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UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 1 Of 15 Image Source: @Sidhant on X Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 22, with a speech that framed the moment as a choice between two kinds of world. "We are called to choose between multilateralism or unilateralism, democracy or extremism, sovereignty or subordination," Lula told world leaders, speaking shortly before US President Donald Trump took the same podium. It was the tenth time Lula had opened the debate, a role Brazil has held by custom since the 1950s. He said it was the most critical moment for the United Nations since he first addressed the Assembly in 2003, and that the feeling driving him was indignation. His sharpest words were reserved for the rules of global trade. "The pillars of multilateralism are being corroded. The World Trade Organization is on life support," he said. "When governments capitulate in t...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 2 Of 15 Image Source: @RTErdogan Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan returned to the UN General Assembly with the slogan that has defined his speeches for more than a decade, and a proposal that goes further than most calls for Security Council reform. "We must acknowledge that a system in which the will of more than 190 countries is subject to the whim of just five countries is not a fair system, and it is not capable of fully inspiring or establishing trust either," Erdoğan said on the opening day of the General Debate of the 81st session, Tuesday, September 22. "The world is bigger than five." Erdoğan turned the phrase into a slogan in his first General Assembly speech as president in 2014 and has returned to it repeatedly since. This year he paired it with a call, according to reports of the speech, to abolish the veto held by the five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, ...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 3 Of 15 File Photo/Representational: Via: @alexstubb on X Finland's President Alexander Stubb offered one of the clearest Western readings of the multipolar shift at the 81st UN General Assembly, acknowledging that power is moving away from the West while warning that a multipolar world without cooperation will end in conflict. "We seem to be going the other way: towards a non-cooperative multipolar world order," Stubb told the General Debate on Tuesday, September 22. "This order, as it turns out, is based on zero-sum deals, transactions, and unrestrained power. This is a short-sighted approach." Such an order, he said, "will ultimately lead to conflict. It will turn against us, whether you represent a great power, a middle power, or a small state, like Finland." His diagnosis echoed the Secretary-General's warning earlier that day that multipolarity could take the form of fragmentation and transactionalism....