September 23: This is fine

In which, the UN tries to adjust to new global realities, Vladimir Putin changes his approach on Russia (to put it mildly), and the Democrats shift their midterm momentum into reverse.

This is fine

We’ve all seen the meme:

The room is on fire, but either because he’s an eternal optimist or just can’t even right now, the dog refuses to acknowledge reality. 

This is the image that occurred to me when looking over the headlines this week: Not a whole lot of good news and what actions/events were being reported on didn’t give me a lot of confidence that the current crop of world leaders is up to the tasks of the moment.

Arranging the deck chairs at the UN

The general meeting of the UN wrapped up this week with the high school…. I mean… high level drama observers come to expect when heads of state in an increasingly fractious world decide to sit in the same room together. 

As expected, Russia (and its absent strongman) was the favorite point of attack for many leaders who criticized Russia’s Ukraine misadventure.

Various leaders called for increased censure of the Putin regime, investigations into human rights abuses, and even a potential reshuffle of the UN Security Council.

The anti-Russia stance of the world powers was not unexpected, but gathering it all in one place carried a certain diplomatic weight that appears to already have China and North Korea on the back foot as China is trying to put some distance between itself and Putin (at least publicly) while North Korea walked back reports of its impending arms sales to Russia.

The maneuvering suggests that the US-Europe alliance against Russia is holding for now, and that the apparently ironclad commitment between Russia, China and North Korea is much more contingent than many early prognosticators believed. Of course, this doesn’t mean the war in Ukraine is about to end (more on that below), but it does indicate that the UN can still serve some diplomatic purpose, even as it may need to adapt or die in order to realize that potential.

Fiddling while the world burns

And though Ukraine was the center of attention at the UN, and it is the biggest, hottest war at the moment, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is in rest mode. In fact, what struck me this week was how NOT at rest the world is.