UN general assembly meetings are not usually riveting occasions. But this year’s encapsulated a world in flux and crisis, an international law and organisation structure that is falling apart, and a humanitarian order machine running hot. What unfolded was less a gathering for resolution and resolve than a display of showboating, frustration and fractiousness.
It was a snapshot for the history books of four huge destabilising conflicts for which there seems to be no means of, or interest in, resolution – Ukraine, Iran, Palestine and Sudan. Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an account of five years of Russian aggression: the staggering loss of life – hundreds of thousands killed on both sides – the porousness of the sanctions on Russia, the “madness” of it all. Donald Trump once again threatened to “annihilate” Iran if it did not make a deal, a promise that has now been made so many times its restating only reveals its hollowness. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, responded in his own speech by saying that Iran has been the victim of US terrorism and aggression, and would defend itself with the “utmost strength”. The sole US delegation representative in the room walked out.
In the middle of this unbridled, unseemly pugnaciousness, pleas to restate facts were trampled over by power-lust. The Israeli government’s sense of impunity “has reached terrifying levels”, said Jordan’s King Abdullah II. “It no longer feels compelled to ask, ‘Can we get away with this?’ It already knows the answer.”
“If international law can be ignored for decades,” he added, “then what exactly is that law worth?” As if to answer that question, Benjamin Netanyahu became the only ICC indicted leader to address the UN general assembly, with a characteristically belligerent speech. Nothing – that law is worth nothing.
And on international law meaning nothing, the assembly was subjected to the farce of the United Arab Emirates, the key player in Sudan’s war, piously preaching about how Sudanese people deserve peace and civilian rule, while the UAE’s leaders are accused of arming and funding the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), itself accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing. A close ally of the US and the UK, the UAE has managed to extend Sudan’s war into a calamitous conflict, without even a breath of censure, or even acknowledgment from its friends. A $500m investment in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency scheme, and multibillion-pound partnerships with the UK, have seemingly captured the two states. Indeed, the silence it has bought is so compliantly observed that the US’s senior adviser on African and Arab affairs (Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) acknowledged foreign interests but refused to name any of the countries.
Even procedurally, the ground was tilted by those who have the power and shamelessness to do so. The Trump administration invoked its sovereign ability to decide who could attend and who could not, wielding a sort of weaponisation of the visa system that rendered the UN not a neutral body with its own rules and protocols, but a tool to be leveraged for the interests of the US and its allies because it sits in US territory. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (not ICC-indicted) and 80 other Palestinian officials were denied visas to attend for the second time under Trump’s watch. The head of the Sudanese government and Sudanese armed forces, the antagonists to the UAE-backed RSF, was denied a visa, seemingly an indication of successful Emirati manoeuvrings in Washington. The dynamics were an expression of how foreign policy and conflict are managed today, with constant gaming of the system to amplify one side over the other and produce outcomes friendly to regional and global powers.
Amid the collapse there was Tom Fletcher, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, darting energetically from meeting to meeting, with a grittily sunny disposition. He posted a hectic flurry of social media clips talking about what could be done in the middle of the fire, a sort of diplomatic “this is fine” meme. And God bless him. In one, he is on a walk with Alexander De Croo, administrator of the UN development programme, who talks about the problem being “crises piling up on one another”. “The answer,” Fletcher says, “to a lot of what we do is actually diplomacy. Getting those chokepoints open, Bab al-Mandab, the Black Sea, the strait of Hormuz, because otherwise we both have a much bigger development caseload and humanitarian caseload.”
He represents an emerging new model of international and humanitarian worker – navigating funding cuts, a lack of interest in peace and politicised drawdown of international aid to at least maintain some traffic of funds. To make sure some support gets to the millions labouring under war, the climate crisis, disease, poverty, hunger and predation. The wars will carry on, and now the strategy is to negotiate with powers to un-choke and unblock what can be opened to get supplies and relief in, from winter aid in Gaza to containing the Ebola outbreak.
But where we are now isn’t just a matter of earnest diplomats and cynical, irresponsible warring powers. A far more complex problem is upon us: the rapidly changing nature of military conflict itself. Wars are becoming vastly less containable through the spread, sophistication and low cost of AI and drones. They are now conducted remotely, veering between high-intensity and low-grade assaults that render their beginnings and ends less decisive. They are more likely to just suspend normal life with dispensable drones, the sort that have held the Gulf hostage to Iran’s response to US attacks, Sudan’s war without a clear frontline, and the “ceasefire” in Gaza essentially just a lower-grade assault.
The UN general assembly meeting of 2026 was a study in so many things – the degradation of international law, the rickety system it has bequeathed, the acceleration of the demise of international community, and the importance of resolve to somehow attend to the victims. But we are also entering an era in which belligerents themselves are coming to grips with asymmetrical warfare and an elusive status quo. There is much talk of “what comes next”: an equilibrium of middle powers in compact, a rupture with the US and within Nato, a nihilistic free for all? We as humans tend to think in clear-cut scenarios. What is more likely is what was demonstrated last week in New York – a messy prolonged state of constant stress under careless leaders giddy with what they realise they can get away with, no exit plan, and the rest of the system given no option but to work with and around them to somehow alleviate the consequences of their actions. The new world order is one of active resignation.
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Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
