During the interview on Tomémonos un Café with Jorge Alberto Valencia, immigration attorney and political analyst María Herrera Mellado laid out her critical view of the current role of the United Nations and the stance Donald Trump has taken toward the organization. As the analyst noted, the UN has enormous potential, but in practice it has become an ineffective structure, captured by political interests and increasingly detached from its original mission: guaranteeing international peace.
The analysis highlighted a central contradiction: while the UN presents itself as a guarantor of human rights and a mediator of conflicts, its Human Rights Council includes some of the regimes with the worst records in that very area. For the attorney, this inconsistency makes it virtually impossible to achieve real peace agreements, since those who should be held accountable end up occupying positions of power and decision-making. Cases such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, violence in Gaza driven by terrorist groups, and the presence of the Cuban regime on the council were cited as examples of an institution that has lost its moral authority.
Against this backdrop, Herrera Mellado emphasized that Donald Trump, now in his second term, has already reached peace agreements on multiple occasions—outcomes that, in theory, should fall under the direct responsibility of the UN. This reinforces the idea that traditional diplomacy has been replaced by a form of economic, tariff-based, and political pressure diplomacy, capable of producing concrete results where multilateral organizations generate little more than statements and disagreements.
A broader phenomenon was also brought into the discussion: the withdrawal of several countries from international organizations that have failed at critical moments. The analyst pointed to Argentina under the leadership of Javier Milei as an example of how different governments are beginning to question institutions such as the World Health Organization, which has been criticized for civil rights violations and a lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic. This shift, she explained, reveals a clear trend: states are increasingly unwilling to delegate their sovereignty to institutions that no longer represent or protect their citizens.
In this context, the attorney argued that the proposal to create a new body or “peace board” led by the United States emerges as an alternative to the erosion of the current multilateral system. Far from being framed as an act of imposition, she contended that U.S. leadership stems from the historical experience of those who were forced to leave their countries due to a lack of freedoms. From this perspective, the priority is not bureaucratic balance, but real peace and prosperity.
The final question raised on the program was blunt: if this new framework moves forward, is the UN entering its final stage? Herrera Mellado left open the possibility that, rather than disappearing, the organization may be facing an inevitable transformation. What became clear in her analysis is that the legacy Trump seeks to consolidate in this second term aims to redefine global peace through power, strategic pressure, and measurable results—not through institutions that have lost credibility and effectiveness.
