https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/17/fiona-hill-putin-war-00061894?cid=apn
Hill: There are so many things that we need to contend with, and we’ve only got the skeleton of an international system.
Putin is holding the whole world hostage. We’ve got so many things that we have to deal with. I understand why the Global South is so frustrated with all of this: “While you’re fighting this war in Ukraine over the same kind of territorial disputes you guys have been having for a hundred years now, we’re dying here from disease and climate change. Our countries have flooded. We’re starving and you guys are expecting us to help you solve this?” The United Nations system is breaking down, as [António] Guterres, the secretary-general, has said over and over again. All the alarm bells are going off. And Vladimir Putin is behaving as if it’s the 1780s all over again.
Reynolds: So we need a new or a revamped global order to address the whole problem?
Hill: That’s obvious. So how do we do it? A lot of people don’t find the idea of a revamped United Nations very popular. I can just imagine some of my former colleagues groaning loudly. We definitely need a slimmed-down version.
But we do need international institutions to deal with the magnitude of the problems that we’re facing. It’s ironic that Elon Musk, the man who has been talking about getting us to Mars should be Putin’s messenger for the war in Ukraine, when we’re having a really hard time getting our act together on this planet. But it’s glaringly obvious to ordinary people that we need to do so. Time is not on our side.