A shrinking UN needs a secretary-general willing to defy great powers

Writing on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation's analysis platform on 16 October, Sumie Nakaya of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies argues that the next UN Secretary-General will inherit an organisation shrunk by financial and political pressure. The UN80 initiative Guterres announced in 2025 contains 86 action points, including a 20% budget cut and the abolition of 6,900 of roughly 35,000 Secretariat posts. According to the May 2026 interim report, approved Secretariat staffing has fallen by 21%. Some 220 posts have moved out of costly hubs such as New York and Geneva, and about 1,900 more have been relocated across the wider UN system.

For the author, the problem is not just a bloated bureaucracy but a structure that gives disproportionate power to the Security Council's five permanent members. The US covers 22% of the regular budget and China 20%; Nakaya notes that China routinely delays or withholds its dues. Five rounds of straw polls were held between 30 July and 15 October, and Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan emerged ahead of seven candidates. If chosen, she would be the first woman and the first Jewish Secretary-General to hold the post.

Nakaya expects a smaller UN to shift away from delivering aid directly and towards building consensus, setting norms and convening states. The first quality to look for in a candidate is therefore the will to stand up to any state that violates the UN Charter, great power or not. She proposes that Japan revive its tradition of UN-centred diplomacy, along with the human security approach it championed with Canada, as tools of middle-power diplomacy.