“By 2050, the United Nations Security Council will cease to function as it is currently understood to, if it still exists at all.”

The current UNSC system, which includes five permanent members with veto power, is becoming increasingly antiquated. In the coming decades, emerging powers (such as India, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, etc.) will put an ever-increasing amount of scrutiny on the system, as they will perceive it as a vestige of the previous geopolitical order that gives an unfair advantage to certain powers but not others, while the P5 members will be incentivized to block any attempt at reforming the system due to their desire to retain their diplomatic leverage. This friction will eventually culminate in a collapse of the UNSC's core functions. The share of global value held by the P5 has been steadily decreasing over time. Currently, the P5 hold about 49% of world GDP, but the percentage will decline massively in the future as more countries develop. Currently, 26% of the world's population lives in P5 countries. Among them, China and Russia are experiencing population declines that will only worsen in the coming decades, and the primary offset of demographic decline for the US, UK, and France is immigration, which is not enough to increase their share of world demographics relative to the ongoing population boom in regions such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. As the P5's hold over the world order outside of the UN system weakens, more countries, especially emerging regional powers, will be incentivized to ignore or even openly disobey UNSC resolutions. We are already seeing this play out in parts of Africa and the Middle East, where aspiring powers such as Turkey and the UAE openly funnel funds and arms into wars in countries under UN-imposed sanctions with little to no international reprisal. There are many proposals for reforming the UNSC to remove or lessen the role of the permanent members, or to increase the number of permanent members in the council, but it is realistically infeasible for any of these proposals to fall through. Any reform of the UN's core structure requires the unanimous assent of all five permanent UNSC members, and it is unlikely that even one of which will vote in favor of any motion to amend the system, as there is a heavy disincentive for a country to give up a position that grants itself massive global diplomatic leverage, and any incentive provided to vote in favor of relinquishing its permanent seat will almost certainly be overshadowed by the cost of losing power projection. I believe the most foreseeable scenario for the UNSC by mid-century will be similar to what the League of Nations witnessed during the 1930s. It will still exist nominally, but will hold very little real power in practice. A full dissolution of the UN is unlikely, as the other UN organs are mostly still functioning as intended. Security, peacekeeping, sanctions, etc. will likely be increasingly delegated to regional alliances such as the EU, AU, ASEAN, Arab League, Mercosur, etc., a trend which we are already seeing to a degree. It is likely that the General Assembly's nominally non-binding resolutions on sanctions and security action will gradually be regarded with much more weight, as it will be seen as a more palatable alternative to the Security Council's liberum veto. Simply put, a system designed to serve the interests of powers locked in a bipolar Cold War will not survive for long past the end of that epoch.