UN chief: We must avoid the mistakes that led to World War I

UN chief: We must avoid the mistakes that led to World War I | GZERO World

Winston Churchill once said: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Those words ring as true today as they did in 1948. Churchill, who served in the First World War before he led Britain through the Second, knew all too well the miscalculations that presidents and prime ministers made leading up to the Great War.

A century later, the UN's top diplomat, Secretary-General António Guterres, fears that world leaders today are making the same mistakes that got us into WWI. In an exclusive interview for GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Guterres explains what makes him so wary of this moment in geopolitics.

"We really need stronger and reformed multilateral institutions to be able to coordinate on what is becoming a multipolar world," Guterres tells Bremmer. "I would remind you that Europe, before the First World War, was multipolar. But because there was no multilateral governance institutions at the European level, the result was the First World War."

Watch the full GZERO World interview: UN Chief on mounting global crises: "Hope never dies"
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.

More from GZERO Media

- YouTube

As Independence Day approaches, President Trump is delighted to learn that one of America's most ferocious revolutionaries has... mellowed out. #PUPPETREGIME

Demonstrators with US and Ukrainian flags rally near the U.S. Capitol ahead of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C., USA, on March 4, 2025.

Matrix Images/Gent Shkullaku

Here’s a short guide to making sense of why the US cut shipments of Patriot interceptor missiles to Kyiv and how it could affect the course of the Russia-Ukraine war.

On the latest episode of the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman to unpack Iran’s stunning defeat and what it means for Netanyahu, Trump, and the path forward in Gaza.

Jess Frampton

Zohran Mamdani was a long shot. But the 33-year-old democratic socialist state assemblyman flew past former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s name recognition and money advantage to win the Democratic primary for New York mayor last week.