Author: Alessandro Sansoni – 23/09/2026

“There is No Global Government”

The meaning of Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations could be summed up in this single sentence: “There is no global government.”

It is a direct and forceful response to outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who, for his part, had called for a form of global governance, particularly with regard to artificial intelligence and other priorities such as climate, inequality, peace and security. It also marks the definitive end both of the unsuccessful Guterres era—which, over ten years, has seen the United Nations’ influence decline to historic lows—and of the ideology of which the Portuguese politician and diplomat has been a faithful interpreter throughout his tenure: the idea of a single world government, essentially the ideology of globalization. It is an unattainable chimera and, given the current state of disorder affecting the planet and its peoples, one that in practice no longer even appears desirable.

Leaving aside Trump’s more provocative statements and occasional leaps forward, there is reason to believe that, although they oppose US unilateralism, the world’s major leaders substantially agree with him on this point. Indeed, it is the American president himself who is dismantling, step by step, the unipolar and globalized world order, for the simple reason that this model is no longer sustainable, in addition to having proved largely arbitrary in its application of international law.

Expressions such as “humanitarian war,” “international policing operations,” “exporting democracy,” and “single world government” are therefore rapidly being consigned to the warehouses of history. They are being replaced by others, such as the “Collective West” and the “Global South,” concepts around which the world will have to redefine its understanding of international legality.

Does this mean the end of multilateralism, as Xi Jinping maintains in his anti-Trump rhetoric? In reality, it could even represent an extension of multilateralism—that is, its transformation into multipolarity. But there is no guarantee that this will happen.

Looking at the situation from an American perspective, and taking into account the strategic documents produced by US federal agencies in recent years, it is clear that Washington would prefer a bipolar order modelled on the Cold War: the United States as the leading power and China as the second, with Beijing bearing the burden of dealing with those regional crises that Washington is unable to manage directly or that simply lie outside its sphere of interest. In essence, two blocs engaged in asymmetric competition. In the absence of a Europe endowed with genuine strategic autonomy, developments are likely to move in the direction favoured by the White House.

Within this framework—and keeping both possibilities open—what future awaits the United Nations?

Many believe that the organization is in irreversible decline, or even already in the process of being dismantled. This is certainly true if we retain the conception of the UN that prevailed over the past thirty years: that of a kind of world government entrusted with maintaining peace and punishing the “bad actors.”

If, however, we interpret its role in a more pragmatic manner and look back at its history, we may realize that the United Nations still has an opportunity: to return to being the place where the Great Powers confront one another, open more or less formal channels of communication on neutral ground, and attempt to identify areas of compromise and mechanisms for balancing their respective interests. In essence, this is what the UN was for the forty years following the Second World War.

After all, even today the United Nations General Assembly remains the forum where world leaders and their delegates address the world from the same podium, even when they are engaged in conflict with one another. That is an invaluable asset.

Certainly, the Organization should be reformed and streamlined, as Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has also emphasized. Ideally, the number of permanent members of the Security Council possessing veto power should be expanded in an effort to reflect the planet’s new political configuration, which has changed radically over the past eighty years. But abandoning such a platform—a neutral space for encounter and dialogue—is simply unthinkable.

The original version of this article was published in “www.lecronache.info” on Septemeber, 23 2026 We thank the Author for allowing its translation and publication on the Vision & Global Trends website.