A design buried under the rubble of the world

“We were drafting the future under the shadow of extinction.” This sentence, recorded in 1954 in the memoirs of Virginia Gildersleeve (1877–1965), is not a historical anecdote but a strategic diagnosis. The drafters of the United Nations Charter negotiated with the experience of total war in full view: industrial destruction, mass mobilisation, strategic bombardment, and the first contours of nuclear deterrence. Security was no longer a regional or temporary matter, but an existential systems question. Gildersleeve, a member of the American delegation at the signing of the UN founding treaty (San Francisco, 26 June 1945) and one of the few female delegates present, describes in her memoirs a negotiating climate in which the experience of total war and moral catastrophe was still palpably present. The architects of the UN were not operating from abstract idealism, but from an existential conviction: that the existing international order had not merely failed, but had nearly abolished the world, humanity, and itself. Today the world again lives in fear of — and under the threat of — the possibility of total destruction. That is precisely why it is so painful that this original awareness has disappeared from the contemporary debate on the UN. The UN today is assessed with the detachment of an accountant, not with the historical consciousness of an architect. People speak of inefficiency, irrelevance, and institutional fatigue, without accounting for the question of what the UN was originally intended to become. The book ‘The Future in the Past’, by Shahr-Yar Mahmoud Sharei, reminds us that this is not a semantic nuance but the core of the problem. The understanding that security had to be organised structurally, legally, and collectively forms the silent foundation of the Charter. That this foundation is barely recognised today — while war is once again reshaping the international system, increasingly so — is precisely the tragedy Sharei exposes.

The mistake that has become collective belief

In current strategic discourse, the United Nations is frequently dismissed as irrelevant to “real” security. The war in Ukraine, the conflicts in the Middle East, instability in the Red Sea, and the militarisation of cyber and space domains are cited as proof that power politics has the final word, not international cooperation. Sharei inverts this perspective. It is not the UN that is obsolete, but our understanding of its design logic. The UN was never intended as a static peace organisation, but as an evolving security mechanism, one that was supposed to adapt to new forms of warfare and escalation. And crucially: the UN Security Council was conceived as a temporary command structure, not a permanent monopoly of power. The fact that this structure was frozen at an early stage of the UN’s existence now renders it vulnerable to precisely the forms of war it was meant to help prevent: protracted interstate conflicts, proxy wars, and strategic escalation without a clear exit strategy.

Article 109(3): the forgotten trigger

At a time when armed forces are continuously revising their doctrines — consider multi-domain operations, integrated deterrence, and escalation management — it is frankly incomprehensible that the global security architecture is treated as immutable. Article 109(3) was designed precisely to prevent that. The article provides a legally anchored moment for strategic reorientation, comparable to a fundamental, rigorous, and course-setting defence review. Sharei demonstrates that this article offered — and still offers — the possibility of adapting the UN to new war experiences: nuclear weapons, asymmetric threats, hybrid warfare, information warfare. The failure to invoke Article 109(3) has resulted in the UN responding to today’s complex conflicts with instruments designed for a world that no longer exists. Article 109 of the UN Charter governs how the Charter itself may be revised. Paragraph 1 provides that a general revision conference may be convened with a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly and sufficient support in the Security Council. Paragraph 3 adds an important safeguard: if no revision conference has been held within ten years of the Charter’s entry into force, the proposal to convene one must be placed back on the General Assembly’s agenda. That decision requires only a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly; the permanent members’ veto plays no role. Article 109(3) thus creates a built-in moment of institutional reflection — a legal mechanism to reconsider the UN system as a whole, precisely when political blockages obstruct reform. The article has never been repealed or amended and remains formally in force. It constitutes a dormant but legally robust instrument for further development of the United Nations.

The UN Security Council: power as a fossil

The Security Council reflects not the current battlefield but a historical snapshot from 1945. Its composition does not correspond to contemporary shifts in power; its decision-making is poorly equipped for rapid escalation, information warfare, and sustained high-intensity conflict. The warning by Eelco van Kleffens (1894–1983), Dutch Foreign Minister during the Second World War, that the Security Council unites “the jury, the judge and the executioner,” carries added weight in light of recent wars. Strategically, this concentration of power leads to indecision at precisely the moments when clear authority and timely intervention could save lives. This is not a failure of the UN as an organisation, but of a security structure that was never adapted to modern war.

Not broken, but unfinished

The distinction between failure and incompleteness is of vital importance in the current security climate. The UN does not fail because collective security is an illusion, but because its institutional development was interrupted before it could reach operational maturity. Those who write off the UN today — which appears to have become something of a national sport — typically do so on the basis of their inability to stop war, without acknowledging that the UN was never given the mandate, the structure, or the political space to actually do so. And this capacity was in fact envisioned during the design phase. In a world of rearmament, strategic rivalry, and nuclear threat, that is a far too dangerous conclusion. Without the UN, only fragmentation remains: coalitions of the willing that are only as strong as their weakest link, power politics without constraint, and escalation without collective control. Anyone who has worked within the UN knows how sharply this tension is felt on a daily basis. From my own professional experience and years of involvement with the Dutch Association for the United Nations, it is evident how military personnel, diplomats, and civilian experts operate in UN missions that are structurally under-mandated. UN peace operations are expected to enforce stability in conflict zones where what is actually occurring is war. Sanctions regimes are expected to influence strategic behaviour without credible enforcement mechanisms. This is not organisational failure; it is the consequence of political restraint at the top.

The strength of Sharei’s reconstruction

Sharei’s contribution is that he does not personalise this impasse but analyses it structurally. He demonstrates that collective security has always depended on visionary leadership: leaders willing to temporarily bind power in order to structurally prevent escalation. The founders of the UN understood this. Their successors have allowed the process to stall. For military readers, this is a familiar pattern: no armed force can function without leaders who are willing to revise doctrine, structure, and authority when reality demands it. The question is therefore not whether the UN can change, but who has the courage to do so. Article 109(3) provides the legal instrument, but requires political will, strategic imagination, and leadership that looks beyond national interests and room for manoeuvre. In the end, it is easier to criticise the UN — not uncommon among military professionals — than to take responsibility for its completion.

What could have been, and what can still become

The conclusion of Sharei’s book is therefore not a nostalgic retrospective but an uncomfortable revelation. The United Nations could have developed into a constitutionally mature organisation in which collective security was embedded in law, not subordinated to power; in which representativeness and legitimacy evolved in parallel with geopolitical shifts; in which the Security Council remained an instrument, not a terminus. The most unsettling insight is that this future has not been definitively lost. Article 109(3) still exists. It is legally intact, normatively powerful, and institutionally meaningful. The UN has not failed. The UN has stalled because we ourselves did not follow through. Those who write off the UN today without confronting this are guilty of a double error: they reject an institution that was never given the chance to complete itself — at precisely the moment when the world possesses no more robust alternative. The UN has not failed. We ourselves neglected to finish the design.

The Future in the Past. Reconstructing Article 109(3) of the UN Charter. Towards the San Francisco Promise to Constitutionalise the United Nations and International Law By Shahr-Yar Mahmoud (S.M.) Sharei, PhD Centre for UN Constitutional Research (Brussels/Belgium), 2025 427 pp. — ISBN 9798991184502