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The Divided Nations | feat. Ben Cohen · FDD Morning Brief

0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Friday, September 25th, the multi-front war in the Middle East is now 1,084 days old.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Jonathan Chanzer.
0:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the FTD Morning Brief.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the environmentalist out there should be fuming because a ton of hot air was released this week at the United Nations.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And quite frankly, I cannot think of one single speech that mattered to me.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, BB took some solid shots at Qatar and Turkey and Mamdaani, but you could watch the FTD morning brief for that.
0:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And quite frankly, BB's speech was not really intended for us.
0:47
[SPEAKER_00]: His tough talk was intended for his constituents back home in Israel with elections just one month away.
0:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But back to the UN, this week has only confirmed what I think we all already knew.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: This multilateral institution that we created in the aftermath of the worst wars the world has ever known is now a waste of time and space.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a weapon of mass discussion.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: In my view, we're going to need to reform this thing quickly or just burn it down.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: More on all of that in just a few minutes with today's guests.
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Saudi civil defense issued an alert yesterday for the holy city of Mecca, along with a handful other cities across the Saudi kingdom.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The alerts were lifted shortly thereafter, a Saudi military spokesman later explained that no fewer than six ballistic missiles for shot.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: All six were launched by the run-backed Houthis in Yemen.
1:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Two things to note here are folks.
1:40
[SPEAKER_00]: First, the Houthis have clearly set their sights on Saudi Arabia.
1:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Ballistic missiles are no joke.
1:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor are the gains the Houthis recently notched along the Red Sea coast.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: This now yielded a distinct advantage in their bid to control the Babelman-Deb Strait.
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Watch this crucial waterway.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Second, the silence from the Muslim world about threats to Mecca, well, it's deafening.
2:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Mecca is home to the holiest mosque in Islam.
2:05
[SPEAKER_00]: One might think that this would be too much to bear for the very same countries that have been halting about a purported genocide, somehow being perpetrated by Israel against Muslims in Gaza.
2:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, it's the sound of crickets from them as Saudi Arabia takes a ton of incoming fire.
2:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a double standard here.
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Craven.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weak, it's nauseating, and for people trying to make sense of this war since October 7th, it feels like someone dropped a dumb truck's worth of crazy bills into the water supply.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: The Saudis are scrambling for answers, fuel if any are likely to come from the Muslim countries so much for Muslim unity, unless the topic is whether Israel has a right to defend itself.
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: What a load.
2:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, for your headlines, headline one, China ends reportedly sent tons of dual-use components to the Islamic Republic of Iran for use in missiles and drones.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: That includes missile guidance systems, engines, and electric motors, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that from January to June of this year, Beijing made about $1300 deliveries, including one ship and carrying over $6 million worth of drone parts.
3:13
[SPEAKER_00]: on a single day, we can now see China's attempt to portray itself as a disinterested party or even a peacemaker for what it is, a heaping pile of bull fertilizer.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if this is registered yet among the countries of the region, but it's high time for them to get down off the fence.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There can be no more hedging.
3:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Beijing is an enemy to all of the countries of the Middle East except for Iran.
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to fall in behind the United States in this great power competition.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: that is heating up by the day.
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Headline 2 Iran is once again threatening to attack its neighbors this time going after regional airports.
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yesterday, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said that Tehran will paralyze airports in any country that cooperates with the United States and Operation Economic Fury.
4:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The backstory here is that earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Besit,
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Runny and Airlines, first maritime now airports, each a threat to the international order that the UN says that it vows to uphold, but there is no action by the international community, only bloviation at Turtle Bay.
4:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're sensing a theme.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: headline three turkey agreed to withdraw from a military base in Northern Iraq and in control back to Baghdad in exchange a rock committed to crack down on armed groups that anchor up considers a threat namely groups connected to the Kurdish workers party, otherwise known as the PKK.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Turkish president, Redgip, Tyap, Erwan, and Iraqi prime minister, Ali Alzidey announced the deal after a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's a good thing, so long as it is not an excuse to just crack
4:58
[SPEAKER_00]: which I fear could be the aim of both countries.
5:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Headline 4, I mentioned the Saudis just a few minutes ago in those missiles that were shot down.
5:05
[SPEAKER_00]: As it turns out, it was the Greeks who shot down at least one ballistic missile and one drone over Saudi Arabia.
5:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And guess what?
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They did the American-made Patriot air defense system.
5:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Greece, well, it's been operating a patriot battery in Saudi Arabia since 2021, and it has now used it five times since the Iran war erupted in February.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't ignore the quiet role of Greece in this war folks.
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They are among the few that have actually taken a stand.
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: They put their money where their mouth is, I wish more countries in Europe would do the same.
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, enough news, enough hot air for me.
5:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to talk about hot air from other places.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time for the main event.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's guest is FDD's own Ben Cohen.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a research fellow and a senior editor with FDD.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: His big focus is international organizations.
5:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'd best believe that he's been keeping close tabs and all the goings on at Unga.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: as we call it, as well as the race to replace Antonio Guterres as the UN Secretary General.
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what did this week teach us about the future of the organization that has largely failed to do its job for which it was created and who is the top candidate to take over this family institution?
6:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Tough questions.
6:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's bring Ben on to the show and find out.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the FTD Morning Brief Ben Cohen.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to be here, Joan, I'll try and keep the whole set so a minimum.
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, come on, we're, you know, we're pervellers of hot air.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I want to talk to you about the sort of the high level discussions, the speeches that came on, that we were all watching on TV or maybe watching with one eye or maybe not watching it all because it is a bunch of hot air.
6:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to just do a quick lightning round of kind of your quick takes.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: on the key leaders that we watched on this program and I don't know how they did.
6:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's start Donald Trump 30 seconds or less.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Donald Trump didn't say anything that wasn't expected, but he was extremely forceful and he did manage to address a wide array of issues, including Gaza, and it was a welcome tonic, frankly, to hear his view of Gaza, his reminder of the horrors
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: with everybody else who focused really on Israeli alleged Israeli offences and did the usual habit of portraying the Palestinians simply as passive victims?
7:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I think in UN terms, what was actually significant about Trump's speech was that he addressed the ICC, the International Criminal Court.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: The U.S. has taken a very dim view, understandably, of the ICC.
7:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't want to see arrest warrants against American officers or American personnel deter with its allies like Israel.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So Trump issued a very forceful call for countries to resign from the ICC.
7:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And for essentially from the ICC, which by the way, John, I would say is in principle a good idea that has been appalling the executed.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And he wants to
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He wanted to see, he wants to see the ICC at least in its present form dismantled.
8:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I welcome its obliteration.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And okay, uh, moving on to, uh, BB, um, you heard my, I take on it.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Agreed, disagree.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I pretty much agree with your take.
8:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually think John I mean you said that there was some election airing there and I think that's true but I also think that BB did actually make an effort yesterday to speak for the state of Israel and not just for himself or for his electoral ambitions and I think he did he did strike some some important points.
8:42
[SPEAKER_01]: particularly calling the delegations that walked out, dozens of them at the top of his speech, moral cowards.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think you've got to remember, we've heard from some really appalling leaders this week.
8:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We've heard from a dictator like Odoan.
8:55
[SPEAKER_01]: We've heard a whining speech from Iran's Masood Pazeskaya and the president.
9:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We heard an appalling speech from from Katza Zemir,
9:06
[SPEAKER_01]: not mentioning, of course, the fact that Qatar is actually in a part-eyed state built on slave labor, nobody walked out of these speeches.
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They only walked out of a BB speech.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think he addressed that one very well.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, in terms of the substance, you didn't say anything I didn't expect to hear.
9:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I would agree.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think, I mean, he was effective in the fact that he stuck a finger in the eye of literally every one of his Rails enemies.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He just, like, I mean, just slapped each one of them individually.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess maybe that was the upshot of it.
9:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think that this was definitely for the benefit of those watching at home.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like he was changing anybody's mind.
9:43
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I mean, even when he's done this in the past and he's had really important things to convey like, well, the status of Iran's nuclear program.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he's changing anybody's mind either.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But OK.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about a couple of the thugs that you just mentioned, Erdogan speech.
9:58
[SPEAKER_00]: How did that go?
10:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think if you were out of one, you think it went extremely well.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, again, there was a lot of focus on Gaza there.
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The actually, the language he used was relatively moderate compared to some of the other things that he said.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: He did talk about genocide, but there were no attacks on Zionism, there was no channeling of antisemitic tropes, which is pretty much a standard fair with, with Erdogan.
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, you know, you wouldn't have any sense of the fact that Turkey's economy is collapsing.
10:40
[SPEAKER_01]: that Turkey's interventions in Syria are leading to more destabilisation there and potentially the persecution of national minorities in Syria.
10:50
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I think Erdogan would have been very grateful that when Syria did come up with the GA, all the focus was on Israel's interventions there.
10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, nobody mentioned Turkish intervention in Syria and the impact that that has had particularly on the Kurdish areas there.
11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and just to be clear, the Turks are effectively the occupiers of Syria.
11:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just be real about this and so far, nobody seems to want to call them out on it.
11:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of people that nobody calls out, you got the the Amir of Qatar getting up.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a guy of course representing 330,000 people standing up and acting like a world leader at the UN.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Did he say anything surprising?
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: No, again, he didn't.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the key issues look Qatar as we know because at FDD, we spend a lot of time analyzing Qatar and exposing what it's doing.
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: There was no knowledge of the fact that Qatar hosts Hamas, that it is funded Hamas, that it has closed relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words,
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Qatar was allowed to use that platform with anger to portray itself as this responsible, civic-minded state.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The image that institutions like the Qatar foundation want you to believe about Qatar, not the reality of Qatar.
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the reality of Qatar is, well, it's not even complicated.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just disgusting and nauseating.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, last and least, what about Masood Pizashkiah, the president of the failing republic of Iran?
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, again, I mean, to listen to Pasechke and you would get the impression that Iran is this entirely reasonable state that just wants to sit down and negotiate.
12:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that you had the standard deflections from Pasechke and this year.
12:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, nothing that we haven't heard before.
12:47
[SPEAKER_01]: particularly this focus on Israel's supposed story of nuclear weapons and this sort of whining refrain, why are they focusing on us, why are they not focusing on Israel?
13:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But in terms of addressing what Iran can actually do to provide stability in the region, nothing.
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So no mention of proxies in Iraq, no mention of proxies in Lebanon, Iran as far as he's concerned and channeling the regime's propaganda is this responsible peaceful state that is being victimized by this satanic, and I use that word deliberately, this satanic combination of America and Israel.
13:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, we are, of course, the great Satan and the little Satan, respectively, I'm sort of bare that proudly here at the Great Satan, of course.
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: In the end.
13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I've got two agencies that we've all been watching.
13:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We've watched them here on the morning brief for quite a while, and just wondering if anything came up on either of these, I'm talking about Unra out of Gaza,
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the UN Relief and Works Agency, is the so-called Palestinian refugee agency.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's the other one.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The other failing one in this space is Unifill, the interim forces in Lebanon.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we have a sense of the fate of either of these?
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: They both come under an enormous amount of fire.
14:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let me start first with UnraJone.
14:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the outlook for Unra for
14:21
[SPEAKER_01]: for months has been extremely bleak.
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: When unofficial's arrived in New York this week, anti-onio-guterres, the UN Secretary General issued a warning that uno was $100 million short in its budget, they did yesterday have a sort of plenary meeting that was chaired by Spain.
14:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Spain is one of the countries in Europe.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: that has been extremely hostile towards Israel and very energetically supportive of UNRA.
14:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a lot of backslapping at this meeting yesterday and a lot of reassurances that UNRA's future was guaranteed.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But you see that the fate of UNRA is not really in UNRA's hands.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's in the hands of any institution, it's the board of peace.
15:10
[SPEAKER_01]: the institution that Trump created to bring stabilization and reconstruction to Gaza.
15:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Board of Peace has been very clear.
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, said this explicitly in a statement at the beginning of July, there is no role for UNRA in Gaza.
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think any headway from under his point of view, I don't think any headway was made in terms of pushing that back on that.
15:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we're still seeing unri-thying a slow death.
15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the reasons it remains alive is precisely because it has locked that refugee status in the Palestinians.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Palestinians are the only refugee population or descendant of refugee population.
15:54
[SPEAKER_01]: that managed to keep refugee status across the generations.
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, if you dismantle honorate, then you have this issue of, well, what is the status of these six million Palestinians with them?
16:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Which by the way, just means, well, they're treated like what they are, descendants of refugees to require assistance.
16:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, there's plenty of agencies at the UN that can handle that.
16:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And that does look like where things are being steered by the border piece.
16:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what have you been feeling?
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Unifill is a different story because Unifill is a peacekeeping operation.
16:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the oldest UN peacekeeping operations that's been in situ in Lebanon since 1978.
16:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And we really reached a milestone at the end of last year when the security council decided to draw down,
16:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So by the end of next year, by the end of 2027, the unreconcision in Lebanon, which I think is now around 12, 30,000 troops.
16:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That will have been entirely drawn down.
16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think particularly over the last 20 years.
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're talking in an entire, again, a generation here.
17:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Since the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701, in 2006, which mandates the disarmament of his boller and insists that only the Lebanese, like the Lebanese armed forces, should be the only armed force south of the Littani River towards the Israeli border, Unifill has failed magnificently.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: to deliver or mad.
17:29
[SPEAKER_01]: If anything, it's been an obstacle.
17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gotten in the way.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel has had to deal with pesky issues like, uh, unifil soldiers being wounded by fire that it trades with, with his bola.
17:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think these rallies are going to shed any tears.
17:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I think again, this is an example of action shifting from a U.N. context to an interest state context.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I mean by that is that the U.S. has been running negotiations between the Israeli and Lebanese, direct negotiations between the Israeli and Lebanese governments.
18:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea being that
18:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel clears these areas of southern Lebanon of his bola and then the Lebanese armed forces go in.
18:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, John, as you know, that has not been a smooth process at all, but I think what might take away from that is that simply a UN force is no longer needed and that in fact what the focus and the American focus in particular is on empowering the Lebanese government and the Lebanese
18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, that is along through from third, as we say, an American baseball, I know that's not probably what you grew up with.
18:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not a thing, right?
18:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we hope, of course, that the Lebanese armed forces can feel the void.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We hope that the Lebanese government can become more muscular and assert itself.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But the idea that it's going to be able to fill in.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not filling in for unifill.
18:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be filling in for the Israeli military, which is now
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, cleaning house in South Lebanon and perhaps even further north, we're going to continue to watch that.
19:03
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
19:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to pivot from the Middle East for just a second.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You crazed diplomatic push at Anga.
19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: How did that play out yesterday?
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And the days before.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think, I think, look, I think it was helpful for the Ukrainians that Zelensky was here.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he got a lot of media attention while he was here.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There was some interesting shot shared of social media of Zelensky walking in and out of the UN building and trading comments with some of the Russian journalists that were there.
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, I think the most important achievement for Ukraine was not inside the general assembly
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: it was the fact that Zelensky and Trump held a 45 minute meeting, which appears to have been pretty productive, pretty cooperative, talking a particularly about boosting Ukraine's missile defenses as the winter approaches.
20:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Zelensky said this from the UN podium and he also said this to Trump that he wants to see the war and before that freezing cold winter descends in a month or two.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what Trump was trying to extract from Zelensky and he didn't really get this was a commitment from Zelensky to no longer attack Russian energy facilities, oil refineries and sort.
20:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And Zelensky essentially said to Trump, look, if the Russian stop attacking our energy
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: attacking this.
20:32
[SPEAKER_00]: This is of course the Ukrainian leverage here.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is the only way that they're going to be able to get to a sea spires by making things painful enough for the Russians that they would actually see ground.
20:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's kind of, and I think the United States understands this pretty well, given that we're trying to kind of do the same thing with the Iranians right now, we're trying to make this painful enough for them to say enough, right?
21:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the word is for uncle in Russian or in Persian, or any of the other languages of the enemies of the West.
21:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, anyway, I'm glad you hear the things went well and it was good to see Solansky getting, well, some good airtime even on some of the conservative channels here.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that was a positive.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I want to ask you about we spend a ton of money on the UN, right, we pay one fifth.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: of the UN budget if I'm not mistaken.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, my friend, Jeff Bartos, who I hope we're going to have on maybe even next week.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: He's an ambassador working with Mike Walts at the UN.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the guy in charge of UN reform in his been cutting back on the budget.
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He's actually slashing the budget of the UN working within the organization.
21:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's great.
21:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we still have to pay, don't we?
22:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and we have actually been paying John.
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is, this is, the, the, the US basically until the beginning of this month, the, the debt was around $5 billion.
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: That's now being taken down by about a fifth.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Middle of September, about 830 million was of those arrears were paid.
22:26
[SPEAKER_01]: to the U.N. by the U.S. government.
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the vast bulk of that money goes into the U.N.'s general budget.
22:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's about another 100 million left over for peacekeeping.
22:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But the point is that the U.S. still owes the U.N. around 4 billion.
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And
22:44
[SPEAKER_01]: what what what might wall to the US ambassador has said and of course those around him like Jeff Bartos who you mentioned is you know we're not going to withhold that money indefinitely but we are going to tie payments to uh pay those payments are contingent on more reform within the U.N. and I think what they will mess that's great right I mean yeah that's all good
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: good that we want to see the reform, but the idea of spending $4 billion on this failing institution that spouts nothing but hot air.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, how does this seem worth it to you?
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Personally, no, I don't think it is.
23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that this administration, and look, the Trump administration has arguably been the most hostile U.S. administration to the UN in living memory.
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And even despite that position, the Trump administration has not said dismantle the UN defund the UN consign the UN to the trash can of history.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the U.S. does see a role for the UN, I think that, for example, last year, when the Security Council passed overwhelmingly without any vetoes, resolution 2803, which enshrined Trump's 20-point police plan for Gaza,
24:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump was very happy at that particular point and I think it was Marco Rubio saying at that time look, the UN does have an important role to play in terms of security and the security council is an extremely important forum to bring out the serial powers together.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The question that
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: comes from that, John, is does that trickle down?
24:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we therefore need all these various humanitarian agencies, all these Byzantine committees that sit inside the UN secretary, this sprawling bureaucracy?
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And the UN has made some effort to address that.
24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Good terrorist has this his own UNAT, UNAT reform scheme.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, you know, we're seeing a lot of waste and I think that's why good Sarah said earlier this year that the UN was facing imminent financial collapse.
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
24:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I'd like to see much more reform.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that that is the goal of the Trump administration.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not to destroy the thing it's to reform it, but man, we need a lot more reform.
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Last question for you, but you mentioned Antonio Guterres, the outgoing Secretary General of the United Nations, there is a race to replace him.
25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's the frontrunner?
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is really what's quite fascinating because Guterres is out of office by the end of this year.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's got about three months left in that office.
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, normally in a race for UNSG, certainly with the last two races, it's very clear who the frontrunner is at this point.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But now, right now, with this race, it's incredibly murky.
25:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's shrouded in smoke here.
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You've had, you basically have eight candidates in the pool right now.
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What happens is that the security, the 15 members of the security council, have to decide on a candidate that they want to nominate that candidate that then goes to the general assembly for approval.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: None of those eight candidates anywhere near meeting, meeting that threshold at this point.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think if you were going to talk about front runners, there were two are quickly mentioned.
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: The first is Rebecca Grinchpan.
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: She is a former Costa Rican vice president.
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: She's now the head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: She is somebody very much in the mold of Antonio Guterres.
26:26
[SPEAKER_01]: and she right now by a razor-thin margin has a lead, nine in courage votes over her next over the person right behind her, another Latin American diplomat, Carolyn Rodriguez, Burquet of Guyana.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that when you look at Rodriguez Burkets positions, you'll find that the US, this is somebody that US is likely to veto.
26:49
[SPEAKER_01]: She is very, very closely aligned with China to the point of having gone to Beijing and endorsed the UN resolution that
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: basically freezes Taiwan out of out of international institutions, she's been very supportive of Chinese efforts on artificial intelligence.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: She's called for lifting of the embargo on Cuba.
27:12
[SPEAKER_01]: She's described Israel's actions in Gaza as a variable genocide.
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I could go on.
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you get the idea.
27:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that is somebody that's going to get vetoed.
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I think finally the final point
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: The beginning of this year, there was an expectation that Raphael Grossy, who was currently the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and it's done a reasonably good job there.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a feeling that he would take over.
27:37
[SPEAKER_01]: He is actually in real trouble right now, getting more discouraged votes than encouraged votes.
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the themes that you heard at the General Assembly this week,
27:46
[SPEAKER_01]: from a lot of leaders is we need a woman as Secretary General.
27:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there's a consensus emerging.
27:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We need a Latin American woman as the next UN Secretary General.
27:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Question is, who's it going to be?
27:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I don't see, I don't think Grinchpan or Rodriguez Burkett are a sure thing yet, and there's no, there's no the else really coming up in the wings.
28:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm all for women.
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm all for people from Latin America.
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Why right now is the moment for that?
28:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure, but I guess there's a logic there within the UN that only cares you and understand.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess, well, I think we'll leave it there.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you.
28:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Ben Cohen for joining us today on the FQU.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, Ben, with you, Joan.
28:32
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's a wrap for this episode and for this week.
28:35
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29:01
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29:04
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29:06
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29:07
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29:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jonathan Chanzer signing off for FDD.