What can the U.N. do without US funding?

Kusha Navadar (0:06)

This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast.

It's Monday, September 21st.

I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian. Today is the first gridlock alert day relating to the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. So beware everyone out on the road. President Trump is in town. Today meeting with Mayor Mamdani at Gracie Mansion and others and speaking at the UN tomorrow. And speeches by world leaders and protests all continue this week. It's also Climate Week, which we mentioned, which we'll have more on that later in the show. But to talk about what to watch at the UN and its role at this time of realignment of the world order, we're joined by journalist Mark Leon Goldberg, who writes the substack and hosts the podcast Global Dispatches. And also co-hosts its UN specific podcast, To Save Us From Hell. Welcome back to the show, Mark.

Mark Leon Goldberg (1:05)

Hey, thanks for having me.

Kusha Navadar (1:06)

Totally. So I know this is a busy week for you. We appreciate you coming on. But first, can you tell us a little bit about the title of your UN podcast, To Save Us From Hell? Where did that come from?

Mark Leon Goldberg (1:18)

Sure. So it's drawn from a quote from the second UN Secretary General, Doug Hammershould, who said famously that the United Nations was not created to deliver us to heaven, but to save us from hell.

Kusha Navadar (1:31)

I also want to ask about how to refer to what's going on at the UN this week. New Yorkers know about the traffic problems on the East Side, especially for what's called UNGA, which stands for the UN General Assembly. All the speeches by heads of state that start tomorrow are called the general debate. That's a lot of generalities, is that all right?

Mark Leon Goldberg (1:52)

Yeah, that's a good way to think of it. UNGA is the entire week of meetings at the United Nations, also elsewhere in New York. But the general debate is the parade of presidents and prime ministers who speak from the General Assembly dais.

Kusha Navadar (2:07)

So the general debate kicks off tomorrow with an opening speech by the UN Secretary General.

Do you think he will tackle the issues like the Iran War or the disarray in the post-World War II order directly? Or will the speech be more of a welcome? What's the vibe generally with these kinds of speeches?

Mark Leon Goldberg (2:30)

So the vibe with the current Secretary General, António Guterres, is very much not a generalized welcome, but a reflection of the dire state of the world as he sees it. He is like a glass half empty kind of guy when it comes to assessing the role of multilateralism in the world today and how so many world leaders are sort of removing themselves from their obligations under international law, violating international law, runaway climate change. He kind of tells it as it is. Plus, this is going to be his last speech at the United Nations. His term expires at the end of the year. So honestly, he has nothing left to lose. I would expect a very direct and frankly, very harsh assessment of the state of the world today.

Kusha Navadar (3:19)

Okay. So nothing left to lose is quite interesting. I want to touch on that for a second. How does a speech like what we might hear today, no, sorry, tomorrow, how would that kind of compare to years past? Is it normally less of a hard, heavy hitting kind of speech?

Mark Leon Goldberg (3:36)

You know, honestly, this secretary general has been fairly gloomy during his speech. As like two years ago, he referred to like the seven horse or the four horsemen of the apocalypse while discussing challenges like climate change and conflicts and inequality around the world. You know, warning that they are galloping very quickly towards us and we got to do something to stop it.

This year, I would not expect it to be any different. He will also, I expect, as he has been for a long time, calling for safety and regulations around artificial intelligence. This has actually been something that the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has been on for quite a while.

It seems like the world is suddenly catching up to him. So I would expect Guterres to add to a global growing voices of concern around AI safety while also talking about runaway inequality, a cost of living crisis that is affecting people around the world owing to the conflicts in the Middle East as well as runaway climate change. One thing I love about Guterres' speech, he's from Portugal, he has a little bit of an accent. Whenever he talks about fossil fuels, he says fossil fools. I think that is deliberate.