The United Nations General Assembly’s 80th session was meant to be a sombre assessment of a world on fire. The Sustainable Development Goals are failing, wars rage on multiple continents and the planet itself is burning. Yet the most significant drama of the 80th session was not about any single crisis but a deeper, more fundamental schism that played out in the very language used within the hall. It seems that the UN is no longer a forum for managing a shared global order; it has become the arena where two irreconcilable visions of world order are fighting for supremacy.
On one side stands the traditional, albeit, weary mulitlateralist project. Its champions, exemplified by European leaders cautiously inching towards recognition of a Palestinian state, still operate on the premise that legitimacy is derived from international law and consensus. Theirs is a world of treaties, institutions and patient diplomacy. On the other side stands a resurgent sovereigntist assault, championed most vocally by President Donald Trump, who returned to the UN stage not to engage, but to dismantle. In a nearly hour-long speech Trump admonished the UN over what he views as its ineffectiveness, framing global cooperation not as a necessity, but as a folly. The 80th UNGA revealed that the transatlantic split is no longer a policy disagreement; it is a philosophical chasm over the soul of global governance.
The issue of Palestine serves as a perfect case study in this clash of legitimacies. The moves by a growing number of countries to recognize Palestine were calculated acts of multilateralism. They were an attempt to salvage the two-state solution, a cornerstone of UN resolutions for decades, by working within the established system. The recognition was a message: that statehood is not a prize to be won through force but a status conferred by the international community.
This logic is an anathema to the Trumpian worldview. From this perspective, such recognition is not diplomacy; it is a dangerous reward for adversaries. Trump framed it as a “reward for Hamas”, reducing a complex decades-long struggle for self-determination to a simplistic binary form of terrorism. The sovereigntist argument holds that these decisions are not the UN’s to make. Power, not consensus, is the ultimate arbiter. The conflict is no longer about land; it is about who gets to decide the rules of the game.
Nowhere is this divide more stark than on the existential threat of climate change. For the multilateralist project, the climate crisis is its ultimate validation. A warming planet is a problem that no single nation, no matter how powerful, can solve alone. It necessitates the very cooperation the UN was founded to foster.
Trump’s address systematically dismantled this premise. He pulled the rug out from under the entire premise by blasting climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetuated on the world.” This is not merely a policy difference; it is a declaration that the central problem the UN is trying to solve is a fiction. If there is no global problem, there is no need for a global solution. The institution, in this view, becomes not just ineffective, but illegitimate.
The sovereigntist vision extends to a radical critique of domestic governance, further highlighting the divide. When Trump declared that some countries “are going to hell” over their immigration policies, he was doing more than critcizing a policy. He was asserting a model where nationa borders are absolute and the internal choices of sovereign nations, particularly those of his allies, are open for public condemnation if they deviate from his ideology. This creates a world not of mutual respect and non-interference, but of perpetual, transactional pressure.
The consequence of this great unraveling is a world adrift. The UN was built on the fragile hope that great powers, despite their rivalries, would see a greater interest in maintaining a common system. That foundation is now cracked. We’re moving towards a multi-order world, where countries selectively engage with institutions, cherry-picking rules that suit them and ignoring those that don’t. The Global South watches this spectacle with a cynical detachment, caught between a multilateral system that has often failed them and a sovereigntist alternative that promises even greater volatility.
The 80th session offered no resolutions to this core conflict. Instead, it held up a mirror. The speeches, the sideline meetings, the starkly different vocabularies – all revealed an institution that can no longer paper over its divides. The question is no longer whether the UN can solve the world’s problems, but whether the world believes in the idea of the UN itself. As the great powers turn inward, the 80th General Assembly may be remembered not for what it achieved, but as the moment the post-war order finally conceded that it’s no longer governed by a shared vision, but by a deepening and potentially unbridgeable rift.