The UNGA Games Presented by

Welcome to the wonderful world of UNGA — the annual festival of global challenges and clashes that is the United Nations General Assembly. Each day next week, you'll get a special UNGA-themed edition of Global Translations in your inbox. We’ll get into the details next week — here’s the context to whet your appetite:

DESTROYING THINGS IS MUCH EASIER THAN MAKING THEM

The world’s political class has some serious questions to answer as leaders gather virtually over the coming week to mark the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. The nations of the world are moving further apart. We have avoided the catastrophe of another World War, but failed to maintain global institutions — supported by national leaders — that are able to meet the world’s current challenges. The bits of the system that arguably work best, like the IMF and World Bank, tend to achieve that because they exist in crisis mode, and are institutions of last resort. The rest of the U.N. can’t operate that way.

In a state of the union speech Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union executive, went as far as to say, “our global system has grown into a creeping paralysis. Major powers are either pulling out or they are taking the institutions hostage,” she said, adding that “we need change, but we need change by design and not by destruction.”

It’s fine for Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister and original political face of sustainable development in the 1980s, to tell supporters of multilateralism this week that “the only way to deal with this is to speak out.” But what’s really needed are workable alternatives to the paralysis von der Leyen describes.

Little change is on the horizon. While the Allies managed to fight a world war on three fronts and create the institutions we have today, we collectively spent more time on Twitter in 2020 than we did coming up with ways to make the World Health Organization work better, a U.N. Security Council that works at all, or some other set of networks that delivers global change from the bottom up.

Corporations are doing more than ever to address the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and climate change — prompted both by their own consumers and by profit motives. But they are also doing it via multiple overlapping initiatives. That may have the advantage of market-driven convenience but it lacks legal accountability and truly global reach. For most observers, that something is better than nothing, while others will say that markets are better than diktats. But is it a full replacement for political will? No.

There’s a reason Bill and Melinda Gates stood before us this week and announced that we lost 25 years of health and poverty progress in 25 weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s because we relied on their individual genius and generosity instead of investing in a renovated global political house.

Next week we can expect parallel global conversations: one will be an earnest set of calls around the U.N. bubble’s pandemic and development goals. The second will be a series of reactions to President Trump: on Iran and on any threat to defund the U.N. that he issues.

Good governance is not a speech or a tweet: it’s hard, year-round work. That’s a point worth remembering as national leaders spend Monday addressing the U.N.’s future, and from Tuesday onward making their pitch to the world to follow in their preferred direction.

What world powers are focused on at UNGA:

U.S.: Enforcing Iran sanctions in full, an effort to kill what's left of the Iran nuclear deal, which “sets the stage for ugly confrontations as the world body prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary at a coronavirus-restricted General Assembly session next week. The question is how the Trump administration will respond to being ignored .”

China: The regime’s position paper is ripped from a developing country hymn sheet: “strengthen international cooperation on poverty reduction” and “reject unilateralism, hegemonism and power politics … defend the U.N.-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law.”

EU: The EU is not a U.N. member, but is one of its most important coordinating forces. The EU’s ambassador to the U.N., Olof Skoog, is prioritizing the immediate response to Covid-19, including developing a vaccine — “No-one is safe until everyone is safe” he said — and a longer-term commitment to “building back better,” in particular through stronger climate action.

Russia: Maria Vladimirovna, Russian’s foreign policy spokesperson, says Russia “will continue calling for further strengthening the U.N.’s central coordinating role in world politics and strict compliance with the principles set forth in its Charter.”

Beyoncé: The pop star makes a return to UNGA Saturday after an eight-year absence , in a joint appearance with Malala on the U.N.’s YouTube channel. h/t Pamela Falk

A message from Bank of America: President and CEO of UnidosUS Janet Murguía joins the ‘That Made All the Difference’ podcast to discuss her upbringing as the daughter of immigrant parents and how that experience informs her life’s work advocating for Hispanic-Latino civil rights and battling systemic inequality. Listen now.

UNGA EVENTS CALENDAR

Friday UNGA events here

Weekend highlights

Saturday Sept. 19, 9 a.m. EST: Nations United - Urgent Solutions For Urgent Times, a 30-minute film jointly produced by the U.N. and 72 Productions to mark the 5th anniversary of the U.N.'s Global Goals (a.k.a Sustainable Development Goals).

Sunday, Sept. 20th, 10 a.m. EST: “Global Cooperation: New Institutions for a New Era?”, a live virtual debate hosted by Doha Debates. The star guest is Liberia’s Leymah Roberta Ghowee, who in 2011 became just one three black women to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Next week’s highlights

Concordia Summit speaker line-up | World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit | Sustainable Development Goals Action Zone | Goals House | Climate Week NYC

The corporate voice — John Frank, the head of Microsoft’s new representation office at the U.N., which operates as a sort of corporate embassy , lays out his case for collective action for sustainable development .

JAPAN — PLUS ÇA CHANGE: Yoshihide Suga is the new leader of the world’s third-largest economy. Japan’s cabinet resigned Wednesday as scheduled and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party elected Suga as Shinzo Abe’s replacement, beating Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, in a landslide.

Suga is Japan’s longest-serving Cabinet member and served as Abe’s right-hand man and fixer during Abe’s nearly eight years as prime minister. That background suggests continuity, but unlike Abe, there’s plenty of both humble and spicy elements in the Suga story. He is the son of a strawberry farmer and a teacher and worked in a factory to pay for university. He also has been photographed with a member of Japanese yakuza (mafia) and accepted campaign donations from a yakuza-linked entity, the Daily Beast reported , before being forced to return the money.

Suga will be the first prime minister in 20 years who is not a hereditary politician, the Mainichi newspaper reported, and he does 100 sit ups and takes a 40 minute walk every morning.

WORLD SAYS CHINA NOW MOST POWERFUL ECONOMY: If perception is everything now, that’s bad news for the U.S. Regardless of what GDP figures say, much of the world now views China as the world’s most influential economic power, said Richard Wike, director of Global Attitudes Research at Pew Research Center, in launching a new report on America’s plummeting image abroad .

Confidence in President Trump’s leadership on world affairs ranges from 9 percent in Belgium to 25 percent in Japan. Confidence declined in all 13 countries surveyed over the past year, including by 29 percent in South Korea. A median of 15 percent of respondents said the United States is handling coronavirus well versus 85 percent who disagree. Even among supporters of Europe’s far-right parties, Trump’s approval never rises above 45 percent.

Trump ranks as the least trusted leaders in a list that includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel (the most trusted), French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

REALITY CHECK CORNER

NO V-SHAPED ECONOMIC RECOVERY: “Don’t take away the (economic) support, don’t take away the relief, too fast,” urged OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria this week. “The problem is that this V-shaped recovery is not going to happen,” he said, warning of a slow recovery through 2021 if relief ends. More from OECD Chief Economist Laurence Boone. Here’s a list of updated 2020 national GDP projections

EUROPE CONFRONTS AUSTRALIA’S REFUGEE LESSON: Herding up refugees and keeping them for years on an island delivers some political benefit to politicians scared of integrating them into domestic society. But it tends to blow up in spectacularly tragic ways: just ask Australia. You end up with children who grow up in camps or detention centers and hunger strikes and hangings . Or, in Europe’s case, governments fail to resource the camps properly despite warnings and then a fire rips through one of them , as happened Sept. 9 in Europe’s largest refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Designed for 3,000 people, it housed 12,000 on the night of the fire. EU leaders have now found their hearts , to a degree — Belgium agreed to resettle as few as 12 refugees . But after years of warnings it’s little, and it’s late.





Global Public Health Spotlight





United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres attends a UN Security Council meeting (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

POLITICO’s pop-up weekly column on global health will end in October and shift to a permanent home as “Global Pulse”. If you want to keep receiving these global health updates, please sign-up here .

The Rise of Global Health Diplomacy is the theme of this year’s Meridian Summit, which will take place virtually October 23. Register here .

25 YEARS OF PROGRESS WIPED OUT IN 25 WEEKS: That’s the annual Gates Foundation update on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals in a nutshell .

LATIN AMERICA IS THE CENTER OF THE PANDEMIC NOW: Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and now Argentina make up half the global top 10 in total coronavirus cases. Add Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador, and Latin America accounts for eight of the 12 countries with the highest death rates.

Read our full Global Public Health Spotlight: With virtually every country around the globe turning inward as its leaders struggle to control the coronavirus at home, the World Health Organization is having trouble raising money for an international effort to develop vaccines, medicines and tests necessary to pull humanity out of the coronavirus pandemic.

POWER PLAYS AND ELECTIONS

Corridors – POLITICO’s new free weekly Canadian politics newsletter from Ottawa is starting next week, with Maura Forrest as your pilot. Sign-up here .

Venus is hell but it’s ours, say Russians: Venus is a “Russian planet” , the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said, after British and American scientists said that they had found signs of life there. Russia was the first country to reach the planet, landing unmanned craft on Venus between 1970 and 1982.

A message from Bank of America:

US 2020

About 60,000 North Carolinians have voted already. Pennsylvania voting is now open and a record 2 million ballots have been requested by the state's 8.5 million registered voters. Minnesota joins the party today, and Michigan joins Saturday.

CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL PODCAST — MONEY, MONEY, MONEY: POLITICO’s Elena Scheider, Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission, and Democratic fundraiser Tim Lim explain why more funds than ever are being raised for a U.S. election taking place during a deep recession. Listen here.

CHINA NOT A FACTOR IN THE ELECTION: Of 11 potential vote-shifting issues that we polled voters on, POLITICO and Morning Consult found China is the least relevant factor for U.S. voters, behind even the generic option of "foreign policy." More from David Wertime here.

BIDEN’S ASIAN CREDIBILITY PROBLEM: Many of China’s regional foes have grown comfortable with Trump’s approach toward Chinese President Xi Jinping. “Officials in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore, and other capitals have grown relatively comfortable with Trump and his tough approach on China. The prospect of a Biden presidency, by contrast, brings back uncomfortable memories of an Obama era that many Asian movers and shakers recall as unfocused and soft toward Beijing,” James Crabtree writes . Bilahari Kausikan, a former high-ranking Singaporean diplomat, has said former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice “would be a disaster” as Biden's secretary of State, from his country’s perspective.

DEMOGRAPHY

Millenials top of the election heap: The last three decades were about the Baby Boomers, but they’re no longer the biggest voting bloc: that’s now Millenials , even in spite of their lower turnout rate.

Trump spent years targeting Indian Americans. Then Biden picked Kamala Harris.

HOW BIG BUSINESS IS PREPARING FOR THE ELECTION: It’s largely the same scenarios regardless of whether a Trump or Biden is in the White House in 2021, according to a PWC survey of 578 chief financial officers and other C-suite executives. Around 95 percent think more fiscal stimulus is needed; 70 percent think business taxes will need to rise to repay Covid-19 simulus; and 63 percent believe U.S.-China trade restrictions will be increasing.

RWANDA FACES CLAIMS OF EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION: Paul Rusesabagina, a dual Rwandan-Belgian citizen who saved 1,268 lives during the Rwandan genocide in a story made famous by the movie Hotel Rwanda, is being held without access to Red Cross or consular visits after being “kidnapped and taken by extraordinary rendition to Rwanda,” said Anaise Kanimba, his daughter. Rusesabagina had been living in Texas and Belgium but traveled to Dubai, UAE and believed he was headed for a meeting with church groups in Burundi, only to turn up in Rwanda surrounded by soldiers, whom he said abducted him. “I was tied — the leg, the hands, face. I could not see anything. I don’t know where I was,” he told the New York Times . Rusesabagina now faces charges of terrorism.

“He is being held by President Paul Kagame’s government on false charges. He is a regular critic of human rights violations in Rwanda, and the Rwandan government regularly brings false charges against all critics in order to try to silence them,” his daughter said. Kagame insists Rusesabagina returned voluntarily.





INSTITUTIONALIZED

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY

The changing face of American diplomacy: Of 189 American ambassadors currently serving in embassies overseas, only three career envoys are Black and four are Hispanic, according to the American Academy of Diplomacy. During George W. Bush’s first term, there were 19 Black ambassadors. During Obama’s first term, there were 18, reports Helene Cooper .

The unchanging face of the Pentagon: Mark Esper promised move diversity at the Pentagon, but the White House had other ideas reported Lara Seligman and Sarah Cammarata.

Some of the intersection between foreign and defense poilcy is working: The case for Trump’s Middle East policy and its ripple effects in the region.

U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Brandsted is stepping down .

GLOBAL DIPLOMACY

WTO RACE DOWN TO FIVE CANDIDATES: Candidates from Mexico (Jesús Seade), Moldova (Tudor Ulianovschi), and Egypt (Hamid Mamdouh) are set to drop out of the race for the World Trade Organization’s top job, after performing poorly in first round voting this week. That leaves South Korea (Yoo Myung-hee), Nigeria (Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala), Kenya (Amina Mohamed), the U.K. (Liam Fox) and Saudi Arabia (Mohammad Al-Tuwaijri) as the five remaining candidates who will progress into the next round.

WTO SLAMS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: The U.S. violated global trade rules when it unilaterally imposed tariffs on what became more than $350 billion worth of Chinese goods.

MEDIATE THIS: The Singapore Convention on Mediation — United Nations (UN) Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation entered into force Sept. 12, and recognizes mediation as the standard in conflict resolution for resolving trade disputes.

VENEZUELA’S MADURO GUILTY OF TORTURE AND EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS: United Nations investigators have linked President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and other high ranking officials in systematic human rights abuses amounting to crimes against humanity, in a 411-page report about 3,000 abuse cases.

CANADA — FORMER WASHINGTON ENVOY’S PALANTIR WORK BROKE CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST LAW: Canada's ethics watchdog says former U.S. ambassador David MacNaughton broke the law and ordered nine senior government officials — including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland — to cease all official dealings with him for one year.

BARBADOS — MAY DITCH QUEEN ELIZABETH AS HEAD OF STATE IN 2021: The country’s governor-general said it’s time for the country to act on widespread support for the Black Lives Matter movement and choose a head of state from within the country.

CORRUPTION — IN GLOBAL SPORT: A former head of the global track & field federation IAAF, Lamine Diack, has been sentenced to two years in prison over for helping Russian athletes to escape doping sanctions in exchange for “hush money.” Diack admitted in court that he slowed the handling of Russian doping cases “for the financial health” of the organization. Prosecutors said he solicited $3.5 million in bribes. Diack, who is 87, had half of his four-year sentence suspended. His son, Papa Massata Diack, was found guilty of working with his father to divert funds through family companies.

A message from Bank of America: On the latest episode of the ‘That Made All the Difference’ podcast, Bank of America’s Alicia Burke speaks with Janet Murguía, President and CEO of UnidosUS — an organization that has been fighting for civil rights and breaking down barriers for the Hispanic-Latino community for the past 50 years. "I'm going to dedicate every fiber of my being to making sure that we can still see that American dream as a reality for everyone. And it's critical that everyone still understands that they have a role to play in breaking down systemic barriers. If we can acknowledge that ... we can keep the American dream alive for everyone.” Listen to the full conversation here.

BRAIN FOOD

SHORT READ: Swedish Greens struggle in Greta's shadow: Teenage activist Greta Thunberg has triggered an environmentalist wave globally — but the Green Party in her own country is struggling to catch it, and may fall out of Parliament at the country’s next election, reports Charlie Duxbury .

PODCAST: Specialist U.N. press service PassBlue has this UNGA preview podcast episode.

BOOK: The Man Who Ran Washington (James A. Baker III), by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

Barack Obama’s memoirs — at 768 pages and $45 — are set to hit book stands two weeks after the election, November 17. “A Promised Land” has an announced first printing of 3 million.

ODDS AND ENDS

BYE BYE BIRDIE: Animal populations worldwide have declined by nearly 70 percent in just 50 years — and experts say humans are to blame .

ASIA GROUP EXPANDS: Ashley J. Tellis, an architect of the landmark U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement, and Anand Shah, a former executive, have joined Asia Group as senior advisors.

THANKS to editor Emily Cadei, Carmen Paun, Cristina Gonzalez, Halley Toosi, Meridith McGraw, Luiza Ch. Savage.