U.S. President Joe Biden used the occasion of his remarks to the UN General Assembly to push his vision of a “UN for the 21st Century,” to promote an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative, to make absurd claims about climate change (accompanied by murderous policies to “address” it), and claimed to be standing up for universal principles in promoting the threat of nuclear war with Russia.
He opened by praising himself for visiting Vietnam, making the wild claim that “For decades, it would have been unthinkable for an American president to stand in Hanoi alongside a Vietnamese leader and announce a mutual commitment to the highest level of countries partnership. But it’s a powerful reminder that our history need not dictate our future.” (A bizarre boast! The US and Vietnam re-established full diplomatic relations in 1994, and every U.S. president since then has visited Vietnam in person: Clinton in 2000, Bush in 2006, Obama in 2016, and Trump in 2019, when he also met North Korean President Kim Jong-Un.)
“I understand the duty my country has to lead in this critical moment,” Biden told the assembled nations. And part of that leadership is bringing the UN into the 21st century. But how did Biden propose doing that? He stated that he was reiterating the proposal he made last year, to support the addition of permanent and non-permanent members to the Security Council. “We need to be able to break the gridlock that too often stymies progress and blocks consensus on the Council. We need more voices and more perspectives at the table,” he said, which means “we need a way to dilute the power of Russia and China.”
He also boasted about the Summit for Democracy that the U.S. hosted. (Let us not forget that of Biden’s two leading opponents, one is subjected to four different criminal prosecutions, and the other to attempted assassination, until now without Secret Service protection.)
On international development, Biden spoke of expanded funding of the World Bank, and of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. The PGII was launched by the G7 in 2022 with much fanfare and few results. It is intended to show the world that there exists a credible alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Development Bank, and other trends in development financing. He claimed that the PGII would have $600 billion in funding by 2027.
