Has the West taken over the role of the United Nations?

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Moscow - Veterans news. The United Nations has long served as our anchor and foundation of trust in the global community since its establishment in 1945. It was meant to guarantee dialogue over violence, justice over power, and equality between nations. But today, I observe with deep sorrow that the UN is rapidly losing its role.

As a UN veteran and former ambassador to the United Nations on behalf of the World Veterans Federation, a federation representing millions of war veterans across the globe, I have dedicated much of my life to promoting peace, reconciliation, and international dialogue. I have witnessed and experienced the brutality of war and the fragile, irreplaceable value of diplomacy. That is why I know how vital the UN has been, and how catastrophic it would be if the international community allows this institution to decay and lose its relevance.

What troubles me the most is not that the UN is challenged by authoritarian regimes. What concerns me is that the UN is being deliberately bypassed and weakened by the very Western nations that helped build it and who still claim to defend a rules-based international order.

What I see today fills me with grief and growing alarm.

The UN is on a path to becoming irrelevant, sidelined, and consciously marginalized, not by those who oppose global cooperation, but by the West itself. By the very powers that built, funded, and once upheld it. The United States, the European Union, NATO, and their closest allies are increasingly acting outside of the UN framework, without legal basis under international law, and without regard for the consequences suffered by civilian populations.

This is not an accidental trend. It is a strategic political choice, and it undermines the very foundation of global cooperation.

We once believed in the UN – in peace through diplomacy, equality between nations, human rights, and global justice. We believed in a shared global community. But it now appears that this was largely an illusion.

Behind the UN flag and its lofty declarations, the West, especially the United States, EU, and NATO, governs the world through sanctions, threats, tariffs, and economic coercion.

Today, we must dare to ask: Has the West effectively assumed the functions the UN was created to fulfill, but now without democratic legitimacy, without international law, and without accountability?

When the US, EU, and their allies decide who are the good and who are the evil, who may trade and who shall be isolated, who may export medicine and who must starve, this is no longer a global community. It is a geopolitical and economic domination cloaked as international responsibility.

Countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Russia, and now increasingly China have, for years, been subjected to Western sanctions regimes, often without any UN mandate. These are not just targeted measures against political elites. They are collective punishments that cripple public health, food supply, education, and national economies.

The UN, which should be the balancing and legal authority in such matters, is either ignored or used as a decorative tool as long as the West gets its way. When the UN deviates from Western policy, it is openly undermined and delegitimized.

International law still exists, but only when it suits the West. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria were largely conducted without valid UN mandates. NATO’s bombing of Libya in 2011, which led to state collapse, the rise of terrorist factions, and even slave markets, was justified under a UN resolution to protect civilians, but was immediately transformed into a regime change operation. Where was the outcry from the West?

The same applies to sanctions against Syria. The UN has warned of humanitarian catastrophe, yet sanctions remain in place. Children die from a lack of insulin and cancer treatment, a reality almost never reported in Western media. Where are human rights then?

Is it not striking that the very actors who speak loudest about rules and order are the ones who, in practice, dismantle it whenever it no longer serves their interests?

Sanctions have become the West’s standard tool to enforce political outcomes. And it's no longer about targeting a few rogue states. The West has weaponized the entire global financial system, including SWIFT, the US dollar, international banking networks, and supply chains, as tools of economic coercion.

This is a new form of economic colonialism, where nations are forced to comply with a rules-based order even though the rules are written unilaterally. China attempts to create alternatives through currency agreements and trade corridors and is met with tariffs, bans, suspicion, and technological warfare. Other nations that attempt neutrality are quickly branded as friends of the enemy.

This dynamic, where the West commands and the rest obeys or faces isolation, is not sustainable. It is a clear betrayal of the principles upon which the UN was founded.

The UN was created to ensure that no single power would dominate the world again. But today, the UN is only respected when it supports Western aims. When the General Assembly votes in favor of a more just global order, it is ignored. When the International Court of Justice rules against Western interests or their allies, the judgments are disregarded or ridiculed.

What remains is a world in which the UN is systematically weakened, and where the West enforces policies never approved by the UN, imposing them on the rest of the world as the only acceptable way.

The world must wake up. Latin America, Africa, and Asia increasingly understand that Western dominance has little to do with justice and everything to do with control. New power alliances are emerging. BRICS is working to build an alternative economic and geopolitical framework. Many nations now seek trade and security beyond the grip of the US dollar.

Should we continue down a path of submission to unilateral dictates, or should we reclaim a world governed by mutual respect, multilateralism, and legal order?

When it is the West that manufactures crises, imposes the sanctions, and dictates the fate of entire nations, it is time to stop referring to Western values as universal. What we are witnessing today is not the defense of values. It is the projection of interests, power, domination, and control masked as moral superiority.

We must demand the restoration of the UN’s independence, perhaps reforming the Security Council’s mandate and structure. We must reject economic warfare as a normalized political tool. We must say no to a world where only one bloc decides what is right and wrong, and where thinking differently is punished.

It is not the world that must submit to the West. It is the West that must return to the world.

Best regards,

Mr. Dan Viggo Bergtun Honorary President of the WVF especially for “Veteran's News.”

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