Sometimes the best-laid plans and intentions don’t work out quite as expected. That’s the case with Guterres’ attempt to codify his blueprint for the organization that would map out its mission for the next 250 years and cement the Portuguese leader’s personal legacy.

His proposed Summit of the Future has been kicked into the weeds, writes my colleague Colum Lynch. Guterres had hoped to cap off 2023 with a summit of world leaders to “forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like, and how we can secure it.”

But a coalition of lower- and middle-income countries have thrown a wrench into proceedings, pressing to halt the event’s preparations until next year and contending that the United Nations must focus this year on implementing its existing (and faltering) development goals, according to U.N. diplomats and internal U.N. documents that Colum saw exclusively.

The dispute constitutes a critical test for Guterres’ ability to overcome the kind of diplomatic paralysis that has thwarted previous U.N. leaders from modernizing a world body whose basic structures were forged at the close of World War II, when the greatest threats to humanity, including climate change, were largely unknown; social media and artificial intelligence were no more than intellectual constructs; and many of today’s governments didn’t even exist.