This year, at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the chorus about the redundancy of the UN was perhaps the loudest. Against the backdrop of two prolonged wars that have fractured global consensus on most issues concerning international governance, the UN's role, utility and ability seemed more vacuous than ever. The UN's own description of our times as an "age of reckless disruption..." validated the need for reforms within its core structures. While this year's gathering in New York seemed largely united in voicing the need for reforms, in the same vein, it may have also marked the beginning of a new rupture in global politics, which is likely to influence its approach in the forthcoming decades.
Each year, the UNGA becomes the bully pulpit for nations to voice their views on global governance as well as to mull improvements. This year, two very different approaches to confronting global challenges stood for the UN tearing at the seams. On one side was unhinged Trumpism characterised by attempts to reverse globalism and recenter sovereignty. On the other were a group of countries, India included, who underscored the need to restore multilateralism. The trajectory of these two diverging approaches, symbolic also of the growing divide between the Global North and the Global south, are likely to shape the future of global governance structures, most importantly the shape that the UN ought to take in the next two decades, as it reaches its centenary.
After a dramatic beginning, with one of the escalators halting and the teleprompter not working, the US president relied on his quintessential style to rail against the UN and its inabilities, threats of terrorism, unchecked migration, biological warfare, and loss of cultural identity. The intention to cast the UN and the rest of the world in the dark and as being against the 'Golden Age of America" was clear from Trump's remarks, with the benchmarks for assessing US credence being economy, sovereignty and military. Much of Trump's remarks were linked to the developments within the US today. His diatribe against illegal immigration, green energy and international terrorism seemed to conveniently tether to the ongoing socio-political upheaval in the US. The rise of conservative politics in the US is threateningly manifest in the foreign policy of the country today. Trump presented a hyphenated view of freedom of speech and expressions and religious liberty, representing the emergent Judeo-Christian backlash against other religions and cultural identities in the US to protect and assert their identity. As such, almost the entirety of Trump's speech was against globalism and the need to reverse its course.
These remarks stood in stark contrast to the Global South's position on similar issues, particularly India's emphasis on multilateralism and a 'duty to contribute and an obligation to motivate'. In particular, India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar's address at the UN linked the reality of different histories, traditions, heritages and cultures to the imperative to co-exist and mutually enrich each other as nations and peoples. Whether it is terrorism or climate, India called for tackling them as shared threats. In its own neighbourhood, India's commitment to more than 600 major development projects in 78 countries, alongside community-based approaches and a focus on the four Fs in its neighbourhood - finance, food, fertilizer or fuel - was cited as a key mantra. From India's vantage point, the Global South's acute predicament is directly linked to the limited choices it has due to the ongoing wars, the resultant lack of resources and the menace of terrorism. To all of these, the UN offers a perfunctory panacea, at best.
The 80th session of the UNGA this year, in many ways, was a mix of the old and the new. The old was represented by countries calling for a familiar note for an urgent reform of the UN, while the new stood in the form of the repercussions of the ongoing conflicts in the world, and, perhaps, more distinctively, in the form of a US president who would not hesitate to cripple the body through funding cuts or other restrictive mechanisms. In its conduct today, the UN seems caught in the quintessential cleft stick - a dependence on world's major powers and economies for its funding but a promise to the world to be democratic and unbiased. As it enters the final quarter of its centenary, the pressure is growing on the UN to reform - most pressingly its Security Council, which symbolises the chasm between representation and decision-making. The US, led by Trumpian policies, may be seeing the beginning of a strategic recoil from the globalism that it once sought. For the Global South, this may be just the moment to step up.
(Harsh V. Pant is Vice President, ORF, and Vivek Mishra is Fellow, Americas, at the organisation)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
