1) Donald Trump’ Unpredictability Sets the Tone
Every UNGA has its sideshows. In past years, this has included things like Muammar Gaddafi’s rambling 125 minute speech; Hugo Chavez suggesting George W. Bush was literally the devil, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claiming there are no gays in Iran. These antics tend to suck up much of the media attention, often to the detriment of important issues of substance.
This year, though, the sideshow is the main event: Donald Trump’s debut at the United Nations.
Trump will spend a good amount of time at
UNGA. He scrapped plans to reside an hour drive away at his golf club
in New Jersey and will instead stay in downtown Manhattan, blocks from
the UN. On Monday he will preside over a UN high level meeting on UN
reform and on Tuesday he will deliver his much anticipated address to
General Assembly. Beyond that, he will have a number of bilateral
meetings with other heads of state and dignitaries, including UN
Secretary General Antonio Guterres, whom he had not yet met in person as
president.
This is a fairly typical schedule for any
American president, and in a press conference ahead of UNGA UN
Ambassador Nikki Haley and National Security Advisor HR McMaster laid
out an agenda that is not terribly dissimilar from previous Presidential
engagements at the UN. Still, Donald
Trump is not a typical US president. The key question on everyone’s
mind is: which Donald Trump will show up? Will be be scripted and stay
on message? And if so, what will that message be? Will he say one thing
at the UN and tweet something else?
The inability of the international
community to accurately predict the behavior of the United States
president has been a driving force of international relations since
Trump took office in January. This dynamic will surely manifest itself
at the United Nations this week, with Trump’s erraticism keeping the UN
at edge.
2) Designing Solutions for Sustainable Development
Though it does not register on the Trump
administration’s agenda, much of the international community are using
UNGA as an opportunity to spur progress towards the Sustainable
Development Goals. With the
US federal government abrogating its leadership role on climate change
and sustainable development, many other forces are stepping up to fill
the void. Throughout New York this week, there are innumerable
opportunities for local government, civil society, the private sector
and philanthropies to demonstrate leadership on smart growth and
sustainable development.
These include several high level meetings
at the United Nations and events around New York, including (but
certainly not limited to) the annual Social Good Summit, the Global
Citizen Festival, Climate Week, the Sustainable Development Solutions
Summit at Columbia University, and a new forum organized by the Gates
Foundation, called “Goal Keepers” that will feature a keynote from Barack Obama.
The Sustainable Development Goals are a
set of 16 goals that every UN member state pledged to work to achieve by
2030. The top line goal is a total elimination of extreme poverty — as
defined as people who live on less than $1.25 per day — by 2030.
Now two years into those goals, a great
deal of effort and energy is being expended into devising tangible
solutions to some of the discrete challenges posed by the goals.
The dialogue around the SDGs this year
will very much be solutions-driven, including devising new ways to
finance the SDGs, exploring new strategies to curb maternal mortality, or scaling up strategies that already have a proven track record. Those
these events and meetings are not likely to generate much media
attention, but they are arguably the important and substantive outcomes
of this week in New York.
3) The Rohingya Crisis
International crises have often provided a
sobering backdrop against which world leaders convene in New York.
Alas, this year is no different. Over 400,0000 members of an ethnic
minority in Myanmar, the Rohingya, have been driven from their homes and
fled across the border to Bangladesh. The uptick in violence began in
late August and since then Rohingya towns, villages and neighborhoods
have been burned to the ground by government security forces. Even as it
foments a mass displacement crisis, the government of Myanmar is
preventing aid from reaching this besieged population. Top UN officials,
including the Secretary General himself, have called a campaign of
ethnic cleansing.
Behind the scenes, diplomats will focus
on twin priorities of designing strategies to pressure Burma to relent
on its ongoing campaign and boosting financial support to Bangladesh and
humanitarian relief agencies working to stem the fallout.
From the General Assembly rostrum expect a
diversity of dignitaries to condemn this ongoing human rights
catastrophe. The Rohingya are religiously muslim, and their plight has
become increasingly politically relevant in Muslim majority countries.
European countries are also likely to publicly criticize the Burmese
government, as they have been growing increasingly condemnatory in
recent days. One big unknown is whether Donald Trump will raise the
issue publicly. Any other US president probably would, but he has shown a
public indifference to human rights issues in general and an antipathy
towards Muslims in particular.
No leader, though, will be able to
criticize the country’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to her face.
The Nobel Laureate has decided to skip UNGA. Meanwhile, by the time her
counterpart across the border Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hassana takes the
General Assembly podium on TK, the number of Rohingya refugees who have
fled her county in the last three weeks could very well exceed half a
million.
4) North Korea
UNGA convenes on the heels of yet another
tit-for-tat between North Korea and the Security Council. After North
Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test on September 6, the Security
Council imposed a heavy round of new sanctions on the country. These
came on top of particularly stringent sanctions passed just one month
earlier. Meanwhile, last week, the North once again tested a missile,
which flew over Japanese territory. On Friday, the Security Council
issued a joint statement condemning this latest provocation.
Little progress is expected on this issue this week, principally for the fact that the Chinese President is skipping UNGA. Still,
North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho is in town — and he has
historically been a key interlocutor with the United States. The chances
that he meet with his American counterpart Rex Tillerson, however, are
rather slim.
Expect American diplomats —and President
Trump himself — to press counterparts to more robustly enforce the
recently-passed Security Council sanctions. Taken together, these
sanctions, which hit North Korea’s textile industry, coal, oil and
seafood exports, affect about a third of North Korea’s foreign trade.
But they are only as strong as they are enforced. Encouraging countries
to put the squeeze on North Korea by swiftly implementing the sanctions
is very much expected to be a centerpiece of President Trump’s address
to the General Assembly. The alternative, he is expected to argue,
increases the likelihood of war.
Though he came to office having expressed
disdain for the United Nations, President Trump has nevertheless put
the UN at the center of resolving the most urgent national security
threat facing the United States.
5) Donald Trump: Champion of Common Sense UN Reform (Seriously)
Donald Trump’s debut at the United
Nations comes one day before his speech to the General Assembly. On
Monday, Trump is playing host to a high level meeting on United Nations
reform. He is there to lend his support— and demonstrate the highest
level of US government commitment — to a rather technical set of
management and bureaucratic reforms that are being championed by UN
Secretary General Antonio Guterres. This is likely to be the substantive
highlight of American engagement at the UN, and it accompanies a
“political declaration” of support around some key principles of UN
management reform.
On the one hand, it is somewhat curious
that President Trump would personally lead a forum on this effort
because these discussions center on rather arcane peculiarities about
the UN bureaucracy. (To whit: the hot debate is whether or not UN
“Resident Coordinators” should report to the Administrator of the UN
Development Program or directly to Office of the Secretary General.
Another issue: should the Assistant-Secretary-General for Economic
Development also serve under a newly formed position of United Nations Chief Economist?)
On the other hand, resolving questions
like these–and many, many others — are actually quite critical to a
better functioning UN system. The reform package championed by Antonio
Guterres and vigorously supported by Nikki Haley would make the United
Nations a more streamlined bureaucracy better able to deliver tangible
results to the people it serves. So it should be seen as a net plus that
the US has decided to positively engage on these issues at the highest
level.
From a political standpoint, the net
effect of these reforms would be to strengthen the position of the UN
Secretary General–that is, give him more power to hire and fire
personnel and more generally shape the UN bureaucracy. Efforts to
empower the office of the Secretary General have historically been
supported by the United States, Europe, Japan and the major donor
countries. They have been resisted by the global south, which tends to
view these efforts as a constraint upon their ability to influence
hiring quotas and spending decisions.
Whether or not this high level forum
provides the kind of political boost these efforts need to win support
from the broader UN membership is not yet clear. But it is definitely a
positive sign that the United States is willing to give it a try.
Podcast: UN expert Richard Gowan discusses the highlights of this year’s UNGA.
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