Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. Day 2 of the U.N. General Assembly’s high-level week kicked off today with the opening of the General Debate. Some 194 speakers are set to take to the podium over the course of the next week. Only 19 of them are women.
Here’s what’s on tap for the day: U.S. President Joe Biden’s last hurrah on the global stage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the U.N. Security Council, and continued Israel-Hezbollah fighting.
Biden’s Global Swan Song
With the world at what he called an “inflection point,” U.S. President Joe Biden sought this morning to rally global leaders to work together to address pressing challenges in what is likely to be one of his last major foreign-policy speeches of his five decades in public office.
“We are stronger than we think. We are stronger together than alone,” Biden said in his remarks at the United Nations.
Using the sweep of his career to highlight the challenges the world has contended with in recent decades, Biden urged his peers gathered in the cavernous General Assembly hall not to give in to despair. “As leaders, we don’t have the luxury,” he said.
Biden’s speech hit familiar themes that have informed his approach to the world: the importance of international cooperation and a commitment to democracy. Referencing his own decision not to seek reelection, he declared, “Some things are more important than staying in power.”
The president also made some news, announcing plans to donate 1 million mpox vaccines to African countries along with $500 million to help curb the virus’s outbreak. But on the major crises that have engulfed much of his time in office—the wars in Ukraine and Gaza—he offered nothing new. (Foreign Policy columnist Michael Hirsh has more analysis on Biden’s speech here.)
Ukraine split screen. With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky set to present Biden with a “victory plan” for his country’s war with Russia on Thursday, the U.S. commander in chief echoed familiar talking points from the United Nations podium. “We cannot grow weary,” Biden said. “We cannot look away, and we will not let up on our support for Ukraine, not until Ukraine wins with just and durable peace.”
In New York, Biden is under significant pressure from the Ukrainians and some Western allies to loosen targeting restrictions to allow Ukraine to fire American-made weapons deeper into Russian soil.
But on the campaign trail in Savannah, Georgia, former U.S. President Donald Trump ridiculed the Biden administration’s approach to the war in a speech where he was supposed to be talking about manufacturing. “Biden and [presidential candidate and Vice President] Kamala [Harris] got us into this war in Ukraine, and now they can’t get us out,” Trump said. “I think that we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president. I’ll get it done. I’ll get it negotiated, I’ll get out.”
Standoff at the Security Council. Zelensky addressed a U.N. Security Council meeting on the war in Ukraine on Tuesday afternoon. After getting conflicting advice from the myriad U.N. media aides stationed around the secretariat about how to get to the meeting, Amy managed to make it into the chamber for the session.
Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, opened the meeting by railing against the decision to invite Zelensky to address the chamber, describing it as an attempt to “malign” Russia and accusing Slovenia, the council’s current president, of having “bent” to pressure from its “senior comrades” in Brussels.
Zelensky used his remarks to underscore the need for respect of the U.N. Charter, which enshrines the territorial sovereignty of member states. “There is one, one U.N. Charter which unites everyone, must unite everyone,” he said.
Yet it was British Foreign Secretary David Lammy who offered the most forceful remarks of the meeting, calling out the Russian ambassador for being on his phone during Lammy’s speech and addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin directly.
“Vladimir Putin, when you fire missiles into Ukraine hospitals, we know who you are. When you send mercenaries into African countries, we know who you are. When you murder opponents in European cities, we know who you are. Your invasion is in your own interests. Yours alone,” said Lammy.
“Mr. President, I speak not only as a Briton, as a Londoner, and as a foreign secretary, but I say to the Russian representative—on his phone as I speak—that I stand here also as a Black man whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved. Whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved. Imperialism—I know it when I see it,” Lammy added.
Middle East on edge. A tinderbox. Escalating tensions. On the brink. We’ve all but run out of creative phrases to describe the situation in the Middle East over the past 11 months.
Over the past 24 hours, Israel has struck more than 1,500 targets in Lebanon in its effort to dial up the pressure on the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Thousands of Lebanese civilians have fled their homes in the south as 558 people have been killed in recent days by Israeli airstrikes, including 50 children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah fired some 300 rockets into Israel, injuring six soldiers and a civilian, according to Daniel Hagari, the spokesperson of the Israeli military.
In brief remarks on Tuesday outside the Security Council chamber, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said that the country had intelligence that Hezbollah was about to begin a “massive attack” against Israeli civilian population centers and that Israel had taken preemptive action targeting Hezbollah missile launch sites in southern Lebanon.
Amy pressed the ambassador for more details, but he did not offer specifics on the intelligence. FP was unable to independently verify the claim. Axios reported on Tuesday that Hezbollah recently urged Iran to attack Israel as the fighting escalated.
“We are not eager to start a ground invasion anywhere,” said Danon, who added that Israel preferred a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in New York City on Thursday ahead of his address to the General Assembly on Friday, but that could change depending on how the next 48 hours play out.
General Assembly Watch
The General Debate—when world leaders take turns at the podium—began today with Brazil offering the opening remarks, as it does almost every year in a tradition that dates back to the earliest days of the United Nations. When no other country wanted to go first, the South American country volunteered, and a tradition was born. As the host nation, the United States speaks second, and the rest of the order is determined by a number of factors, including geographic balance.
Many (dare we say most) of the speeches will make little news, but they do offer the opportunity to get a peek into the preoccupations of most of the world’s leaders in one fell swoop. The full order of speakers has yet to be released, but tomorrow we will update you on all the highlights.
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Snapshot
A member of the Canadian delegation attends the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Sept. 24.Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
I Like Turtles
The United Nations building is in a small East River alcove of Manhattan known as “Turtle Bay.” How did it get that name? Well, there’s a debate over it, according to the local historical society. Some say it’s because the natural bay and marshes once allowed turtles to thrive in the area; others think it’s from a Dutch word that indicates the shape of the bay.
Quote of the Day
“Today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today, because the public parks have been closed to women and girls.”
—Actor Meryl Streep on the situation for women’s rights in Afghanistan, speaking at the United Nations on Monday.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Sausages. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made an unfortunate gaffe in Liverpool on Tuesday when he misspoke during a Labour Party conference. “I call again for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, the return of the sausages—the hostages—and a recommitment to the two-state solution, a recognized Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel,” Starmer said, adding a quick correction.