Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Part I

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It’s General Assembly Time at the U.N.’s 80th Meeting: World Crises Are Fully on Display

The 80th session of the United Nations. That is the General Assembly, it’s 80th year. All this taking place this week in New York City. It’s a cavalcade of celebrities and national leaders, political leaders, cultural leaders, most importantly, heads of state and heads of government who are lining up to address the general assembly of the United Nations. Yesterday morning the speaker was the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. He has not expressed great admiration for the United Nations, but he did have something to say. The President’s remarks went on about four times the allotted time he was given on the program. And the president spoke in some pretty bracing language. He said to the national leaders there, that most of the nations were in his words, “going to hell”, and he was describing what he considers the mayhem of the world situation.

And from the beginning, this President of the United States has indicated that he isn’t much for the international system of institutions. He isn’t much for soft power. More on that in just a moment. The President actually hit so many issues for our discussion, and no doubt he got the attention of those in the room there at the United Nations General Assembly, but some of the biggest headlines are almost always when it comes to this UN session, not what takes place before the General Assembly, but what takes place inside conversations. Already the president’s side conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is getting most of the attention and deservedly so. Let’s go back to the United Nations for a moment. How in the world do we arrive at this place? 

Well, first of all, the United Nations, I mentioned the fact that it’s its 80th session. It’s right at 80 years old. It was established the 26th of June, 1945. And immediately when you hear in 1945, you understand this was at the end of World War II. With World War II ending, there was a sense that there had to be some kind of formation of an international body, if nothing else, to prevent the two world wars that had so shaped the 20th century with so much bloodshed and carnage. You’ll recall that in the aftermath of the First World War, there was the idea of a League of Nations. Something like that had been conceptualized even in the 19th century in what was known as the Concert of Europe. But we’re not just talking here about Europe. Now that we are in the 20th century, we’re talking about the United States, Europe, we’re talking about the entire globe. That was President Woodrow Wilson’s vision, and it was something of a monomaniacal vision, so much so that the League of Nations did come into being, but the United States Senate did not ratify the treaty, the agreement that would’ve brought the United States into the League of Nations.

So Woodrow Wilson may have been the single individual most important when it comes to the existence of the League of Nations, but his own nation, the United States, did not join that league officially. By the time you get to the end of World War II, the world scene is so reshaped that nothing meaningful can be done without the leadership of the United States of America. And thus, it was really the United States that took the lead in creating what we know as the United Nations. But here’s something really important. Even as there were globalist dreams, far larger by the way at our time, but back at the middle of the 20th century, there were still globalist dreams and the United States understood the necessity of an international body like the United Nations, but it was not going to concede our national authority, initiative or power to any kind of international body. So what did we end up with?

Well, the United Nations is an international body. Currently, it numbers 193 as member states. It has two observer states, and those both deserve headlines here. That would be the Vatican and the so-called Palestinian State. But the 193 states that make up the United Nations are in a two-tier system. All are members of the United Nations. They’re all represented in the General Assembly, but the power at the United Nations from the start, by American insistence, has not been the General Assembly. It is rather the Security Council of the United Nations, which has a limited number of permanent seats. The United States holds one of those, and the United States, along with just a few other countries, has a veto in the Security Council, which means that the United States can block any major United Nations effort. Although on the General Assembly floor, it can’t stop some messaging. That’s the big distinction. Without going into all the numbers, the United States can keep at the level of the Security Council, nonsense from happening, but it cannot keep nonsense from being communicated at the General Assembly, which is largely an exercise in global nonsense. 

One of the things I want to point out is that the committees that we’re looking at, for instance, where to put the United Nations, at one point they considered putting it near San Francisco, California overlooking that beautiful territory there. And there were those who argued that the tilt towards Asia and the Pacific would indicate that a location on America’s west coast would make sense. President Harry Truman was having none of that. He insisted that wherever the United Nations headquarters would be, it had to be in the United States and it had to be where he and his government could give oversight. He didn’t want the nonsense to be too far away.

So the United Nations headquarters ended up in what’s called Turtle Bay there in Manhattan, and that’s where all the dignitaries are gathered this week. Thousands upon thousands. Just imagine the security protocols, just imagine the motorcades. But yesterday the President of the United States spoke, and as I said, he spoke dismissively of many of the member states, just telling them that they have huge problems, but he also spoke dismissively basically of the United Nations itself. Now, not entirely. So in other words, when President Trump gave his remarks yesterday, he was castigating many of the member nations and he was also casting doubt on the entire globalist experiment, certainly globalist ideologies, but he did show up to speak, and that’s another thing that is important. The president has a very powerful projection at the United Nations in terms of American interests and the president’s pretty loud about those interests himself.

One of the most fascinating parts of the president’s remarks yesterday is where he basically said he’s not a big proponent of soft power. Well, where does that come from? It goes back to Joseph Nye, a political scientist who said that national power isn’t just found in military and political power, in other words, the ability to wage war and when, but rather national power is also seen in soft power. That might be redefined as cultural power. Cultural power is seen in the fact that the world’s watching American movies, playing American video games, using American technologies and writing more importantly on American ideas concerning human rights, human dignity, democracy, constitutionalism, and all the rest. Well, here’s where President Trump, you’re not really going to be surprised here, says that he’s not a big proponent of soft power. He is far more a proponent of hard power.

It’s one of the reasons why he recently renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Let’s just say President Trump is many things. He is not subtle. But let me also add that even though he’s rather dismissive in terms of policy about soft power, he does rather intuitively understand it. After all, he became known to millions and millions of people as a television character and personality. He is involved in all kinds of enterprises and has been of course beginning in the real estate business there in New York City. And so he does understand soft power, but his point is, that at the end of the day, soft power is going to yield to hard power. And I think he thought he was just asserting that honestly at the United Nations yesterday. Now, as I said, the president gave extended remarks. More extended than had been scheduled there on the UN order.

No one should be surprised about that. Just consider the way President Trump seizes this kind of opportunity, and once he’s got the microphone, he uses it. And he had a lot to say to the United Nations member states yesterday, and he knew that the entire world was watching. But again, the most important thing that may have happened yesterday, is not so much what happened at the General Assembly, but what happened in that private meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Because what the president indicated after that meeting was a vast reshaping of American foreign policy when it comes to the response to Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine, now a war several years old, very bloody, very costly. In the beginning of his term and going back to his campaign for the second term in office, President Trump said that he would bring peace. He would bring Russia and Ukraine together.

He would get Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky together and he would make peace. What has happened in the months since he has entered his second term is that President Trump has grown very, very weary, and that’s apparent in his public comments, when it comes to Vladimir Putin and Russia. At one point he said, “It looks like we’re being played by Vladimir Putin.” And I think at this point, it’s really clear the game that Vladimir Putin is playing. What was so remarkable yesterday is that the President of the United States, who has been considered in so many ways more Russia leaning than most other recent presidents, he said that Ukraine has the right to regain all of its territory, every bit of it, that has been gained by Russian aggression. And so that’s a very interesting turning point. 

Now, that was a statement and it came after a meeting. It’s not yet translated into the entire fabric of national policy, but it has to be very significant that that event took place yesterday. And the occasion for it was the fact that both of the presidents were in New York at the United Nations for this General Assembly session. 

Now, let’s talk just a little bit about the General Assembly session, this 80th session and what’s expected to be covered in it. Well, front and center, as has been the case more years than not, is the situation with Israel and in this case, Israel’s war in Gaza in response to the brutal invasion by Hamas on October the 7th, 2022. And so what we are looking at here is an absolute obsession on the part of the United Nations, and we’ll talk more in a moment about what happened when several of America’s key allies decided to move towards a recognition of Palestinian statehood.

A huge issue, but let’s just go back to the United Nations General Assembly meeting for a moment. What took place there was a continuing discussion about issues such as the threat of artificial intelligence, about Russia’s incursion to Ukraine, about climate change and goals when it comes to supposedly mitigating climate change. President Trump was pretty blunt in stating that he wasn’t too impressed with that entire agenda. And frankly, one of the very interesting things in the backdrop to this meeting is the acknowledgement, at least by many honest observers, that virtually none of the nations that had committed to radical steps to cut back on greenhouse gases and what’s being defined as climate change, global warming and all the rest, the fact is those goals are not going to be met. And there are many who pointed fingers at the United States, but Donald Trump is not shy to point the fingers right back and say no one is going to meet these goals.

And thus, in one sense, by any objective measure, this 80th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, it’s going to be a failure. But I think for Christians, we also need to step back and say there are moments in which it is a good thing just in itself that people are talking rather than shooting at one another. And if such a forum did not exist, we would basically have to create it in one form or another. I think Christians should understand that the very idea of a global government is itself not sustainable in biblical terms. I think it is also very clear to understand that in biblical terms, what you have is a puddling together of all kinds of toxic forces at one time. But it sometimes is profitable to have these conversations. The downside is that especially when it comes to the General Assembly, there will be actions taken, messages given, there will be speeches presented that quite honestly will be disasters in and of themselves.

But if anything, the failure of globalist dreams and that really is rooted in a globalist ideology. And that goes back even to the early Enlightenment with the idea of a kind of global cosmopolitanism. Think of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. This cosmopolitan vision in which you could have the world come together in peace if you just got everybody around a table, if you just had a deliberative body. At some point, if you could just have a minor peacekeeping force, then you could be able to maintain peace. The 20th century said that’s a ludicrous dream, but on the Left it is a very persistent dream. And so when you look at what’s going on, and by the way, when you have a lot of smaller nations, they have a big microphone sometimes at the United Nations General Assembly and why would they give that up?

And when it comes to so many of these discussion points, the United Nations has adopted all kinds of policies which can be found in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation, which basically means very, very little. But as some wise statesmen have observed, better to have people writing useless documents than doing something more malevolent or violent. In worldview terms, tying this to the political sphere in the United States, I think it’s important to recognize that when you have Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, you have two different sets of rhetoric, but you also have some commonality of approach with the United Nations, which is to say even more liberal, left-of-center, Democratic presidents are not going to concede national authority and sovereignty to the United Nations. And if they’re not doing so in terms of principle, at the very least they understand pragmatically that would be a disaster. In that sense, Harry Truman speaks for all the presidents. It’s one thing to have that meeting take place in New York, it’s another thing to recognize the center of our universe isn’t New York, it’s Washington D.C.. In political terms, I think it is important to recognize even Democrats and Republicans together are in basic agreement with that. Republicans are just more likely say it out loud. Democrats less so.

Part II

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The United Nations is in a Free Fall: The U.N.’s Mass of Confusions

As the session began this week, Monday’s edition of the New York Times came with a headline, “As UN Meets, The Institution is in Freefall”. Now, that’s a quotation from an observer who described the waning influence of the United Nations. Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group, said, “We can actually say we are in an organization that is in sort of a freefall.” And I think that’s true. I think anyone who might even in recent decades have thought there are all these crises in the world, maybe the United Nations can solve them effectively.

The answer to that is an emphatic no. But again, it’s not meaningless that you have so many national leaders in one place at one time with opportunities to have side conversations that might actually be more meaningful than anything that takes place there on the platform of the United Nations. But this front page article in the New York Times is important because I think so many people on the Left that had invested so much confidence in the United Nations now recognize that confidence has not been sustained by action and authority coming from the UN. And I think a lot of that has also been made clear, and this is something that’s tied to recent headlines. When you look at the United States, the Trump administration in particular, cutting back so much funding through USAID, US Assistance In Development. And the UN has basically been thriving with a preponderance of funds, an outbalanced source of funds from the United States.

The United States makes the single biggest contribution to the UN and in a very big way, and I think you can see why presidents of the United States are rather reluctant to keep funding something like the United Nations to pool together all these other nations, paid for at least in large part by the United States in order to create a forum in which they complain about the United States.

Part III

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No, There Isn’t a New Age of Autocracy at the U.N.: Autocracy Has Always Been A Part of the Picture

On Sunday, the same newspaper, the New York Times, ran another front page article. The headline, “Autocrats Seize Initiative at UN With US Retreat.” The subhead, “Driving to Weaken Labor and Human Rights Protections.” This is speaking of the autocrats who would speak. And of course, there are so many autocrats who are heads of state and heads of government, and yes, they will be speaking at the United Nations. I do think that I will dispute the New York Times making a one-to-one equation here. “Autocrats Seize Initiative at UN With US Retreat.”

The US isn’t retreating from the United Nations, but the US is clearly under the Trump administration, recalibrating its approach in terms of foreign relations and our relations with international bodies such as the UN. What I think is falsely communicated by that headline is that there was a time when the United States could prevent autocrats from having their say at the UN. That’s not true at all. Think of historic speeches by figures such as Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union. Certainly an autocrat, certainly a dictator. Similarly, Fidel Castro and others. There never has been a time, quite honestly, when the UN didn’t hear a lot of noise from autocratic leaders. Let me just say that when you consider the formation of the United Nations 80 years ago, and you understand that the creation of the United Nations and the Security Council included the Soviet Union having a permanent seat on the Security Council, when you consider that within a short number of decades, you also had the addition of Communist China, it sounds rather stupid now. Given all the videotape and all the newsreels you can find about times past, it seems quite ridiculous all of a sudden to say that you have a new age of autocracy at the United Nations. It has always been a part of the picture.

Part IV

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News Alert—There Is No Palestinian State: But Britain, Australia, Canada and France Say They Now Recognize a Palestinian State. Why?

But finally, as we consider these things, let’s remember that always a part of the picture in terms of the history of the United Nations, particularly since 1948, is conflict that involves Israel. Remember that Israel was created, at least in one legal sense, by action of the United Nations. And remember that the United Nations from the beginning had recognized Israel as a legitimate state. In 1948, it also envisioned in terms of the initial agreement and subsequent agreements, the existence of a parallel Palestinian state. The problem is that Israel quickly became a state. The Palestinian state never became a state.

And one of the things to recognize, is that the Palestinians who lived there before did not establish a state. There was no Palestinian state that was supplanted by Israel. And in one sense, the response of the Arab nations trying to destroy Israel in the very beginning, you go back to Israel’s war for independence, you go back to subsequent wars, you fast-forward to 1973, you fast-forward even now to October 7, 2023 and the deadly attack by Hamas, and you come to understand Israel has been surrounded by its enemies from the very beginning. And it’s also important to recognize that those existing Arab states were also largely allied against any so-called Palestinian state. And so even though for all kinds of reasons, particularly Palestinian nationalism and the Islamic extremism that arose, the terrorist actions against Israel, but also we need to remember some terrorist actions against some of the Arab states as well.

We just need to recognize that lip service, so to speak, was given to the idea of a Palestinian state, but no particular action and for one reason more than any other, and that is that a state, a government has certain prerequisites. Those prerequisites include a people clearly defined, borders clearly understood, and a national identity of functioning stable society that can have a functioning government and rule of law. And when you look at that particular set of criteria, the idea of a Palestinian state just immediately disappears into a fog of confusion. But, that confusion also is important to recognize in statements made just in recent days headlined in the Wall Street Journal. Western countries recognized state of Israel. Well, what countries? The United Kingdom. That is to say Britain, Canada, Australia, a host of other nations including Portugal. Close allies of the United States that had not heretofore recognized a Palestinian state.

And it’s also important to recognize that more than a hundred, indeed a good deal more than a hundred of the member states that the UN have, in their terms, recognized a Palestinian state. 

Well, let’s just ask the obvious question. Where is the Palestinian state that they have recognized? Where has it ever been? Where has it ever been functioning? Who is this Palestinian state? The fact is that it remains a legal fiction. It’s a political fiction. It’s a very powerful political fiction. And as the United States government made very clear, it is a dangerous political fiction. The editors of the Wall Street Journal were really clear in asking how in the world can this make sense? When you look at the fact that Hamas brutally invaded Israel, is currently even now holding hostages, and many of the hostages had already been killed, it is now acting in such a brutal way, it is, after all, an Islamist terrorist organization. Its heart and its methodology extremely well known. How can you reward Hamas by now recognizing a Palestinian state that almost assuredly will be either run by Hamas or influenced by Hamas, eventually controlled by Hamas. 

The fact is that that’s an immoral equation. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio is exactly right. President Trump is offered similar arguments. But what you see is internal pressure. Here’s the big thing to watch. In worldview terms, remember that when you look at governments in democratic nations, eventually they respond to pressure coming from inside their own political constituency. Why in the world did Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom move to recognize Palestine at this time? And the answer is because of leftist power in his own party and in his own parliament, populist uprisings that have been very clear and demonstrations, and also even the threat of terrorism.

I mean, that has to be a part of the background here. Similarly, let’s consider Australia and Canada. And especially in Canada, a liberal government, and just like the labor government, the more liberal government there in the United Kingdom, you have similar developments taking place elsewhere. Most importantly, right now, I think you have to look at France. So consider the fact that the continent of Europe has two major powers that are more important than any other, and in Western Europe, those two nations are France and Germany. Well, where is Germany on this? Because of the legacy of the Holocaust and World War II, I don’t think Germany is about to take any action as a government that would be at the expense of Israel, and certainly not to the empowering of Israel’s enemies. When it comes to France, well, that’s a very interesting and convoluted story.

France has been a close ally of Israel. France has also under subsequent governments, been far less than friendly and supportive of Israel. French President Emmanuel Macron himself, is in big trouble. France itself is in big trouble. Big economic trouble, big political unrest. Several failed governments in a row. A new prime minister just recently to take power even in the last few days. And there’s a lot of political pressure, certainly coming from the French Left. Not a new thing, but coming now for the recognition of the so-called state of Palestine or the Palestinian state. It’s going to be very interesting to see where this goes, but we shouldn’t be surprised. In the larger sense from the Christian worldview, we shouldn’t be surprised that when you put a mass of nations together, representatives of those nations together, it’s something called the United Nations, and then you call a part of it, the most public part of it, a general assembly, and you create a platform where people from so many different perspectives, ideologies, forms of government, national systems, can get up and have their say, it is a perfect cacophony.

And that’s exactly what’s been coming out. It also is an opportunity, and we should be thankful for American diplomats who are there, and also for the American president showing up and speaking at the General Assembly. It is a mess. But in the Scripture, we hear the question, why do the nations rage? I don’t think we should be surprised at any point in world history that what we see is the picture of the nations raging. Much of that right now on display, there in Turtle Bay, in Manhattan, in New York City at this meeting of the United Nations.

So it began, so it continues. And Christians understand that’s just a big part of the story.