Crisis Over
The idea of polycrisis has outstayed its usefulness.
In one sense, if everything is in urgent, nothing is.
In another, we can't focus on solutions if we're stuck endlessly admiring these problems - seductively complex, interconnected, dynamic and shrouded in uncertainty.
The UN has played its part in perpetuating this narrative, even before Covid. The idea was to summon the urgency for elevated collective action. We wanted to ensure better integrated organizations and equip our smartest minds and most advance analytics to work across these interwoven complexities.
That may have been the intent, but now the funding crisis of the UN suggests it hasn't worked. Instead this seems to have entrenched a sense of helplessness and paralysis. The polycrisis frame has perversely let Member States avoid politically sensitive and resource-intensive decisions about prioritization and commitment.
The UN's 2026 budget crisis and wider disruption of the global order can be seen as just another layer of crisis to add to the pile.
Rather than indulging in further abstractions about the intellectual gravity of today's issues, this instead could be a clarifying moment for the UN. A window to bring multiple issues into view with a new light. It doesn’t necessarily connect everything in a deep singular model of causal relationships, rather it could help us see the relevant linkages and consider what decisions really matter right now. An opportunity to act with more coherence and intent.
Clarity to do what?
Governments call for a fairer multilateral system, but as the US and China grind the UN to a halt, their respective European and G77 allies are not standing up to them in the GA or even Fifth Committee.
If the UN80 reforms can find clarity on specific strategic priorities, rather than broad commitments to vague crises and operational costs, meaningful reform may take root. The UN cannot resolve Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, climate change, debt, trade, migration etc by itself. Each are indeed crises, but different and related to varying degrees. Each require governments to go into difficult diplomatic negotiation together, supported by a useful multilateral system: a UN that meets them where they are, however far from international norms their starting point is.
These are not questions to be answered with more sweeping declarations or reorganization. They need practical sequencing, decision-making and goal-setting within the bounds of the political opportunities available, that can push the Overton window.
Clarifying moments allow us to take stock. Going beyond articulating the majesty of a problem and conceptualizing abstract, all-encompassing frameworks, but instead taking viable, if partial, action. Right now that could be:
- Overhaul how the UN System is financed, and by whom.
- Connect security, rights and development in ways that reflect today’s political geography, not the post-1945 settlement.
- Support more processes that use political disagreement and conflicting interest as starting points towards consensus.
The UN system was created in the aftermath of war and upheaval. The great powers agreed to a basic workable framework that was far from perfect but was a basis for further negotiation and cooperation.
By reframing these compounding pressures - not just of complex web of crises, or even as one great underlying crisis - but instead as clarifying moment, the UN can become the signal in the noise, and move the world on to firmer ground.
