Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the post-Cold War period is over and the world is moving toward a new multipolar era already marked by the highest level of geopolitical tensions and major power competition in decades

Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, said this vision “of an activist, interventionist U.N.” has been its underlying policy for the past three decades. But he said Guterres’ “New Agenda for Peace” stresses that “the driving force for a new multilateralism must be diplomacy.”

In an analysis of the new agenda, Gowan said it focuses on what member nations need to do, and on multilateral cooperation in an increasingly fragmented and unequal world “in which Guterres believes that the U.N. must adapt to facilitating international cooperation, not aim to lead it.”