World in trouble, says UN chief

Our world is in big trouble, as Secretary General Ant nio Guterres put it in opening the annual General Debate on Tuesday.

The UN has never lived up to its loftier goals. It is hard to remember a time when its fundamental principles of forging common solutions for peace, supporting human rights and promoting international law have been so threatened.

Russia has trampled the UN charter with its invasion of Ukraine. Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping will bother to show up for the meeting of leaders in the Big Apple, even though they did get together last week. Recent floods in Pakistan suggest that the UN's efforts to broker deals to curbing carbon emissions are already too late for some nations.

In times of war, the UN was a hotbed of diplomacy. But those days are gone as Beijing and Moscow vetoe their Security Council vetoes to try to mediate in places like Syria and Ukraine. Russia turned council meetings into a theater of the absurd after its invasion earlier this year.

The US president Joe Biden will be on the receiving end of frank talk when he calls on the world Wednesday to stand up against the naked aggression of Moscow, national security advisor Jake Sullivan said. Biden warns that the world is dividing into a duel between the democrats and the despots.

America's critics point out that it has often appeared to infringe the principles of the United Nations itself, with its wars in Vietnam and Iraq, for example. If a return to power by former President Donald Trump, who has spun US diplomacy on its head by dissing Western allies and coddling tyrants, it could obliterate Biden's efforts to save international law.

All this explains the bleak tone of the speech of the Secretary-General, as he lamented that there was no cooperation, no dialogue, no collective problem solving. The reality is that we live in a world where dialogue and cooperation is the only path forward.