The United Nations Security Council is in the process of selecting the next secretary-general after Ban Ki-Moon. With any luck, the five nations that hold veto — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China — can agree on a candidate to recommend to the General Assembly by October.
There is intense interest not least because the GA has made efforts to make it more transparent via an open nomination process and televised debates among candidates. There is also an appetite for electing the first woman to the office in UN history. Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark (pictured) is one of a handful of women who are regarded as strong contenders.
The robust competition may come as a surprise, given that the UN has lost its shine, seen in some parts as an edifice to bureaucratic ineptitude. But this is not just about the UN.
The internationalism that stitched the world back together after two calamitous wars has frayed. Perhaps it began when the US and UK bypassed the Security Council after 9/11 in order to invade Iraq.
The function of the UN as a civilising restraint was rendered farcical as two major western powers gave themselves license to mount a military offensive on dubious grounds against a sovereign nation. The cascade of violence that followed across the Middle East has left the UN unable to deal adequately with the humanitarian fallout, further eroding its stature as a mechanism for global order.
The European Union, which was also a response to the nationalist-fascist movements that had wrecked the regional economy in the first half of the previous century, is being challenged by ascendant right-wing populism. Despite the established benefits of the single market, labour mobility and bloc trading, not to mention access to a suite of agricultural subsidies, reactionaries continue to press for insularity — an untenably selective one. They succeeded at the recent British referendum.
NATO, the military alliance forged in the embers of World War II, faces the prospect of a US president that would dispense with it. Republican candidate Donald Trump has reduced mutual protection as a conditional transaction, suggesting that NATO allies cannot count on the US unless they have 'fulfilled their obligations to us' (whatever that means).
The 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, as well as ongoing Chinese disregard for international maritime law in the South China Sea despite a tribunal determination at The Hague, add