. But these crises are connected.
Once the UN appears weak and ineffective in one crisis, it becomes very difficult to demonstrate relevance in another. A lot of this is also the result of many decades in which even countries that support the UN have not really invested in it.
The question now is whether there is a conflict, or a couple of conflicts, where the UN can again prove its usefulness and build on that for the next Secretary-General. The office of the Secretary-General is often described as impossible: immense prestige, no real power, scarce resources, and universal expectations. What allowed U Thant, at least in his early years, to overcome these structural contradictions?
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He understood the historical moment he was in. He understood the Cold War between the Soviets and the Americans, but more importantly, he understood that he was operating at a moment of profound transition from empire to post-empire.
He saw the UN as a tool to consolidate decolonisation and then use that legitimacy to help de-escalate the Cold War and address other global issues. It was not just him — many of the men and women he worked with in New York and in governments around the world understood this as well. We have forgotten a lot of what they were trying to do and how successful they actually were.
Your book has been described as a recovery of both U Thant and the UN as a serious historical actor. What has been lost by forgetting that moment?
We need to remember that there have been many times in the past 80 years since the Second World War when the world, like today, seemed to be in crisis, and war appeared to be on the rise. In the early 1960s, when U Thant became Secretary-General, answers to the most profound crises did not come from Washington or Moscow. They came from non-aligned countries, from Afro-Asian countries, and from their partners, such as Sweden and Ireland, who were working with them.
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We should not wait for Washington, Moscow, or Beijing. We need to think very carefully, not just about the UN, but about how we are going to preserve peace and security and prevent another world war for the next 80 years.
India plays an important role in this history. How did it shape U Thant’s understanding of the UN?
India’s role in remaking the UN into something that was not only effective, but that really helped to prevent world war in the 1960s, is profound.
It was not only the leadership of the government, but an entire generation of people who wanted to invest in the UN, and that had very practical consequences. The Congo crisis, for instance, was one of the most important crises of that period. It was a test of whether the world after the empire would still allow former colonial powers to intervene as they wished, or whether independence truly meant independence. If the government of India had not supplied thousands of its best troops — even during the days of the China war in 1962 — that test could have failed.
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In today’s geopolitical moment, what role do you see India playing?
This is a confusing geopolitical moment. The first priority has to be that, whatever the differences and whatever the problems, we do not want a war between the big powers, and India is a big power.
That means doing something that has become unfashionable: recognising that peace, global peace, requires organisation. We have to reject the idea that peace comes simply from a balance of power or spheres of influence.
After two world wars, people understood that peace required institutions. Either we go back and try again to rescue and recover the institutions of the UN, or we need something else. But this has to be at the forefront of everyone’s agenda.
