Summits and dangerous choices

The turmoil they want us to get into

Victor Ângelo

 

The UN General Assembly is today expected to re-elect António Guterres for a second term. The first one was not easy, for various reasons, including the fact that Donald Trump has been president of the United States four of the last five years. Trump had not the slightest interest in multilateralism. He was, moreover, unpredictable and oddball in matters of international politics. To appear to be going against his theses would be a kind of political suicide. This greatly reduced the Secretary-General's room for manoeuvre. Guterres then focused on four major areas: the parity agenda, particularly within the organisation, where he successfully implemented a policy of promoting women to senior posts; climate change; humanitarian response; and finding solutions to crises in countries where it did not clash with the permanent members of the Security Council. He also carried out some internal reforms, notably of the UN's organisation chart and representation at country level.   

The second mandate will be even more difficult. The summits of the last few days - G7, NATO, US-EU, Biden-Putin - have shown that we have entered a very complex phase in the global power games. Several conclusions can be drawn from what has been said. None of them puts the United Nations where it belongs, as a platform for convergence between opposing interests. At these summits, certain players have adopted a confrontational line, and others have allowed themselves to be dragged along. Even when the tone is calm, as was the case at the meeting between Biden and Putin, we cannot fall into illusions: each maintains his positions and sees the other as the hostile side. It is a new era of distrust and direct conflict between the superpowers, outside the established international order.

More specifically, bringing the rivalry with China into the military field and openly including it in NATO's agenda is a mistake. It is true that the two paragraphs dedicated in the final communiqué to relations with China are softer than the messages disseminated before and during the meeting. But in essence, we are giving Beijing reasons to strengthen defence cooperation with Moscow and to increase its participation in joint military exercises with the Russians, including in regions close to the European Union's borders. If we have criticisms to make, in the areas of human rights and freedom, of unfair commercial competition, or even when China pushes certain countries into excessive debt, with investments in infrastructure that serve, above all, its own interests, let us make them in the appropriate political forums. 

When you gamble, as you have done all week, on confrontation and bloc politics, you are almost irretrievably compromising the functioning of the United Nations Security Council. The veto then becomes the standard practice. The result is the weakening of the UN and the marginalisation of its leaders, starting with the Secretary-General. And all this is in contradiction with the repeated promises to strengthen multilateralism, which appear in the documents approved at the G7 and NATO meetings.

Soon after his investiture, Biden decided to bring his country back to the United Nations Human Rights Council, as an observer and to make it more relevant. This is a wiser decision than going ahead with the intention of convening a conference of democracies, an issue that was again on the table during summits with allies. Such a conference, which should include the good guys and exclude the bad guys, according to Washington's criteria, would further divide the international community and put the UN in an extremely delicate situation. To help the multilateral system and help defuse the turmoil looming on the horizon, the European Union should not support such an initiative. Nor should it be towed along by any superpower. It is precisely to avoid this that there is a common project and so much talk of deepening European sovereignty. 

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published today in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper)