The UN has rarely lived up to its highest goals. But it is hard to recall a time when its founding principles of forging common solutions for peace, upholding human rights and promoting international law have been so threatened. Member State Russia has violated the UN Charter by invading Ukraine. Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping will bother to attend the leaders’ meeting in the Big Apple – although they met last week separately. And recent floods in Pakistan suggest that UN efforts to broker deals to curb carbon emissions are already too late for some nations. The UN was once a hotbed of diplomacy in times of war. But those days are gone as Beijing and Moscow wield their Security Council vetoes to block mediation efforts in places like Syria and Ukraine. After its invasion earlier this year, Russia turned council meetings into a theater of the absurd. US President Joe Biden will extend his streak of candid talks when he calls on the world on Wednesday to stand up against “bare aggression” from Moscow, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. Biden’s warnings that the world is divided in a duel between despots and democrats are on the money. Of course, America’s critics point out that it often appears to be violating the principles of the United Nations itself, with its wars in Vietnam and Iraq, for example. And any return to power by former President Donald Trump, who has dogged American diplomacy by gutting Western allies and going after tyrants, could derail Biden’s efforts to save international law. All this explains the extremely gloomy tone of the Secretary-General’s speech, as he lamented that “there was no cooperation, no dialogue, no collective problem-solving” while warning, “the reality is that we live in a world where the logic of dialogue and cooperation is the only way forward.”
