Johannesburg - In a truly sobering, reassuring manner, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this week exhibited his capability to provide unprejudiced leadership in addressing the geopolitical challenges of our times.
Addressing the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York Guterres - at times accused of ideological bias when dealing with global conflicts - came across as a morally upright leader with no interest in sectarian geopolitics.
He spelt out the world’s immediate challenges, led by food insecurity and war in Ukraine, among others, and implored the world leaders meeting in person for the first time since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic to go back to basics and embrace multilateralism.
Guterres’ main theme that cut across his impassioned speech was international co-operation and global peace at a time when the wealthy and powerful nations of the Global North often opt for unilateralism and mob psychology.
He made a particularly persuasive argument for the human spirit’s ability to overcome adversarial relations and conquer antagonistic standpoints, citing the “grain deal” the UN brokered between Russia and Ukraine for supplies to be allowed off the Black Sea into the world despite the ongoing fatal hostilities in Ukraine.
The deal, Guterres opined, “was an important lifeline and a reminder that even amid the most intense animosity compromise can be struck”.
China, Turkey, Qatar and Brazil stood among nations at UNGA 2022 that are increasingly calling for a negotiated end to the Ukraine war. Truth is, as peace advocates argue - in any war there can be no winners. The loss of human life plus infrastructure destruction is invariably felt long after the war has ended. The sad reality is that history has a habit of repeating itself due to human beings’ inability to grasp valuable lessons from its chapters.
The US-led Nato remains adamant that negotiations for peace in the Ukraine war are a moot point. Instead of investing their endeavours in ending the Ukraine war, Nato and the US continue to pump billions of dollars worth of lethal arms and a bottomless pit of money into Ukraine, where the war that broke out on February 24 seems set to enter its eighth month shortly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently held bilateral meetings with his Turkish and Chinese counterparts. President Xi of China and Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan have publicly stated the availability of a window of opportunity to end the Ukraine war that has become global in both effect and impact.
However, the protagonists of what geopolitical scholars refer to as “America’s proxy war” continue to show no interest in halting the hostilities.
Speaking at UNGA 2022, US President Joe Biden exhibited a familiar sense of brinkmanship, promising President Putin hell and misery.
For his part, Putin addressed his nation at the same time that UNGA 2022 was getting underway. He has announced signing a decree to summon some 300 000 reservists to the Russian army to beef up the front-line fighters.
To further compound an already dire potpourri of an international catch-22, four Ukrainian regions under the command of Moscow have announced a series of co-ordinated referendums before the end of September to determine if the majority of their citizens would like to secede from the Russian Federation.
In 2014, after the violent Western-backed coup that led to the ouster from power of the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimea region of eastern Ukraine voted in a swift referendum to become a part of Russia.
Now Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions seem set to follow the same route as Crimea eight years ago.
The mooted referendums have already been condemned by the US and the West as a “sham” that they would not recognise.
Paraphrased, the referendums are a non-starter. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who addressed the UNGA 2022 via a video link, has also vowed never to recognise any move aimed at whittling down the size of his beleaguered country, a significant portion Russian-speaking.
Secretary-General Guterres’ reassuring words amidst tangible gloom and despair were the ambience of patience and the scent of peace among the world leaders stuck on their pre-conceived ideological positions.
“The possibility of diplomacy taking over to ease these troubles can often seem distant,” Guterres said, before adding: “Nevertheless, even as fighting rages in Ukraine, it is important to remember that diplomacy has shown its power at points during this most vicious of conflicts.” Again, he was highlighting the shining example of a breakthrough in the grain deal between Kyiv and Moscow despite the relentless run of bad blood between the two warring neighbours.
Like a seasoned world’s number one diplomat now serving his second term of office, Guterres implored the UN member-states to remember that “had diplomacy been more robust in the years before the (Ukraine) conflict, this death and destruction might have been avoided altogether”.
He continued: “This lesson should be applied to other geopolitical challenges in 2022, including US-China tensions over Taiwan and the question of Iran’s nuclear programme.” He concluded by pointing out that none of the issues that have brought nations to each other’s throats is isolated.
Emphasising the importance of multilateralism, Guterres implied that the penchant of some powerful nations to take their resolutions away from the UNGA processes undermines the world body. It makes the UN “to seem slow-moving and powerless”, he warned.
Not too long after Guterres had attempted to sensitise and educate a myriad of world leaders was President Biden already threatening Iran with violence if the Middle Eastern country continues with its controversial nuclear programme.
Iran resumed its enrichment programme after President Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, unilaterally tore the nuclear agreement the US and Iran were signatories to - and because he disapproved of the rationale of the Barack Obama administration that had served before his to append their signature to the Iran nuclear deal.
Iran’s current list of concerns includes insisting that in no uncertain terms should, once again, any of the future US administrations elect to throw the “new nuclear agreement” in the dustbin willy-nilly without “there being serious repercussions”.
To be quite honest, it is not always seamless that Guterres finds a way into one’s heart with his questionable handling of Western-led conflicts.
However, methinks his performance this week at UNGA 2022 will go a long way in repositioning him as truly putting the interest of world co-operation and peace ahead of the interest of certain power blocs.
In the interest of humanity, the Ukraine conflict cannot be allowed to continue any day longer. Already, too many people have lost their lives in the conflict, with President Putin revealing the loss of 6 000 Russians in the conflict since February.
The accurate mortality rate on the side of the Ukrainians remains unclear - suffice to bet that the number of the dead is way too high to contemplate.
Hopefully, countries such as China, Turkey, Qatar and Brazil will be joined by many others as calls for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine gain traction. Indeed, as Guterres warned: “Our world is in peril and paralysed.” Mandela would probably be saying “it’s in your hands” to do the right thing.