UN General Assembly in New York – Peace

Nicole Deitelhoff in conversation with Liane von Billerbeck

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There is no shortage of commitments to peace, and there is certainly no lack of peace itself: soldiers from states belonging to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization during an anti-terrorism exercise in Russia. (Imago / Itar-Tass / Sergej Medvedev)

The US has announced that it will put peace and cooperation at the center of the UN general debate. However, it is questionable whether this will have lasting consequences. The peace researcher Nicole Deitelhoff already sees the next debacle coming.

Afghanistan, climate, Covid-19, tensions with China: the UN general debate begins in New York in an environment of severe crises. US President Joe Biden wants to use his first speech at the UN General Assembly as a commitment to intensive diplomacy instead of military intervention. A senior US government official announced: “We are closing the chapter of 20 years of war and opening a new chapter of intense diplomacy by bringing allies and partners and institutions together to meet the great challenges of our time.”

However, it is questionable whether this will succeed. There is no lack of confessions to peace, but of peace itself. “We live in excited, nervous times,” says Nicole Deitelhoff, managing director of the Leibniz Institute Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (PRIF). The international conflicts were still at a high level, and the fuse was short, as can be seen in the submarine dispute between France, the USA and Australia.

Where is foreign policy in the German election campaign?

Deitelhoff therefore has no understanding that foreign policy is not the focus of the current election campaign in Germany. Politicians in this country refuse to face realities, she criticizes. The USA is withdrawing internationally, Germany must redefine its role.

“We are not a great power. We depend on stable international institutions and cooperation,” emphasizes the conflict researcher. Against this background, the country could not afford not to talk about the future of foreign policy. But this currently plays “no role at all” in the election campaign.

The West is currently still under the impression of the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan – and according to Deitelhoff, the next debacle is already looming. The mission in Mali will not achieve its goals either, she predicts. Your analysis: too many goals, some of which contradict each other, many partners, too little coordination. The security situation has steadily deteriorated over the past few years, and the federal government must ask itself when the time has come to withdraw the Bundeswehr and leave Mali.

Strengthen international cooperation

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will represent Germany in the general debate in New York, and he will speak on Friday. Besides him and Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi will also give speeches. After the general debate last year mainly consisted of recorded video statements due to the corona pandemic, more than a hundred heads of state and government will be personally represented again this year, albeit with significantly smaller delegations. The rest of the representatives from the 193 member states take part online.

Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had used the New York stage year after year to go it alone and to promote his “America First” policy. Biden, on the other hand, started with the promise to strengthen international cooperation again. But because of the rapid and uncoordinated troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the White House has recently had to put up with a lot of criticism.

Biden had rigorously followed through on his withdrawal plans despite warnings from allies and experts and vehemently defended his decision despite chaotic circumstances in the final weeks of the withdrawal. And the submarine dispute with France also shows that, in case of doubt, the USA is ready to assert its own interests and also risk conflicts with partners in return.

(ahe/dpa)

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