UN General Assembly Sessions Begin; a Worldwide Dietine or Special America?

Every year at the beginning of autumn, the whole world gathers in New York for the U.N. General Assembly. The great powers are represented on equal terms with small countries, even those whose whole army is smaller than a fire brigade of another country’s city.

But everyone has his or her word. ”The biggest challenge” for world peace — as pointed out by the Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon — is the conflict in Syria. Ban Ki-moon is appealing to everyone to stop sending weapons to Syria and to start negotiations as soon as possible.

The U.S. president, Barack Obama, who has announced to the public that the Assad regime will be punished for the use of chemical weapons, also declared that he has always preferred solving conflicts in a diplomatic way. Why then, asked one commentator, is their response to react specially to the use of chemical weapons if people are killed with any type of arms, often in larger numbers? Probably because 98 percent of the world population has signed conventions in favor of banning these kinds of weapons for many, many years. Last week the U.S. and Russia agreed to impose international controls on Syria’s chemical weapons.

But the agreement is on paper only. And even the whole General Assembly — in almost 200 major speeches during the session, which lasted weeks — is not able to change it. Someone needs to persuade the resistant ones to carry out what has been promised, just as someone should force those who are fighting to lay down their arms and start peace negotiations. Vladimir Putin — in his recent letter to America — pointed out that they shouldn’t consider themselves special, by which he probably meant that Americans don’t have a mandate to impose their will on others. In a retort, Obama said on Tuesday that Americans are special, after all. Why? Because they didn’t hesitate to sacrifice soldiers and financial means, not only in their own interest, but also in the interest of the world. This statement, even though pompous, is still true.

Obama came to power criticizing the careless and costly intervention in Iraq. Five years ago, almost 180,000 American soldiers served in military operations outside the U.S. Recently they have been withdrawn from Iraq, and next year they are to leave Afghanistan as well. Obama said that because of new circumstances, there have been fewer attacks on his country. But who is going to take its place? The beginning of the General Assembly session coincided with a tragic Kenya mall attack. In Pakistan, almost 100 people died in a bomb blast outside a church. In Iraq bombs explode literally every week. The civil war in Syria continues. For a long time more conflicts have broken out within countries rather than — as it used to be — between them. Local governments are not able to solve them. America, in a difficult role as the world’s policeman, has caused irritation and even anger in public opinion. There were many reasons for that. All we need to know is that if, after 10 years of wars, America withdraws [and] the U.N. will take on the role of the policeman, either in this session or in the next one.