As the UN General Assembly gets under way, the world’s peace record is in flux

The pandemic casts a shadow but we should count our diplomacy wins at this year’s 75th-anniversary event, writes Mary Dejevsky

The United Nations is (virtually) celebrating its 75th anniversary this year (Getty/iStock)

Mid-September, and the United Nations General Assembly is the latest landmark of the calendar year to have been transferred to the virtual world by the coronavirus. Which is to be regretted for at least three reasons.

First, while modern technology makes international gatherings in some ways simpler and greener than before – no national leader needs to get on a plane – it is an excuse for the rest of the world to take even less notice of the UN General Assembly than usual. Second, the UN has reached its 75th anniversary this year, which – for all the organisation’s well-known failings – should have been a cause for more than virtual celebration. And third, because the conjunction of the UN anniversary and the pandemic has prompted a discussion about the future of multilateralism, international cooperation, and peace-making that deserves a wider hearing than it is currently receiving.

The genesis of this debate was the rush to national and even regional barricades in the early stages of the pandemic. We saw it in China’s initial reticence about the outbreak in Wuhan (whether or not this is where the virus originated). We saw it in the borders that were re-erected across the European Union and in the reluctance of many countries to share precious equipment and intensive care beds (Germany has just apologised to Italy for its early unhelpfulness on this score). And we saw it in the way that the United States, New Zealand and other countries tried to cut themselves off from the rest of the world.

It fed into a discussion that had already begun, however, thanks to Donald Trump’s victory four years ago for “America First”. As seen from Europe, in particular, Trump was inaugurating a new isolationist age, with all forms of multilateralism being challenged – from international alliances, to arms control, trade organisations and, of course, the World Health Organisation, which the US said it was leaving just as the pandemic in the US reached its height.

So far, the general lines of discussion on multilateralism have tended to pessimism, at least for those who favour participation and cooperation over going it alone. The future, it had started to seem even  before the pandemic, would be one of populist leaders, nationalism, and everyone for him or herself. Trump and Brexit were bracketed together as signs of what was to come. Would a Joe Biden presidency reverse that? Maybe not – if the trend was bigger than one seemingly maverick president.

Is such pessimism justified? Is multilateralism really dying, or even dead? And if it is, is anything emerging to replace it?

In fact, there is already something of a rethink in some quarters about the protectionism that broke out at the start of the pandemic. The anniversary address to the UN General Assembly this week by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was more collaborative than might have been expected from Bejing’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy of recent months. Russia is periodically offering to share its vaccine research; though in the west, at least, this has been widely spurned.

The European Union is taking a new look at how its 27 members cooperate on health issues. Before the pandemic, healthcare was the preserve of national governments, in part because health systems across the EU were so different and in part because of the attachment that citizens feel towards their own healthcare systems, and the feeling that national governments needed to be accountable. This is also one reason why there was so little cooperation when the pandemic first started to take hold. The actual experience of the pandemic, however, has started to change that, with everyone able to see who has performed best. Statistical comparisons may be deceptive, but there are now moves to coordinate health policy and procurement more closely across the EU.

As in so much, the UK currently looks like an exception, with the pandemic accentuating the effects of devolution, and the devolved governments coming into their own. At the other end of the spectrum, there are moves at the UN to reinvigorate the World Health Organisation in some form. It is probably too soon to judge whether the post-pandemic world will be more or less collaborative than it is now.

The pandemic casts a disproportionate shadow, but it is not all that has been going on. Just as with the pandemic, the tendency towards protectionism, disintegration and conflict should not be exaggerated. The balance sheet is not as bleak as is often presented. Yes, the United States and China are vying for supremacy in trade and at sea, and this could be the global conflict of the future. And, yes, parts of the Middle East – in particular – remain ravaged by war. Syria is a long way from peace, and skirmishes between US and Russian forces do not bode well (though Russia’s military presence in Syria is legal under UN definitions, while the US presence is not). There are few signs of hope from Yemen or Libya either. And yet...

While it seems absurd for anyone even to suggest that Donald Trump be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has a diplomatic and peace-making record over four years that at least equals that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, and far exceeds that of George W Bush.  

There has been more progress towards stability in the Middle East than for many a long year, thanks to the formal recognition of Israel by two Gulf states, the UAE and Bahrain. The so-called “two-state solution” for settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict may be as far away as ever, but Israel is suddenly more secure than it has been perhaps since its foundation, and secure countries are less likely to lash out and more likely to be amenable to compromise. This is not peace and it is not justice for Palestinians, but it is an advance that can be built on.  

Talks are beginning between the Afghan government and the Taliban – a prospect that would once have been dismissed as both undesirable and impossible. The talks will be difficult; they may fail in the first instance. But this is progress that was once unimaginable.

Sometimes, there is an advantage to just stepping aside. Trump’s qualms about Nato and the US making a disproportionate contribution to European security has forced Europe to take more responsibility. The absence of any strong US voice on either the conflict in eastern Ukraine or the current protests in Belarus may be having the effect of staying Russia’s hand. We shall see.

Perhaps the greatest difference between the world four years ago and now, however, is the relative calm that prevails around the Korean peninsula. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un still makes the occasional bellicose pronouncement and fires, or misfires, the odd rocket. But the mortal threat – the fear that a nuclear war could start from Pyongyang – has receded and not just because it has been obscured by the pandemic. Trump took a risk, and it is a risk that has paid off in opened communications and a less paranoid Kim.

Almost nothing Trump has achieved internationally owes anything to multilateralism as it is commonly understood. Yet could it perhaps have the effect of multilateralism in another way? Not just America first but a recognition that anyone engaging in negotiation will put their own interests first. Any US president starts with the unique advantage that the US is more powerful than anyone else, and Trump is often condemned for what is termed his transactional approach that leaves ideological considerations aside.

However, if his wheeler-dealing encourages talking, defuses conflicts, and ends up giving both sides something of what they want, is this not a positive result? Indeed, whisper it very quietly, is this not what all diplomacy is about? Europeans and others may like to dress it up in more flowery language, and talk hopefully of “values”, but it comes down in the end to national interests – and those interests can often be shared to common advantage, whether the enemy is a pandemic or an unpredictable nuclear-armed state.