This year expectations for UN General Assembly high level segment - Tuesday

By Vlad Lupan, former Ambassador to UN

September 23, 7.43PM EST, NY

UN on Tuesday, September 24:

As the Climate Action Summit is closing at the UN, it’s hard to say that tomorrow the UN will start its high-level segment of the General Assembly (UNGA). It’s already there. The 74 session actually started earlier. It doesn’t start with the Heads of States, it does it earlier with Ambassadors to UN, and not UN Ambassadors. Those are two different groups. The Ambassadors to UN represent their counties, like US, at UN, while the others are not called UN Ambassadors, yet are, as the Special Representative of the Secretary General, UN Ambassadors.

This whole UNGA week is also not exactly a Summit, as some say, it is just a week out of a year-long session. That’s right, the General Assembly works the whole year round. However, in September all Heads of State, be it Kings and Queens, Presidents or Prime-ministers usually come to express their priorities for their countries and this world, as they see it. Imagine how the world is seen by North Korea, USA, Moldova or Brazil. Anyway, that’s why this is “just” a high-level week of a UN General Assembly 74 session, while the whole session will last till next year and change its President by then too.

Beware, the President of the General Assembly is like a Speaker of the Parliament and the Secretary General is still bound to serve at the pleasure of the member states, as, actually, a Chief Administrative Officer of the UN, and not the boss of the world. That last one, about the Head of the UN being “in charge” is another wrong assumption I hear quite often. It’s the member states and, of course, the most powerful member states, such as US, Russia, China, UK, France, have a stronger voice, unofficially, but voices of Germany, Japan, India, Brazil and others are heard quite well too. Still the UNSG can be a powerful player and at the same time it can depend on states and their five regional groups for re-elections. And the elections of the UNSG are bound to take place next year, so this session may start a bit of circling around the tiny UN meeting booths, as well as UN offices. Everyone is dancing around the idea if the current SG will run again or not.

What happens after the high-level week ends? Head of delegations are transported by their Missions to UN with lots of difficulties for both the diplomats and New York city, in which sometimes both are as frustrated as the others. The delegates will then return to negotiate the texts of climate, development, arms control agreements, and the UN Security Council (UNSC, another abbreviation) members will battle each other over Syria or North Korea and agree on other parts of the world.

Tuesday, September 24 - of course, look out for the number one attraction after Brazil that speaks first. Historically, the first UN Special session and its Second one was chaired by Brazil, hence the first speaker, though rumor has it that no one wanted to be the first speaker and Brazil was the first to go in (and get it over with apparently).

USA - anyway, the next speaker to watch is the POTUS, Donald Trump – I would not expect a serious reiteration of the Monroe doctrine, though some of its points may find the way to POTUS speech again. We should rather wait for a strong focus on Iran and references to the Saudi Arabia situation in the context. Perhaps some focus on North Korea, though I would have expected far less attention to it, due to the expected lack of results.

Usually after the POTUS speech many delegations leave. To an external viewer their departure en masse may be shocking and even disrespectful. However, this is normal due to bilateral meetings that many Heads of State have right after the introductory speeches. This year however, this dynamic will change. Not much, and yet it might, due to the next two speakers.

Egypt and Iran follow immediately after – Egypt is interesting from the Middle Eastern perspective, ISIS and regional security. Iran - for the same reasons and more, including the reply they will give to US.

Later in the day watch for the King of Jordan, who tried his horse trading between Russia and USA, as he put it in an interview where he believed that Moldova will be its object. Surprisingly, US had a coincidence of goals with Russia over Moldova, in a separate effort, with different reasons, yet with one common goal – to unseat a corrupt tycoon – an effort topped by the US Ambassador in a eight minute talk with the tycoon, who then fled Moldova. The point is that the King might not be so familiar with Moldova, yet he is familiar with US and Russia in the Middle East and one can hear from him of some of the zero-sum ideas, circling around the bigger two countries, worth paying attention to.

The South Korean President is next to watch, though with a limited and expected message of security and peace.

However, I would very carefully watch two speakers after the French President Macron, whose new and somewhat unexpected ambitions of a “reset” with Russia (ok, another one, who steps on the same rakes again) may leave some in the US and Eastern Europe extremely unsettled, for what is now a more obvious reasons, unlike during Obama’s Presidency. Also, France is quite important in Africa. Marcon is also representing a country important in the climate change movement.

In the afternoon, from my Eastern European regional concerns perspective, I would wait for Poland to speak - good speaker, clear ideas, knowledge of the area, active and strong player.

At the end of the day the Prime-Minister of New Zealand, who is also in charge of the National Security, will probably speak of the attacks and a more coordinated UN response to the spread of terrorism, including via online means. This small country has a very good, human yet practical approach to matters and sometimes they do take things into their hands at UN level and drive them well.

The evening is crowned by two very interesting or important speakers – PM Abe of Japan, with what could be an anticipated focus on North Korea and on UK’s PM Boris Johnson, who just spoke at the climate summit, on Monday, September 23, how good of a Mayor he was, when talking about understating climate change, in a semblance (to the point of smiles as well) to President Trump’s last year speech how much better the US is since he started his presidency. Yet PM Johnson is interesting to watch, in a way and UK is still a permanent member of the UNSC, with a convoluted Br-exit from the European Union that somewhat dissolves the meaning of the multilateral institutions like UN.

However, POTUS Trump, PM Abe and Pm Johnson will provide us with an insight of how the current leaders view the issues of nationalism, or even populism, and how much does this contradict, in their opinion, the multilateral institutions, such as UN.  Observe discrepancies in their views and correlate that with the internal political developments in the respective countries and even with the size of the countries as well. Coming from a region where a healthy dose of nationalism ensured independence and an unhealthy one, several wars, we are watchful of the balance.

Enjoy UN on Tuesday!