Agenda: problems beyond strength, beyond mind

Police on every corner, blocked streets, fences, document checks, paralysis of transportation, howling sirens of special services cars escorting cavalcades of limousines of world leaders, the usual picture of New York during the UN General Assemblies. I live in midtown Manhattan, but I have never seen such a cluster of security keepers and street chaos, even though the homeless and beggars have been removed from the neighborhood.

Without hope or expectation

The heightened security measures are not only due to the threat of terrorism but also to the need to control aggressive protests and demonstrations that reflect polarized political and socio-economic attitudes and interests. These actions are increasingly taking radical, extreme forms, and their participants often use civil rights and freedoms to suppress the civil rights and freedoms of others.

Such an atmosphere has developed not only in America. During international events in London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and other large Western cities, violent protests and civil disobedience have become commonplace. Participants in protest actions try to attract attention and express demands and disagreement with the situation in their own and other countries and with the policies and decisions of international organizations.

A contradictory image of the United Nations has been formed in the public consciousness: the idea is good, the field of activity is global, and the problems are acute, but loud resolutions and huge expenditures do not bring the expected results and leave less and less hope that a substantial bureaucratic apparatus and competition in verbosity can overcome the antagonisms and challenges of a polarized world. Moreover, many UN decisions and declarations only exacerbate the critical situation and conflicting interests.

According to the agenda, the General Assembly “Summit of the Future” “emphasizes the urgent need for international cooperation on climate change, poverty and inequality, and overcoming conflict and the global health crisis.” The main objective is to agree on action plans for 2030. The UN’s Global Communications Division provided opportunities for interviews and dialog with assembly participants.

The theme of the world leaders’ debate is “Leave no one behind in achieving peace, development, and human dignity.” Special attention is paid to pandemics and rising sea levels, which threaten global catastrophe and the need to relocate millions of people.

Another important issue is preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their total elimination. The issue has been debated since 1946, and the hope of solving it in the present conditions, when the world is closer than ever to nuclear war, is another great utopia. Without relying on international treaties and safeguards, more and more countries see nuclear weapons as a prerequisite for maintaining independence and territorial integrity. International efforts cannot stop North Korea, Iran and threat from terrorists using nuclear weapons. The countries where the main nuclear arsenal is concentrated cannot agree on even small steps to soften relations and are ready to improve and increase their military resources.

On the eve of the General Assembly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, essentially recognized that UN decisions and recommendations are not imperative for the participants in the current wars and conflicts. The experience of wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and many other hot spots of the planet confirms the helplessness of the organization.

In 1997, CNN founder Ted Turner donated a billion dollars to UN programs and created a charitable foundation to support the organization. This was at a time when the United States had restricted financial support for the UN, and Turner’s action was particularly telling.

But today, on the eve of the opening of the General Assembly, a CNN columnist observes that “193 UN members can’t agree on a lunch menu,” let alone more serious matters, and asks, “Has the UN passed the point of no return?” The question is rhetorical; the answer is obvious even to the media flagship of liberalism and globalism.

The paradox of the UN’s fate is that although the organization is persistently moving towards democratization, attracting new members, expanding the Security Council, nominating representatives of developing countries for leadership positions, and limiting the dominance of the UN founding countries, primarily the United States, its main sponsor, stability and commonwealth in the world are not added, on the contrary, it is becoming increasingly difficult to negotiate and cooperate.

However, there is an issue on which the overwhelming majority of opinions agree: condemnation of Israel for its response to terror and daily rocket attacks, and demands to give East Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the Palestinians. It would be better for Jewish state  to disappear altogether, but they are not talking about it explicitly, although they are essentially demanding the suicide of a UN member state under existential threat. If the recommendations of the UN majority were accepted, the Jewish state would not exist. Inspired by widespread support for its demands, Hamas believes it is winning the war; politics and sacrifice produce the desired results. What an example and incentive for global terrorism.

Guided by similar logic and notions of justice, one would have to condemn the Allies in the war against fascism for carpet bombing German cities and using nuclear weapons, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, to demand the return of the lands Germany lost after the war and the millions of refugees from those lands. Or, in more recent times, America’s response to a terrorist attack that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and millions as refugees.

In many countries and peoples’ view of justice, their problems stem from the fact that the West dominates the world, that the “world government,” the plutocrat class, and the “golden billion,” exploit and oppress others. American imperialism and neo-colonialism are most suitable for this role. If the issue with Israel is solved according to the scenario of its haters, there will be another responsible for all the woes of mankind.

Leave or stay

It is obvious that America is losing its dominant role in the UN, the democratization of the organization is not helping, and the world is not becoming more secure and stable. Neoconservatives, convinced that America cannot give up its role as world hegemon, have given way to liberals who have a different picture of the world: with more democracy, freedoms, economic aid, and enlightenment, everything will work out.

But no matter how one looks, left or right, at developments, the State Department and the Pentagon can no longer determine the fate of the planet. In President Biden’s farewell address to the UN General Assembly, he expressed confidence that by united efforts, the leaders of the world community will be able to defeat wars and diseases, avoid climate threats, and overcome technological challenges.

It is difficult to say what this confidence is based on, especially considering the country’s political and socio-economic problems. Whatever the presidential election’s outcome, the social and political divide will not disappear and may even worsen. No amount of rhetoric can convince most Americans that an economy that is thriving according to statistics and the fortunes of billionaires is improving their lives and overcoming property and social divisions.

The new demographics and the political forces that represent them radically change the country’s cultural image and value system and exacerbate social and ethnic divisions. Inter-party and media infighting, endless street protests, university riots, irreconcilable positions on abortion, gun and drug sales, curriculum, and sex education… The president and lower ranks repeat the absurd mantra, “There is no place for violence in America,” at every mass shooting and political assassination. Still, America is the first in the civilized world in terms of violence, and the public atmosphere is not conducive to softening attitudes. All this reflects a radicalization of society that conciliatory assurances and Harris’s sexy smile will not remedy, nor Trump’s promise to solve everything with dictatorship on the first day of his presidency.

On the eve of the General Assembly, a bipartisan congressional commission released a report on the state of nation’s and the world. The document’s opening lines were: “The threat to the United States is the most serious and most defiant the country has encountered since 1945 and includes the possibility of a major war.”

These threats are primarily attributed to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and extremist groups that are now, in many cases, converging and acting in a coordinated fashion. The report does not address the extent to which the U.S. is responsible for creating the conditions that have led to the convergence of these countries and groups.

The report’s authors conclude that America is unprepared for the new threats and challenges. Their recommendations are to increase military spending and America’s will and activity in preventing global threats and conflicts.

The conclusions are not new. Two years ago, a similar report noted that “the American public is largely unaware” that the situation is worse than during the Cold War and called for increased investment in weapons, almost doubling the budget allocation for these purposes. The authors of the report were not the neoconservative hawks who left the scene with the Bush-Cheney government; they were the new liberal hawks who realized the utopias of the globalist-designed world order but did not come up with anything new.

America’s current military spending is about a trillion dollars, more than 40% of the world’s spending in this area, more than the next ten countries following the U.S. combined. Increased American arms spending in a polarized, multi-conflict world will inevitably lead to increased spending in other countries and increased social and political tensions within America. Reducing social programs and welfare under the dominance of liberal ideology will strengthen populist and isolationist sentiments in society, which is inadequate to the interests of the political and financial elite and the military-industrial complex.

Today, America does not have a realistic vision of the world picture and prospects either at the level of practical decision-making or in theoretical thinking. In recent decades, a public consciousness was formed that envisioned a utopian future modeled on liberal democracy, without conflicts and wars, in the commonwealth and mutually beneficial cooperation of the international community.

Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” became the gospel of a new life, promising that liberal democracy is the only solution to all the world’s problems and a guarantee of peace and well-being for all peoples. Fukuyama is not only a prolific theoretical professor; he was involved in solving practical problems in the State Department and in the development of projects at RAND Corporation and other leading research centers. “The End of History” he did not recognize as a flawed concept, but as recently as a decade ago, he spoke on BBC about difficult time for democracy, the decline of the United States, and the understanding of anti-Americanists. It didn’t require deep scholarly research, just a look out the window, a walk outside.

Following the collapse of the global communist utopia, the utopia of global liberal democracy collapsed. Today’s bestsellers include Fukuyama’s new volume, a colossal 670-page work with a huge scientific apparatus, Political Order and Political Decay. The first part is a history of progress from the Industrial Revolution to the Arab Spring, and the second is global democratization’s decay and fall. In the conclusion of his magnum opus, Francis Fukuyama concludes that one must consider both the objective course of history and the factors determined by the personal efforts of leaders. A colossal revelation, as productive as the next UN declarations.

Kissinger is not here today, but it seems that in convening a global summit to save humanity, he would today rely not on a universal parliament with populist speeches for domestic consumption but on a meeting, away from the noise of the city, behind closed doors, of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China, India, and Russia, without communiqués and declarations, but with an actual program of action. Perhaps not only New York but the whole world would live more peacefully.