The Delegates Lounge

The State of the United Nations on the Eve of the 'Summit of the Future'

• The Delegates Lounge LLC • Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

When world leaders descend on New York in September, they’ll gather for a “Summit of the Future,” an eleventh-hour attempt to make the United Nations system more credible in the public eye. Ahead of that high-level debate, join us in The Delegates Lounge as we delve deep into the world body’s response to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine; the great power rivalries between China, Russia and the United States; the potential impact of the upcoming U.S. election on multilateralism; and the challenges to reforming the Security Council as the UN debates its own future.

J. Alex Tarquinio chats with Richard Gowan, our guest in The Delegates Lounge and a familiar face around the UN hallways here in New York after 20 years of monitoring the global institution. He’s the UN Director at the International Crisis Group, an independent nonprofit, non-governmental organization committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. He oversees the global NGO’s advocacy work at the UN, liaising with diplomats and officials in New York.

Speakers:

J. Alex Tarquinio (host). @alextarquinio of @delegateslounge on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Richard Gowan (guest). @RichardGowan1 of @crisisgroup on X, formerly known as Twitter.

References: 

A recent article by Richard Gowan on the “Pact for the Future” to be discussed at the “Summit of the Future,” which he mentioned in the interview. The draft version that he reviews here was released on July 17, after the interview in this episode.

https://www.justsecurity.org/98128/united-nations-pact-for-future/

The article by Richard Gowan about the recent U.K. election mentioned in our conversation.

https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/uk-foreign-policy-united-nations/

The host mentioned Martin Griffiths, who was the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator until the end of June 2024. In his final press briefing on June 4, well before the recent pause in UN aid deliveries to Gaza, Griffiths spoke about the challenges of providing security for aid deliveries to Gaza. He specifically addressed the issue of the stolen trucks at several points in his final press briefing, including at the 14-minute, the 26:30-minute, and the 44-minute marks in the following video. 

https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k16/k16fjab6eu

The host mentioned that the UN “was not very present” at the Summit on Peace in Ukraine in Bürgenstock, Switzerland in June 2024. The UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo attended the summit as an observer.

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/fdfa/fdfa/aktuell/dossiers/konferenz-zum-frieden-ukraine.html

The host and guest discussed the U.S. financial contributions to the UN system. These are explained in the following “backgrounder” article by the Council on Foreign Relations, “Funding the United Nations: How Much Does the U.S. Pay?”

https://www.cfr.org/article/funding-united-nations-what-impact-do-us-contributions-have-un-agencies-and-programs



J. Alex Tarquinio:

Welcome to the Delegates Lounge. Pull up a chair. I'm Alex Tarquinio, a journalist based at the United Nations here in New York City and your emcee for this podcast featuring some of the most influential minds in the world today. Settle in for some riveting tete-a-tete, available wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome, welcome. By whichever of the myriad means you may have found your way here. We're glad you've joined us in the Delegates' Lounge, an independent podcast on world affairs. I'm Alex Tarquinio, your host and a veteran journalist who's now based at the United Nations in New York City, where I write essays for foreign policy out of my office at the UN headquarters, right across the hallway from the Security Council chamber. From time to time, we'll hit the road for sit-downs with the world's movers and shakers, whether it be at NATO's 75th anniversary summit in Washington DC or to parts as yet unknown. This podcast is solely a production of the Delegates' Lounge LLC, which I co-founded with my husband and executive producer, frank Radford. In the future, we plan to drop new episodes of the pod on Thursdays, but for the show's launch, we'll be rolling out several edifying episodes for your discerning ear. Now to our guest.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

In this episode, we sat down in the UN building for a wide-ranging conversation with Richard Gowan. He's been a familiar face around these hallways for 20 years. Richard is the UN director at the International Crisis Group, an independent nonprofit committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. He oversees the global NGO's advocacy work at the UN, liaising with diplomats and officials in New York. We chatted in early July, around the time of the elections in both Britain and France, and Richard opined on the implications for the UN of a second Trump presidency. He also spoke on the importance to Secretary General Guterres of his summit of the UN, of a second Trump presidency. He also spoke on the importance to Secretary General Guterres of his summit of the future. Like clockwork, world leaders will descend on New York next month, but this year they'll brainstorm the future of the United Nations itself.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

The UN was founded in the wake of the Second World War and critics say it's beginning to look the worse for wear. So let the conversation begin. Richard Gowan, thank you for joining us. You've been a go-to expert for journalists covering the UN. Every September, journalists descend on the UN headquarters here in New York and they all want to talk to you for insights about what's been going on in the previous year. Tell us a little bit about how you became that UN expert.

Richard Gowan:

I never planned to be a go-to expert on the.

Richard Gowan:

UN. But I have been based in New York for nearly 20 years and I've worked in different places. I worked at New York University, at Columbia University, I've worked with a range of think tanks and all through this time I've been trying to really understand the diplomatic dynamics of this strange thing called the United Nations. And simply because I've been around for rather longer than I had expected, I've got to know a lot of the players and I've got to understand a lot of the diplomatic games that we see here. Year on year, diplomats come and go. I mean, the average diplomat in New York is probably on a posting of about four years, sometimes a little longer. Everything feels very new when you turn up as an ambassador or a first secretary dealing with the Security Council. But for someone like me who's seen this over time, you begin to see the patterns, you begin to understand how the institution works and then suddenly you find that you are the go-to expert on the institution.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, the UN has come in for a great deal of criticism, obviously, especially over the last year or two. With your long-term view, can you say, has that changed at all in terms of the tone of the criticism or the volume, or is that pretty much just par for the course?

Richard Gowan:

The UN always faces a lot of criticism and the UN always deserves a deal of criticism because it's an imperfect organization and it does incredibly important work in terms of humanitarian aid and peacekeeping. But these are hard tasks and of course, the UN makes mistakes and of course, there are scandals, sometimes horrible scandals about problems like sexual abuse by peacekeepers. What I would say is that there are moments where panic about the state of the UN spikes and I turned up in New York in 2005. And there was definitely a spike of panic then about the UN's failure and the UN's breakdown over the Iraq war, and there was a real sense that this was an organization facing an existential crisis. Now, actually, that panic dissipated.

Richard Gowan:

But two decades on, I think we're seeing something very similar over the twin crises of Ukraine and Gaza, because a lot of diplomats are saying we have two horrible conflicts. We have a permanent member of the Security Council invading one of its conflicts, we have a permanent member of the Security Council invading one of its neighbors, we have the US blocking action over Gaza and we just don't know if this organization works anymore. And I do sense a level of nervousness about the future of the UN. I do sense a sense of sometimes despair about the state of the organization. That is different from the run-of-the-mill grumbling and criticism.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, in fact, whenever someone does express this rumbling and criticism, as you call it, sometimes defenders of the UN say well, we're working on fixing that, we're working on Security Council reform. But the shape that's being discussed to the Security Council reform sounds like it would actually exacerbate the problems, creating, for example, more permanent Security Council members with veto power, when the veto power is what is being criticized now the fact, for example, that Russia, one of the five permanent members with the veto power, could invade its neighbor and it can veto it even as an agenda item. So do any of the reforms that are being discussed give you any hope that this can be fixed? Or is this just more dialogue around the Security Council, which they've had for decades?

Richard Gowan:

I think it's definitely worth acknowledging that there has been a serious uptick in real discussion about Security Council reform, really since the Russian all-out aggression against Ukraine in 2022.

Richard Gowan:

And if you talk to diplomats from almost any member of the UN, they will say the Security Council is antiquated. The veto powers are stopping the Council functioning. We need change. But as soon as you dig into that and as soon as you say what change do we need, suddenly everything starts to come apart. Because, yes, india says you know, we are a gigantic nation, we obviously deserve a permanent seat on the Security Council and we want that to come with a veto. But, as you say, if you start adding to the number of veto players, then that's going to make it even harder for the Security Council to work. Anyway, I have to say that, although I've been involved in council reform debates for quite a long time, I don't spend my nights awake worrying about what happens when reform comes through. To be quite honest, the chances of getting real, meaningful Security Council reform, which would mean changing the membership, at least limiting the veto, are very, very low.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, can you explain a little bit about the Byzantine rules for reform? I mean, it would need to be approved and you still have the veto, the problem of the veto power. So is there any likelihood of getting any type of reform passed?

Richard Gowan:

So look to change the composition of the Security Council, to change the number of permanent members or even to expand the number of elected members. There are currently five permanent and 10 elected. To change that you would need to alter the UN Charter, and the Charter itself says you can only change that text established in 1945 if a large majority of the UN members ratify change and all the permanent five members of the Security Council ratify it too.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

So here again, france and the UK may be amenable, but it's difficult to imagine a plan that the United States, russia and China would all agree on, and then they would have to get their governments to approve it. The US would have to get the Senate to approve it. I don't know. That in itself would be a challenge.

Richard Gowan:

You cannot imagine any reform to the Security Council, I think, which would be acceptable to China, acceptable to Russia, I think, which would be acceptable to China, acceptable to Russia, and then President Biden would be able to go to Congress and get it ratified. And it's also worth saying that there's a real issue for the Chinese in particular about Security Council reform. They do not want to see Japan or India getting permanent seats on the Security Council. They're very worried that a reform process would lead to Tokyo and Delhi getting more power at the UN and Chinese diplomats go all out with other UN members to block any progress in that direction.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, this is where regionalism comes in, and I'm not certain people are aware how regional these disagreements between, for example, china and Japan's aspirations and then, on the other hand, in Europe, germany wants a permanent seat as well.

Richard Gowan:

Germany is one of four countries that sort of work together to try and get permanent seats of their own. The other three are India, japan and also Brazil.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

And there again you have Latin America. But Mexico and Argentina might feel why don't they get a seat?

Richard Gowan:

If you're sitting in Mexico City, you have Latin America, but Mexico and Argentina might feel why don't they get a seat? If you're sitting in Mexico City, you know Brazil does not speak for Spanish speaking, latin America Right. And if you're sitting in Madrid or Rome, I mean obviously. Actually the Italians and the Spanish have day to day pretty good relations with Germany, pretty good relations with Germany, but they worry that if Germany got a permanent seat, their own relative standing at the UN would be further diminished because they would be overshadowed by the French. They would be overshadowed by Germany.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

And then there's Africa. You have South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt. Is there any consensus on who might represent them?

Richard Gowan:

Well. So the African position on Security Council reform is especially mysterious and problematic, because all the African countries say that they believe that the continent should have two permanent seats on the Security Council with veto powers, but they have never said who would hold those seats. And there are quite a lot of credible candidates South Africa, algeria, but also Egypt. Ethiopia at times has been talked about as a candidate, although its recent conflict complicates that. Nigeria is obviously a key player in West Africa. There's no agreement amongst the Africans about who would hold the two permanent seats, and so US diplomats and others say we would be willing to negotiate with the Africans if we knew what their real position was, but they're not telling us enough.

Richard Gowan:

I mean I think what this all shows you is that there is a clear case for Security Council reform. I think there's an urgent case for Security Council reform, but there's no clear pathway to get to reform, and so the UN is stuck with a central body, the Security Council that no one thinks is fit for purpose I don't think even the Chinese and Russians would say that it was so for purpose but no one knows how to change it. What we see is a lot of countries, like India, for example, clearly losing interest in the UN Because they know that they're not going to get what they want in terms of changes to the institution.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, we talk about the Security Council being fit for purpose, but it seems as if the purpose may be changing, and when you talked about how both Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza have really darkened the mood. Obviously there are many other conflicts in the world and the UN is failing people in other places as well, which we should get to. But for the first year after the full-scale invasion, it did seem like there was a growing consensus among a wide range of countries across regions in favor of the territorial integrity in Ukraine. However, since October 7th, the tables have been turned and it's hard to say how much of that is inevitable and how much of that is successful propaganda by certain actors who were trying to deflect attention from their own actions. Has the Security Council really changed to just a venue for propaganda?

Richard Gowan:

Well, I think it's certainly true that both Ukraine's friends very much including the US, but also Russia. They have used the Security Council as a space for political theater over Russia's war against Ukraine. And the US and Kiev's friends have held dozens of meetings with the goal of condemning Russia, making Russia look bad, both in the Security Council and then also in the UN General Assembly. And the Russians have pushed back by holding dozens of meetings of their own where they lay out their view of the war and also frankly spread disinformation about what is happening in Ukraine. For example, we've had a series of debates in the Security Council about whether there are US bioweapons in Ukraine, and most diplomats know that this is all theatre, that there are a lot of lies involved here. But that is how both sides are treating the Security Council. I see it as a space for amplifying their messages, and it's not conducive to constructive diplomacy. It's certainly not conducive to constructive diplomacy with regard to Ukraine, but I think it is actually getting in the way of constructive diplomacy over other issues now, such as North Korea's nuclear program, for example.

Richard Gowan:

I would just draw one important comparison between Ukraine and Gaza, which I don't think everyone outside the UN always understands. I think that when most regular UN members look at Ukraine, they feel genuine concern about the loss of its territorial integrity, they feel genuine empathy for the Ukrainian people, but a lot of African or Latin American or Asian diplomats would say we just don't believe the UN can fix this. We don't believe that the UN is designed to fix a conflict that ultimately involves the veto powers and the Security Council directly or indirectly, and so we are nervous about spending too much time and too much political capital focusing on this conflict, even if that's what Washington and the Europeans would like. By contrast, when you turn to the Palestinian question, you have to remember that the UN has been debating the Palestinian question since the 1940s.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Essentially since the beginning.

Richard Gowan:

Since before the beginning, I mean since before the creation of Israel. The beginning I mean since before the creation of Israel. And there's a deep seated feeling for a lot of diplomats, especially diplomats from the Arab world, but also the global south more generally, that the UN has a special responsibility to the Palestinians. That's something that goes back decades and so when you see a war between Israel and Hamas, that's a war where a lot of UN members say the UN must act, the UN has a special responsibility, and that contrast between Ukraine and Gaza, I think, is something that a lot of outside observers don't really understand.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Granted, this is an incredibly difficult terrain and obviously they've already lost many staff members. On the other hand, when Martin Griffiths gave his farewell, he mentioned that not only was there theft of aid, but that entire trucks were being just driven off. One of the roles of the UN peacekeeping forces is actually to protect the delivery of humanitarian aid. Is there more that the UN could be doing to protect aid deliveries?

Richard Gowan:

I think, short of actually sending in military guards for the aid convoys, there is very little that the UN could do to stop the sort of aid theft that you're talking about. And the security situation for UN personnel in Gaza has been absolutely appalling since the very start of the war. I mean, I think something that UN officials worry about, and have worried about since October, is that the organization has felt pretty cut out of the real politics of solving the war, partially because Israel has immense distrust for the UN. Prime Minister Netanyahu was actually the Israeli ambassador of the UN in the 1980s. So the Israeli authorities don't trust the UN and the US has said, yes, we want the UN to provide humanitarian aid, but no, we don't want the Security Council or the, the General Assembly or the Secretary General to have any role in really defining the political solution to this conflict.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

So you believe that's why the politics have been playing out with the negotiations including Qatar and Egypt.

Richard Gowan:

Yeah, until very recently, when the US did come with a sort of fully detailed ceasefire resolution to the Security Council. The US just didn't want the UN to be playing a central role in the process. But of course this creates tensions between the US that wants to limit the UN's role, and a large majority of UN members who, as I say, feel that they should be playing a greater role.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

It's difficult to think of what conflict they're playing a central role in at the moment. The UN is actually not playing a central role in any of the because, of course, the same is exactly true of Ukraine. There's also an analogy the UN was not very present in Switzerland. That is also a separate track that Ukraine is working on with allies and partners and friendly countries. They all gathered in Switzerland. The UN really didn't have any presence there. So this is just a moment of an identity crisis at the UN.

Richard Gowan:

So if you look back at the post-Cold War history of the UN, there was a period in the 1990s where you had UN mediators from Central America to Africa, to Cambodia, playing a really crucial role in conflict resolution and in that relatively permissive moment, they had the backing most of the time of the United Security Council.

Richard Gowan:

Today, the Security Council is obviously deeply divided and it was pretty badly divided before 2022 already and the UN is being displaced or at least put into a supporting role by alternative mediators.

Richard Gowan:

Now that can be the US and Qataris dealing with the war in Gaza, but it can also be Gulf Arab countries in Sudan. It can be the African Union in many conflicts in Africa. In the case of Myanmar, asean, the Southeast Asian bloc, has taken the lead, and when you have these other actors coming forward, stepping up and saying we're going to solve the conflicts on our doorsteps, what tends to happen is that the UN doesn't disappear, but it at best plays a supporting political role and most often really just ends up focusing on humanitarian issues and humanitarian diplomacy, and that certainly is the direction of travel we've seen in the last few years. I mean, the UN has not been a leading political actor, not merely in Ukraine, but also in Ethiopia, in Myanmar, now, to a very great extent, in Sudan, and other players, some of whom are qualified, some of whom are less qualified, are stepping up to sort of fill this void.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

The UN has also gone into should we say, more niche areas. I know artificial intelligence everyone's talking about that now, so perhaps it's just the theme of the moment. I wonder if that's something that's best left to organizations that have more technological expertise, or does it make sense for the main world body to have a seat at the table?

Richard Gowan:

Well, I think firstly it's worth saying that there are UN officials and there are UN member states who look at this very messy security picture and sort of say, well, maybe the UN isn't going to live up to its supposed role as a arbiter of international peace and security, but we do think it can do other good work in the world. And actually for a lot of poor states that's really about development. And I would say that for the 60 to 70 poorest members of the UN, most of this stuff that we're talking about with the Security Council and Security Council reform is not that central. What they want the UN to be doing, along with organizations like the World Bank, is helping them grow economically and deal with debt.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

We spend a lot of time talking about the Security Council. You hear a lot about it in the news, for very valid reasons. Is there more hope for reform at the IMF and the World Bank?

Richard Gowan:

I think that for a lot of UN members, and especially countries from the so-called Global South, that is where they want to see change. That's where it's most important for them. That is where they want to see change. That's where it's most important for them now. If we were to focus down on washington and we were to look at the, the rules and regulations of the world bank and imf, we'd find that reforming them is pretty complicated too, and not that many people around the un actually understand those complications. But I think we can say that there are a lot of countries who would like to be talking more about development and you know a bit less about Ukraine because development feels more relevant to their needs.

Richard Gowan:

Now, when you come to the other sort of issues that you're talking about science and technology, artificial intelligence and so forth this is very unfamiliar terrain for the UN, and it's actually been a sort of pet project for Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General, to get the UN to look at the digital world, at artificial intelligence, and he has been posing the question for a long time what international regulatory frameworks do we have for these technologies? And you know this is a challenge which I think a lot of UN member states are still finding it quite difficult to process. They still don't have easy answers to that. But I think Guterres has an important point, which is if you look at how rapidly some of these technologies are evolving, if you see how massively they could disrupt a lot of societies and a lot of economies. For the UN to remain relevant in the 21st century, it should have a function in sort of managing how the technologies are used and how states work together to get the most out of technology.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, in fact, a lot of the work on the governance issues on this has been regional. I mean. So you almost have three internets now. Europe has the GDPR very strong privacy. They have their system. In the US it's a little more freewheeling. And then you have the more authoritarian countries that impose more restrictions on the freedom of digital information. So I mean, this is actually it's the same discussion we're really having with peace and security, which is are there regional solutions and regional conversations having with very different priorities or not? Can the UN function to bring those different regions in and find global compromises?

Richard Gowan:

I don't think we know yet, and I think what is certainly true in the AI space is that a lot of the big players on AI, including the US and China, have made it fairly clear that they don't want the US to regulate this incredibly important new technology, and I think even members of the European Union you know they want the EU to set standards for the use of AI.

Richard Gowan:

They don't want to defer to standards set in New York.

Richard Gowan:

It's actually really primarily smaller, poorer countries that would like to see the UN have a bigger role in this space, because they have a stake at the UN, but, to be quite honest, smaller, poorer countries don't have a lot of leverage over this conversation. So this year we're going to have something that Guterres is convening a leaders level summit in September called the Summit of the Future. One of the main areas that that is meant to address is precisely AI and new technologies, how to regulate them. But I think what we're seeing is that everyone is okay to throw out a few platitudes, say that we should harness AI to help the poor, but no one is really willing to actually let the UN regulate how these technologies are used, and UN officials get nervous because they see how rapidly these technologies are developing and how slowly UN diplomacy is moving. And you know, there are people at the UN sitting in the UN building who, I think, really do believe that AI could turn into an existential threat to humanity before there's any diplomatic agreement with how to deal with it.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

I'm glad you mentioned the smaller countries, because I mentioned three large economic blocks and they're different approaches, but perhaps that is a fourth one and with smaller countries, perhaps I don't know. Which is more important access to cutting edge technology and know-how versus access to capital, because they look at the example of China, which is obviously on a different scale. But if you look at the economic growth of China over the last 30 years and the improvements of the standard of living and it's really incredible, but it really does come down to access to technology and capital. But they have the scale to leverage that. So what you're saying is that the smaller countries want the UN to give them that little bit of a leg up that they don't have because of their size. Is that what you're saying?

Richard Gowan:

Yeah, and there's talk, for example, of setting up a UN-based fund that would sort of finance AI assistance to poorer countries, and I think it's really worth understanding why a lot of small and medium-sized countries still care about the institution, because if you're a G20 country, if you're the US or India or whatever you know, the UN may still matter to you, but ultimately you can use the G20 to shape a lot of global policies.

Richard Gowan:

If you're a G7 country, that's a club you can leverage as well. We see the BRICS expanding as more and more non-Western countries are sort of looking for influence, and the leaders of a lot of those states, I think you know they'll pay due deference to the UN, but they don't necessarily care that much about it because they have other venues where they can discuss issues like finance or technology. But if you're a smaller country or even a middle-sized country, you're not going to get more than occasional invitations to those clubs, and so actually you have a real interest in solutions to global problems being sorted out through the UN, because ultimately, at the UN, you may not be a huge player, but you are a player, and so what I see at the moment on a lot of files is it's really the small states at the UN, led by some very effective voices of the small states like Singapore, who are the ones standing up for the institution and are saying we have to protect this institution, even though bigger powers may think that it's now quite marginal to that interest.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Perhaps that also explains why so many smaller countries and in regions far from Europe did support Ukraine, because to a smaller country the rule of law is imperative.

Richard Gowan:

I had a colleague break down the data on who voted in support of Ukraine in 2022. And, unsurprisingly, democracies are more likely to support Ukraine than not. But actually the most telling factor was the size of the country. The smaller the country, the more likely it was to support Ukraine's territorial integrity, because for a lot of small states, it is the UN Charter and it is that UN Charter-based commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity that is meant to guarantee their survival.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

I did want to also ask you about nuclear nonproliferation both in Iran and North Korea obviously different background stories. You mentioned North Korea. How do you counter the fact that Russia is defending the interests of North Korea on the Security Council?

Richard Gowan:

Well, I think this is incredibly worrying and it's worth saying. The UN and the Security Council have only ever been one part of the international arms control architecture. Traditionally, the US and the Soviet Union did not negotiate key arms control deals through the UN. They did it bilaterally. Negotiate key arms control deals through the UN, they did it bilaterally.

Richard Gowan:

But the UN hosts the non-proliferation treaty meetings, which are key to the international nuclear architecture, and the Security Council has played a really important role in recent decades in specifically sanctioning the Iranians and the North Koreans over their nuclear programs. And the fact that this year we've seen the Russians veto the monitoring mechanism for sanctions on North Korea, the fact that we're seeing a real breakdown between the US and Russia and China over how to deal with North Korea is, I think, part of a much broader breakdown of international cooperation on managing nuclear weapons. And in a period of increased international competition, I think that the UN is going to struggle to persuade nuclear states not to renew their arsenals, not to update their arsenals, and I think the UN's importance as a venue for disarmament talks is definitely under strain and that, I think, is one of the most terrifying aspects of the period of global instability that we're going through.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Is the UN equipped to look at these more modern threats Drone warfare, cyber warfare, the jamming of GPS, threats to satellites, security in space? Does the UN have the mechanisms to confront rapid technological changes?

Richard Gowan:

No, absolutely not. And this is again one of the scenes that Antonio Guterres has been trying to press home through some of his policy papers, which is that the UN, it, struggles to deal with civil wars in places like South Sudan, but it has the toolkit to deal with the proliferation of drones or the use of AI in warfare. There are UN discussion tracks, there are meetings in Vienna and Geneva that may touch on these issues, but they clearly are not equal to the again, to the rapidity of change and the scale of the threats involved. And so, yeah, we're entering a very different world of conflict, with new tools, but also, obviously, a new picture of strategic competition involving the US, russia and China. And the UN toolbox for dealing with these problems is still really largely the toolbox that it had in the 1960s or 1970s. It can do peacekeeping, it can do mediation, it can do humanitarian aid, but can it deal with the sort of war that we might see fought between China and the US? I mean no.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Should it be focused on Sudan and Haiti? Myanmar? There are many conflicts around the world that don't get the press headlines that the UN has been able to do more with in the past. Does it spread too thin?

Richard Gowan:

I think the UN is spread quite thin, and this is a debate you often hear around UN headquarters.

Richard Gowan:

Should we be following the lead from Guterres and thinking about the big picture, thinking about future threats, or should the organization really just stick to its knitting and try and sort out a few of the very urgent, very bloody conflicts that we see today?

Richard Gowan:

I think there are quite a lot of people around the UN who worry that, to be blunt, guterres has spent a little too much time thinking about the future and not enough time doing the painstaking, slow, often unsuccessful work of mediation. In some of these cases, there is a sense that he doesn't fully invest in conflict resolution on a day-to-day basis. But I think, looking at the broader scheme of things, in a sense the UN has to do both. Looking at the broader scheme of things, in a sense the UN has to do both. You can't just focus on gangs in Haiti and ignore the sort of changing nature of warfare. You do have to be trying to look at the big picture, but at the same time you have to be trying to deal with the crises of the moment, and the UN is a huge organization with many different arms dealing with many different problems. It should be able to manage these different streams of work at the same time.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

How important are some of the big elections that are going now. You recently wrote a piece called the Future of British Multilateralism. There's the election in the UK, major winds of change in France. We don't know what's going to happen in the US in the fall. Things are on edge now, really, in the world of mult in France. We don't know what's going to happen in the US in the fall. Things are on edge now, really, in the world of multilateralism. Isn't that uncertainty at some of the major powers going to create more worries?

Richard Gowan:

Well, it's pretty striking when the countries we know as the P3, the Western Permanent Members of the Security Council Britain, france and the US are all going through some pretty crazy elections. It may be a bit much to sort of say Britain, france and the US are all going through some pretty crazy elections. It may be a bit much to sort of say well, you know, they should be behaving more responsibly in the Security Council when all three countries are actually dealing with sort of great internal change.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Or, as we say in the US, all politics is local.

Richard Gowan:

All politics is very local, you know. I think actually, of the three elections, the one that is least likely to have a huge impact on the UN is the British one. Actually, I think that a Labour government and we're speaking on the eve of the British election I think we can assume it will be a Labour government. I mean, I think it will probably invest a bit more rhetorically in the UN. It will try and bolster British development aid, british development aid, but on a lot of issues, such as support to Ukraine, there will be a lot of continuity between the Tories and the Starmer government. The tone will change but the substance won't change that much.

Richard Gowan:

The French election I think the impact is much less certain, but at least in the short term, it does seem quite probable that President Macron will be facing more constraints both at home but also constraints on his foreign policy agenda. And you know France has had a lot of difficulties at the UN recently, including seeing UN peacekeepers being thrown out of its former colony in Mali, and I do wonder whether France is going to have sufficient political bandwidth to invest in UN diplomacy as intensively as it often has in times gone by. But both of these problems are piddling compared with what would happen if we get a second Trump administration.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, you were here for the first Trump administration and now the Biden administration, but of we get a second Trump administration. Well, you were here for the first Trump administration and now the Biden administration, but of course the second Trump administration might be very different than the first.

Richard Gowan:

We don't know exactly what Trump would do at the UN, but we have some fairly good ideas. We know he would pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. We know that he would leave UN bodies like the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and we know that because that's what he did last time, so we can assume that he will do that again. I think there's a huge amount of concern at very high levels in the UN that radical anti-multilateral Republicans will also absolutely slash US contributions to the UN budget. The US is already way behind on its payments to the UN because of holdups in Congress, but a Trump administration might freeze very large amounts of money for the UN.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

We should also explain that these contributions are based on GDP, so the US is the largest contributor, china would be the second, and so forth.

Richard Gowan:

So the US and China would account for a huge amount of the budget, so obviously if the money stops flowing from the US, there may just not be money for peacekeepers and there may not be money for mediators, so I think that financial concern looms very large. And then, when it comes to sort of bodies like the Security Council, I think we could assume that the US would adopt a very confrontational approach towards the Chinese in particular. That was something we saw towards the end of Trump's first term. Beyond that, though, you start to get into a lot of speculation, because Trump has said that he will improve relations with Russia. If he's serious about that, that could actually ease some of the tensions we're talking about in the Security Council, but that might come at a very, very high price for Ukraine and for a lot of US allies.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, that's an excellent point. I have heard from some diplomats that the frank discussions they have behind closed doors in the Security Council I mean, it gets very rough between the US and Russia, but it's also one of the few places that they do talk. So maybe the Security Council is actually a less important venue for US and Russia, if in fact he does open up new channels between Trump and Putin, because right now that is one of the few places where they do talk to each other. But you're right, it could come at a very high price.

Richard Gowan:

Just imagine if you're President Zelensky, if you're sitting in Kiev. The nightmare scenario is that the US and Russians come to the Security Council with a resolution setting out a framework for a ceasefire in Ukraine, that the Trump administration would necessarily go that far. There are lots of other obstacles to better Russian-US relations, but I think that's certainly a nightmare vision that a lot of European diplomats have at least envisaged.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

And it's not only the Kiev administration and the other capitals. It's the soldier sitting on the front line in the Donbass wondering if they're going to have a country anymore, because it's all really going to be decided in the building where we're sitting now.

Richard Gowan:

Yeah, I mean. But again, I think one should keep in mind that while Trump might want to improve relations with Russia, as I say you know, most of the signs are that he will take a very hard line on China. So you start to get into some weird territory. It's possible for Trump to reconcile with Russia and the UN while also piling on pressure on Russia's Chinese friends. I mean, we start to enter a set of scenarios that is very, very hard to grasp mentally but maybe are reality in just over six months from now.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Right, well, actually I wanted to end on a lighter tone question, but you know I was thinking about a certain type of dystopian sci-fi film where the protagonist noticed something a little off in his morning commute and by lunchtime it's a full-blown zombie apocalypse. The UN is almost inevitably central. What would you expect if we had the full-blown zombie apocalypse tomorrow? What would the response be at the UN, you know?

Richard Gowan:

in a sense we sort of had a trial run of that with COVID.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Right.

Richard Gowan:

And I'm afraid the results were not all that encouraging.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

Well, in fact, the solutions came from federal governments or regional alliances like the European Union.

Richard Gowan:

It was very striking that the UN did not really play a central part in sort of organizing a grand international response to a pandemic, and one does rather suspect that if you had a zombie apocalypse, everyone would protect their own and forget the global good. There's actually a novel that was written by a Czech author, I think, about the League of Nations, the UN's predecessor, in which he imagines I think it's an army of rampaging lizards or newts humanity and he describes how the League of Nations sort of ends up having a futile debate about whether to do a diplomatic deal with the newts and I mean there are also people around the UN. There is one school of thinking that I call catastrophe multilateralism. Lisa. We'll only ever really get true global cooperation when we realize exactly how bad climate change is and how challenging AI is. Maybe you need some major natural disasters to really hammer that home.

J. Alex Tarquinio:

The war of the worlds. I mean to use a different type of sci-fi subgenre. It's the war of the worlds idea that a shared global catastrophe will bring humanity together. I mean that is the $64 million question. Does a shared global catastrophe bring humanity together or does it drive it apart into regional associations? And that will determine if the UN is actually useful in that scenario.

Richard Gowan:

It's the sort of question that Secretary General Guterres likes to ask. He talks about the need for better coordination, but at the end of the day, I think we know that human nature does not always lend itself towards good diplomatic cooperation in an extreme crisis. But who knows, maybe we will see, or maybe we will get lucky and never have to find out.

Frank Radford:

And that's it from the Delegates' Lounge. We'd like to thank our esteemed guests, who have graciously allowed us to share their hard-earned insights into what really matters. And then there's you, our listeners, who we hope are sufficiently edified to clamor for more of the same. Do drop in for a weekly episode on Thursday, or, from time to time if we're on the road, for special events, in which case there'll be a bonus episode. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and, if you like what you've heard, please take a moment to rate or review the show, as it helps others who share your abiding interest in world affairs to find their way to the Delegates Lounge. You can connect with us on many popular social media platforms or reach out to us directly at infothedelicatesloungecom. We're a small team so we can't respond to every message, but we will read them. Our show this week was written and produced by the host and by yours truly executive producer, frank Radford. Until next time, keep calm and curious.