Neither Xi Jinping and even less Vladimir Putin will be part of this great annual gathering of heads of state and government that is the United Nations General Assembly which opens de facto Tuesday, delayed by the excessive funeral that the United Kingdom gave to the “humble” Elizabeth II. A little as if the future of the world would or could be decided without these two. Their shadow will hover, of course. They weren’t in London, nor will they be in New York. This is symptomatic, in these times of crisis, of the state of impotence of the UN as a forum for dialogue and international consultation.
It is understood that Mr Putin would not have felt welcome there. As for the absence of the Chinese president, who does not often leave his land anyway, it is to be qualified with regard to his position on the war in Ukraine. Xi’s solidarity with Putin, a pariah of the West, is real but relative, as shown by the signs of ambivalence he displayed last week when he spoke of the need to “inject stability and positive energy in a chaotic world”. Solidarity less economic than geopolitical, in fact, as Beijing can hardly afford to mortgage its extensive commercial relations with Europe and the United States.
A General Assembly of the United Nations is anything but the place for shattering decision-making breakthroughs. This year, however, it is more than a great diplomatic happening, given the violence of the impact that Russian aggression in Ukraine has on the global balance of power and an international order which we have known for some time that it takes on water. The blockages in the Security Council, of which China and Russia are part of the United States, are notorious and old. But it’s as if the very idea of ”international community” was today imploding – if indeed we ever really spoke of community…
Or are we sticking our noses to the near horizon too pessimistic? In any case, Sunday in an interview on the airwaves of the continuous information network France24, the trouble that the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, took to hide his discouragement in the face of the state of the world was striking. Whether it’s Ukraine, Haiti or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Iranian nuclear agreement or the urgency of COP27, which will take place next November in Egypt, a turning point in the fight against global warming, everywhere the dynamics of peace and solutions, to sum up Mr. Guterres without betraying him, seem completely blocked – and the ability of the UN to put together even the smallest pieces, largely handcuffed.
Ukraine will inevitably dominate the debates over the next few days at the UN, no offense to the delegations who would also like to be able, quite rightly, to talk about something else. However, there is little that Putin is ready to do to impose himself on the battlefield. The macabre discovery of 445 graves and a mass grave in Izioum after the departure of the Russians is clearly evidence of this – and on which the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who will speak before the Assembly by videoconference, intends to rely to claim the creation of an international tribunal. Proof of this is also, no less seriously, the nuclear blackmail that Putin continues to engage in. After weeks of tension around the Zaporijjia power plant, unverified Ukrainian sources reported on Monday Russian bombardments near another power plant in the south of the country.
Contrary to the excitement that is manifesting in certain neighborhoods in the face of the so-called “turning point” that the success of the Ukrainian military counter-offensive could represent, the risks of escalation therefore remain intact. “The prospects for a peace negotiation are very remote”, says Mr. Guterres, the belligerents remaining camped on their maximalist positions, about Donbass as about Crimea. In this context, the speech that Joe Biden will deliver on Wednesday at the UN rostrum on the defense of democracy risks ringing all the more hollow in the already skeptical ears of some of the developing countries that the United States does not obviously have no objection, if they feel it is in their interest to do so, to let the war go on for another 200 days. With all that that entails in terms of suffering for the civilian populations and abuses, on both sides.