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THE United Nations General Assembly functions as an air-pump: it inflates the egos of national leaders. The UNGA provides them a stage in New York where, (in Shakespeare’s words), they can “strut and fret … full of sound and fury”, before an audience of 193 peer countries.
In 1945, the United Nations was established by the survivors of two world wars which, as the UN Charter’s preamble admits, “brought untold sorrow to mankind”. Its predecessor — the League of Nations — had been created in 1920 by the victors of World War I. By locating the League in Geneva, they hoped to assure member states of both neutrality and access.
The League lasted 26 years. The present UN, even after 80 years, has shown that, instead of resolving conflicts between member states, it has itself degenerated into a war zone.
If president Woodrow Wilson is remembered as the father of the League, history will regard President Donald Trump as the UN’s undertaker. His combative speech to the UNGA on Sept 23 gave equal time to Iran, Palestine, the Nobel Peace Prize, and anger at an errant escalator and a faulty tele-prompter. He consigned UN member states to a premature purgatory — “Your countries are going to hell” — and warned the UN of a US-assisted euthanasia.
The UN has degenerated into a war zone.
Previous UNGAs have endured harangues which were provocative, virulent and lengthy. In 1960, Fidel Castro of Cuba spoke uninterruptedly for four and a half hours, criticising “global inequality and US foreign policy”. During the same UNGA, Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR spoke for 140 minutes. Later, he interrupted UK’s prime minister Harold Macmillan by banging his fists on the table, not his shoe as the Western media alleged. In 1940, British propagandists doctored newsreel images of Hitler by looping a German Army film, to show him “dancing a jig” after the French surrender at Compiegne.
Speeches at the UNGA are meant less for the audience present (Trump had a full house; Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a depleted hall) than for a domestic electorate. Trump, however, broadened his one-to-one skirmishes in the Oval office to a mass confrontation in the UNGA with the world.
He intends to use the location of the UN headquarters in New York’s midtown Manhattan as another barb. Some delegations have been denied visas to attend the UNGA. (The Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas circumvented this by addressing the UNGA by video.) Colombian President Gustavo Petro had his US visa cancelled after he made a “reckless and incendiary” speech to pro-Palestine protesters outside the UN HQ.
The right of member countries to go unhindered to the UN HQ is enshrined in Article V, Section 11 of the UN-US Agreement of 1947. It provides that “the federal, state or local authorities of the United States shall not impose any impediments to transit to or from the headquarters”. Section 12 underscores this by adding that “the provisions of Section 11 shall be applicable, irrespective of the relations existing between the Governments of the persons referred to in that section and the Government of the United States”.
In 1971, although the People’s Republic of China had not been formally recognised by the United States (it had been admitted to the UN), the US permitted Huang Hua (the PRC’s permanent representative to the UN) to travel freely to New York.
Some member countries have suggested that the UN should shift its business ‘temporarily’ to Geneva. Practical perhaps, but a sure death knell for the UN. It will atrophy there, like the defunct League of Nations.
For Pakistan, the UN offers two advantages: it has kept the issue of a plebiscite in Jammu & Kashmir simmering since 1948, and the proximity of New York to Washington, D.C. has proved a useful boon. Never more so than today, when President Trump has given Pakistan unprecedented access to his White House. In the 1970s, India resented Nixon’s ‘tilt’ towards Yahya Khan. Today, it must be apoplectic at seeing a US president bend over backwards to entertain a Pakistani prime minister and its field marshal in the Oval Office.
This camaraderie has proved a successful repellent. It caused PM Narendra Modi to avoid this year’s UNGA. He left it to his External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to pummel Pakistan. The EAM presented Bharat’s three alliterative concepts: Atmanirbharta or self-reliance; Atmaraksha or securing oneself; and Atmavishwas or self-confidence. He pointedly ignored PM Shehbaz Sharif’s earlier conciliatory offer of “a composite, comprehensive and result-oriented dialogue with India on all outstanding issues”.
EAM Jaishankar and the Indian cricket team at the recent 2025 Asian Cup matches need to recall (despite PM Modi’s taunting tweet) the fourth unspoken ‘A’: Ahimsa or nonviolence towards all living beings — yes, even Pakistani cricketers.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2025
