NEW YORK. Joe Biden wants to open “a new era of relentless diplomacy” and “peace” in the world after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and assures that America is not seeking “a new cold war” with China, even if the warning remains in Beijing not to attack neighboring countries and not to violate human rights as it does with the Uighurs. This is his message in his debut as president at the UN general assembly, “the first in 20 years without open wars”. He was heard by an audience for the first time in attendance after the start of the pandemic, albeit to small delegations, with the appearance of leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro and Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the debut of the new Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi. A 34-minute speech, very far from the threatening tones of Donald Trump, in which he tried to revive American leadership in the world but with the cooperation of all countries that pursue peaceful ends, inviting us to work together to face the most urgent challenges of this “Decisive decade”, such as the pandemic, climate change, human rights but also cyber attacks.
An intervention to which the hawks of Tehran replied: “Iran is in favor of nuclear negotiations that lead to the end of all sanctions against Tehran”, said the new ultra-conservative president Ibrahim Raisi, who launched a harsh attack on America. “This year two scenes made history, the attack on Capitol Hill and the takeover of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US hegemonic system has failed miserably and has shown that it has no credibility inside and outside the country, “Raisi said in his video message, underlining how” the United States did not come out of Afghanistan, they were driven out “. In Iran, on the other hand, he continued, “a new era has begun”, with Tehran ready to “collaborate for a better world“.
Biden assured that the United States is ready to return to the Iran nuclear deal if Tehran does the same, however specifying how the US remains committed to preventing the Islamic Republic from having a nuclear weapon. The US president then underlined the importance of alliances. Starting from the “fundamental” one with the EU, put to the test first by the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul and then by the new US-Australia-Great Britain security pact in the Indo-Pacific, with the consequent submarine crisis and the ” solidarity support »of European countries to France after Monday’s Foreign Ministerial in New York. “We will continue to defend ourselves against terrorism and to use force if necessary, but as a last resort, and we must do so with the consent of the Americans and in consultation with our allies and partners,” he clarified, invoking the use of multilateral institutions for address global challenges, including those in the Indo-Pacific area.
“We do not want a new cold war, or a world divided into rigid blocs,” Biden then assured without ever mentioning Beijing. But, he warned, “the United States wants to participate in the competition and participate strongly”. Competition, therefore, not conflict. “With our values and our strength we will defend democracy, our allies and our friends, and we will oppose the attempts of the strongest countries to dominate the weakest”, warned the autocracies, before Chinese President Xi Jinping intervened with a video message in a sort of remote duel.
The alarm bell was sounded at the opening by the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, who launched an appeal to Washington and Beijing for “” dialogue “and” understanding “to avoid a degeneration of world crises that would be” very less predictable than the Cold War. “” The world has never been more threatened or more divided, we are on the edge of an abyss and we are moving in the wrong direction, “Guterres warned, evoking a planet that moves” towards two different sets of economic, commercial, financial and technological rules, two divergent approaches in the development of artificial intelligence and in the end two different military and geopolitical strategies. “” A recipe for trouble, “warned the UN chief, before listing the crises open, such as the pandemic, global warming, the upheavals from Afghanistan to Ethiopia to Yemen, the wave of mistrust and disinformation.
Biden tried to reiterate that “America is back” on the international front, promising new aid to deal with the main emergencies: further (vaccine) commitments in the fight against the virus, which will be announced Wednesday at the White House summit, the doubling of the contribution Use to reach the 100 billion dollars pledged by developed countries to the most vulnerable in the fight against climate change, and a 10 billion dollar commitment against hunger in the world. The president did not forget two delicate dossiers such as the Iranian nuclear and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reiterating that the US is ready to re-enter the nuclear agreement “if Tehran does the same” and that the “best solution” in the Middle East remains that of the two states.