Perfect storm confronts UN assembly meet

Powerful thunderclaps from the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan rumbled as a dire greeting to the opening UN General Assembly session in New York. Winds from ongoing but unresolved humanitarian crises the world over from Sudan to Syria and Somalia swirled. And a nervous atmosphere of widening conflicts, some still yet to happen, settled over assembled delegates.
In a gloomy but prescient opening address to the 79th annual Assembly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated on Tuesday: “Our world is in a whirlwind… Wars rage with no clue how they will end. Nuclear posturing and new weapons cast a dark shadow.” He stresses, “We are heading towards the unimaginable, a powder keg that risks engulfing the world.”
If current world events were described in a political thriller, the plot would be considered too far-fetched. But we are now living it! Add this to the contentious backdrop of an American Presidential campaign where the opposition candidate has been threatened with arrest and has faced two assassination bids.
Usually opening UN sessions are a time of forced optimism and at least reserved hope. But these words from the UN chief are somber, sober and probably a little more realistic than we would wish to hear. Still the myriad of calamities from an expanded Gaza war, to exploding new fighting on the Lebanon/Israel frontier, to the grinding conflict in Ukraine set the stage.
The General Debate of speakers hosted calls for peace but offered few solutions. US President Joe Biden, in a political swan-song address offered the usual platitudes about political inflection points and mixed with a loopy auto-biography of his career. There was painfully no mention of human rights in places like China or Iran. There was no talk of North Korea’s nuclear menace. Indeed, Mr Biden offered no concrete plans for the future or solutions, reflecting perhaps less his own vision than his administration’s maladroit foreign policy.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Assembly but with a far more somber tone; warning of the focused Russian threat to nuclear energy facilities and to Ukraine’s power grid. He criticised both Brazil and China, advocating a one-sided ceasefire deal which would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia. Yet contrary to his video address to the UN two years ago which was often interrupted by applause and ended with a vigorous standing ovation, his speech received polite but not enthusiastic applause at the end. People, especially Ukrainians, are weary of this war.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb stated, that the number of ongoing conflicts is the highest since the cold war; he added, “Human suffering has reached a point that should be unacceptable in this room.”
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni steered the discussions into uncomfortable waters; recalling her proposal of a “global war against human trafficking”. She stressed that defeating “the slave trade of the third millennium” is possible through joint initiatives between police forces, intelligence services and judicial authorities to “follow the money”.
But the escalating Lebanon crisis quickly seized centre stage as the Assembly progressed.
Lebanon is a multidimensional victim; but let’s recall that despite having a nominal independent government, between its historic Christian and Muslim communities, Lebanon’s sovereignty has long been hijacked by the de facto Hezbollah military occupation of the South of the country bordering Israel. Hezbollah serves as a lethal cat’s-paw of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Lebanon’s quasi-democratic central government in Beirut is powerless to oust them lest even insult them. A small but ineffective UN peacekeeping mission (Unifil) is stationed in southern Lebanon along the Blue Line to presumably prevent conflict. But Hezbollah’s swaggering impunity has predictably, albeit foolishly, attacked Israel. Now they will reap the whirlwind.
Mr Guterres said, “Hell is breaking loose in Lebanon.” During an emergency Security Council session, the United States, Britain and France called for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon.
Currently far more that 60,000 Israeli civilians have fled from their homes in the North; and now hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are fleeing to North Lebanon. Israeli jets pounded Hezbollah military sites which are firing rockets into Israel.
Israel’s Ambassador Danny Danon said no other country would behave any differently as Israel, faced with attacks across its borders from north and south, “No nation would sit idly by as their citizens were attacked.”
There’s a confluence of global conflicts; some would call it a perfect storm.