The U.S. took over the presidency of the UN Security Council for the month of August yesterday, and seems dead set on making it as much of a circus as the British presidency did in July.
One of the first issues taken up will be food insecurity, with Secretary of State Tony Blinken presiding over a meeting on Aug. 3. “We know food security is national security,” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council yesterday. “And we know without a shadow of a doubt it is within our power to feed the world and end famine,” she said in a flourish of sophistry—no mention of the starvation that U.S. sanctions are causing in Afghanistan, for example. According to NPR, Thomas-Greenfield singled out Russian President Vladimir Putin as the alleged main cause of famine, because of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
So, tomorrow’s meeting won’t be so much about preventing famine as it will be about accusing Russia of waging a war on food. “Russia has launched a full-scale assault on the world’s breadbasket, and it is dead set on depriving the world of Ukraine’s grains,” Thomas-Greefield said.
Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy accused the U.S. of attempting to impose its own will on the council in remarks to the media. “[U]nfortunately, our U.S. colleagues are starting the Presidency from the wrong foot, if I may use this expression. The task of the President is to get a common position and to agree on one so the President of the Security Council is the first among the equals. It’s not his/her task to impose his/her position or that of his/her allies on the rest of the membership. Maybe it is quite okay in the ‘rules-based international order,’ but it’s not okay given the traditions and the practice that we have in the Council, which we are guarding….
“As for the reaction of members of the Security Council, yes, everybody was disappointed [by the lack of unity on the working program]. We ourselves are disappointed because we never expected that our U.S. colleagues would put their national priorities and their position on top of the interests of the Security Council.” (https://russiaun.ru/en/news/stakeout_010823)
