Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in his annual report before the plenary session of the General Assembly on September 25, painted a sombre and dangerous picture of the world in which unilateralism is being preferred over the post-Second World War multilateral diplomacy and multinational institutions which have secured the world after a bitterly fought world war and an unstable post war peace. The Secretary General said the idea of each country building a fortress around itself was what led to the Second World War. He identified climate change and the danger of wrong application of robotics and artificial intelligence as posing challenge to mankind’s survival. The melting of arctic ice in places like Greenland and other areas, in the polar regions of the world, if evidence are still needed, is a clear indication of the challenge of a deluge to the world apart from the unseasonable heavy rains and high temperatures.
On the technology front, he felt the use of machines to wage war and to kill people may get out of hands where machines take independent and automatic actions in killing human beings. He called on all humanity to come together and save the world from destruction. He emphasized that security cannot be secured individually but by the collective effort of the world. He may have had an advance copy of President Donald Trump’s speech and felt he needed to respond to it in advance.
President Trump’s speech called on individual states to embrace “patriotism, pride and prosperity” over globalism which before the First World War was in consonant with traditional American isolationism rooted in the Monroe Doctrine which the president made an allusion to. He began by saying no administration in the history of the United States has achieved as much as his administration. This attracted the laughter of the assembled delegates from all over the world which felt the American president mistook the audience for an American campaign rally. The president was visibly shaken but he brushed off the embarrassment by jokingly saying he was surprised by the reaction of the audience.
Then he continued by saying all the “wonderful” things he had achieved since he last spoke at the United Nations. He said he has built an American economy in which unemployment has virtually disappeared. He emphasized the fact that millions of African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos have never had it so good in terms of employment. He mentioned how America was economically strong and had gotten a budget over $700 billion for its military in 2017 and a further increase on this budget for the current year. He then called on every member state of the United Nations to be prepared to defend itself and clearly said any country that wants America to defend it must be prepared to bear the cost.
He also mentioned how last year, he had been preoccupied with the danger posed to the USA and the world by nuclear weapons-armed North Korea but which through his effort following meeting with Kim Jon Un its leader, he has gotten a commitment towards denuclearization. This time, the “little rocket man “has become his dear friend chairman Kim Jon Un. The president said his Secretary of State was following up efforts at further talks with the authorities in North Korea to ensure meeting the target of complete denuclearization. He said he had just signed a bilateral trade agreement in a win-win relation with South Korea. He said he had also done the same with Mexico but was quiet about Canada its northern neighbour which forms the third leg of the triangular trade relations called NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area). Surprisingly he went after China whose leader Xi Jinping he describes as his friend. He claimed that over the years China had ripped off the United States up to trillions of dollars in unfair trade and intellectual property theft. He said he was determined to reverse the situation and had imposed series of tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States and would continue until there was equilibrium in China- American trade relations.
He singled out some countries for praise and approbation. He then mentioned a country like Saudi Arabia which was witnessing an era of reforms under its young crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud .He also singled out Poland as a country determined to consolidate not only its political but more importantly its economic freedom by building a gas pipeline from the Baltic Sea apparently bye-passing previous Russian gas supply. He used the opportunity to lambast Germany, which these days has become his whipping boy, for its total dependence on Russia for energy supply. He praised India for seeing millions of people out of the poverty trap. He said nothing negative about Russia not even when he was talking about Syria except indirectly when he said America would not stand idly by if Syria uses chemical weapons in its civil war which had led to displacement of millions of Syrians and the death of more than half a million Syrians.
President Trump had the harshest and undiplomatic words for Iran whose leader, Hassan Rouhani, described him as suffering from intellectual deficit. Trump said the Iranian regime was robbing its own people and that all the billions of dollars that it had earned under the 2015 nuclear agreement it signed with the P5+1 i.e. the USA, Great Britain, France, Russia and China (five permanent members of the UN Security Council) and. Germany had either been embezzled or wasted on destabilizing its neighbours and sponsoring terrorism. He said America was determined to stop Iran from harming American allies in the region. He said he was a realist and to this end he has moved American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the interest of peace. He said he was elected to defend American interest and was not ashamed to do this and he called on other nations to defend their own interest. He did not say or perhaps does not care about what may happen when there is a clash of interest. He carried on with his jingoism and attacked President Maduro of Venezuela for economically destroying his country and said those who are still deluded about the efficacy of socialism should see what it had done to one of the richest countries in the world which has now been reduced to absolute poverty.
He said nothing about climate change rather boasted about how the USA is now the largest producer of energy including “clean coal” which it was ready to export to willing buyers. On the whole, this was a rather distressing speech which brought bad taste to the mouths of all who believe in the United Nations which Trump had dismissed during his campaign for the presidency as a useless and hostile body working against American interest. He said the USA will reduce to 25% its contribution to UN peace keeping operations and that this will be on voluntary basis and not as an assessed contribution. He said America had withdrawn from UN human rights commission, UNESCO and had no good words for the WTO and that America will not participate in UN sponsored international conference on migration saying control of any country’s borders is not the business of the UN. He made it clear America will determine who comes to the country and would not welcome large numbers of refugees as it used to do and that everyone was on its own .It will not surprise any one if next year, America withdraws from the UN especially after the delegates had laughed at Trump who does not take personal attack lying down.
Needless to say virtually every head of state or leader of a country’s delegation including President Muhammadu Buhari spoke diametrically against Trump’s position.
