The United Nations: Ineffective, Impotent, and Ethically Compromised

It’s that most wonderful time of the year in New York. I mean of course the time when the United Nations General Assembly is in session.

There really is nothing like it. If you can’t get down a couple of blocks on foot you can at least console yourself that some African despot is holed up in his 5-star hotel.

And if you can’t cross town in a car then you can be safe in the knowledge that some Arab potentate is raiding the minibar in a hotel of their choice.

But at least you know that the real action is going on over on the floor of the United Nations.

On Tuesday it was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey who was up. And from the main podium at the UN he used an analogy that people like him enjoy using on 1st Avenue.

“Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must also be stopped by the alliance of humanity.”

At the 79th General Assembly the Turkish president also criticized the U.N. for failing to fulfill its original mission and instead becoming “a dysfunctional structure.”

He’s right on that last bit, at least. But unfortunately he seems not to realize is that one reason the UN is dysfunctional is because it allows despots like him to use the stage to attack not only the country that is hosting them but also our democratic allies.

Of course Erdogan is simply committing what this city’s shrinks would call “projection.” Throughout his time in office Erdogan has consistently locked up journalists, judges and anyone else who stands in his way or criticizes him.

After what he claimed was a “coup” attempt against him in 2016 he locked up around 50,000 people.

He has also continued a war of aggression against the Kurdish people who have been denied a state of their own by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, among others.

When faced with people like Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, the Mullahs in Iran and the terror-sponsoring, slave-state of Qatar, you would have thought that the world’s democracies would have a chance to shine.

But then you would be wrong.

It seems that when it comes to speeches before the UN the Western democracies are not sending our best.

Take the speech to the UN this week by the new British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy.

Lammy has the unfortunate habit that a lot of our politicians in America share of thinking that he is the most important subject.

In the same way that Tim Walz cannot answer a question on the economy without talking about the house in which he grew up in, so Lammy believes that there is no issue of international politics that cannot be brought back to his favorite, chosen specialized subject: himself.

This week Lammy tried to make a big grand-standing address to the Russian delegation. He told the assembly, “I speak not only as a Briton, as a Londoner, and as a foreign secretary.” All of which is true. It is why he is there.

But then he went on to try to talk about Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine. “I say to the Russian representative, on his phone as I speak,” he said, his voice rising in anger like a school teacher telling off an errant pupil, “that I stand here also as a black man whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa, at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved. Imperialism: I know it when I see it. And I will call it out for what it is,” he said.

Mr. Lammy was educated at a choir-school in charming Peterborough, England. From there he went on to, among other places, Harvard

And while he is black, there is no special insight he could possibly have gained from ancestors he never knew fighting rebellions he never saw.

But this is par for the course in the modern West. Our politicians always tell us about themselves and pretend that they have some special insight due to characteristics over which they have no say.

It was rude of the Russian representative to be on his phone. But people who invade sovereign countries often are rude. You might say it comes with the territory.

And one thing that is very unlikely to scare them or subdue them is Western politicians behaving as though a good telling off in New York is going to rein in their behavior.

Our very own President Biden managed a similarly pointless intervention in world affairs during his time on the podium.

On a rare break from the beach, President Biden told the General Assembly that there should be a ceasefire in the Middle East.

“Now is the time for the parties to finalize its terms, bring the hostages home,” Biden said. As if the terrorists of Hamas were listening and famously vulnerable to reason.

Not content with not solving that conflict Biden went on to say of the escalating war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon: “Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.”

Which isn’t true. A full-scale war that stopped Hezbollah would be very much in the interests of the Christians and other minorities in Lebanon who have seen their country destroyed by the Iranian army in their midst.

And it would be very much in the interest of the millions of Israelis who either cannot live in their homes in the north of Israel or have to spend every day going to the bomb shelters to hide from the thousands of rockets Hezbollah keeps firing at them.

“Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” said Biden. As though the body he was speaking to is not the same body that passed a resolution 18 years ago called 1701

A resolution preventing Hezbollah’s arms build-up, which the UN has done absolutely nothing to uphold.

The world is full of bad people. And New York is chock-full of them this week.

But the world’s democracies need leaders with the strength to stand up to them. And not just tell them where to go, but what we might do about it.