The easiest way to generate consensus on problem-solving is to get as close to the problem as you can
Some twenty years ago, I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times that was meant to be humorous about why the United Nations should move from New York to Jerusalem. This is a re-visit. New York has never been known as a center of diplomacy. It’s an expensive place for third-world countries to have homes, much less offices. The city is far away from most of the broader world’s problems, and while seventy years ago it may have made perfect sense to anchor the UN in New York, certainly over the past 20 years, the UN has increasingly lost its relevance to the wider world in part because of its location. The institution has never been a happy tenant. In the New York urban context, it competes with Wall Street, the broader publishing industry, and Broadway. Ask a New York City schoolchild about the United Nations, and mostly their response is at best muted. Casey Stengel and Billy Martin, both managers of New York baseball teams, would never have been considered diplomats. How many New Yorkers have made it to the UN’s East River campus?
My first visit to the assembly floor as a guest of the Costa Rican delegation in 1972 was colored by the Cuban delegation immediately adjacent. Would Fidel Castro, then the prime minister of Cuba, have ever sat in a chair next to me? The incongruity of the delegation floor and the broader city outside was startling. The idea that the institution might be better off in another location was planted.
Let’s look at a possible move to Jerusalem in a historical context. Few cities in the world have a five-thousand-year history. Istanbul/Constantinople has been at the crossroads of global trade and travel. From the start of the Silk Road to the meeting of the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea—walk the streets and look at the faces and people, and you see the genetic mix, from eye colors, skin tones, and body shapes. Yes, there have been conflicts and battles, but it is trade and commerce that even today make it the place it is.
Jerusalem has that five-thousand-year history not as a port or meeting point but as a fortress in a dense, dry landscape. It is a rare mountaintop with access to fresh water. Even today, walk the streets of the Old City and you note not the genetic mix, but the distinctly different dwellers: Arabs, Palestinians, Orthodox Jews, and a mix of global tourists. Its history is both as a religious center for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but also a contested epicenter of regional control. My first experience of Jerusalem was as a young 11-year-old in the early ’60s. Thanks to my family’s diplomatic passports, we were allowed to pass through the Mandelbaum Gate from the New City of Jerusalem on the Israeli side to what was then the Jordanian side and the Old City.
Walking at the tail end of my family group, I witnessed a murder and robbery as a porter on the street carrying an engine on his back was tripped. I saw his neck snapped, the engine taken, and the body shoved in the gutter. I had to run to catch up with my family group.
I have returned to Jerusalem many times over 60-plus years. The last time, I was given a personal tour of the city by a distinguished historian—it was a magical day—from temples and mosques to the Western Wall, and even then, witnessing the armed patrols of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. As a man with a Christian father, a Jewish mother, and a Muslim wife, my spiritual and intellectual connection to the place has been profound. The neck-snapping from my youth has often played in my dark dreams.
I’ve been told that Russian President Vladimir Putin has quoted my original column multiple times in press conferences, stating that if the city of New York was tired of the UN, he was too. The column has bubbled up on social media multiple times, and the anger directed at it has been costly. That said, as all of us witness the ongoing chaos in the Middle East—from Syria and Lebanon to Gaza—we are desperate to get to a solution. Moving the UN makes even more sense today.
What would happen if we moved the UN from New York to Jerusalem?
First, in the pathetic nature of what’s going on in Gaza, much less Syria, the presence of an international body close by would stabilize the situation.
Palestinian contractors would have a field day, Israeli developers would make money hand over fist, and in the meantime, we might begin to solve the issues because we would interject more foreigners.
We live in a shrinking world. The effect of climate change is not just local but global. Forest fires in Canada create bad air thousands of miles away. Yet one of the most important recognitions I have made in 40 years of global consulting work is that the easiest way to generate consensus on problem-solving is to get as close to the problem as you can. I also call it thinking standing up rather than thinking sitting down. President Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump meeting in Alaska to solve the issues of Ukraine is pathetic. Had they met close to the battleground, or even in Crimea, the realities of the situation would have become more apparent. Again, in a shrinking world, the idea that we need to retreat or find a retreat to generate understanding, much less consensus, is dated.
Moving the UN to Jerusalem both renews the potential impact of a global peace institution and gives a focus to how, in 2025, we bring a sense of serenity to one of the epicenters of the world. The irony is that everyone would both make and save money. Having the temples, churches, and mosques there reminds the delegates both of their historic responsibilities and the immediacy of our modern age demands.
What happens to the East River complex? Perhaps we ask our billionaires to turn it into an international campus—a school where we teach languages and encourage our youth to think about global culture—and the curriculum requires at least a semester in its Middle Eastern campus in the New Old Jerusalem.
Paco Underhill is a psychologist and New York Times best-selling author.
The opinions expressed in op-eds are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the magazine.
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