Many world leaders will arrive at the United Nations for their annual high-level meeting in the last week of September with a sense of trepidation. Although the U.N. is marking the 80th anniversary of its founding, three less happy themes will overshadow the gathering. The first is the Unites States of America’s relationship with the world, as President Donald Trump will give his first U.N. address since returning to office. The second will be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is likely to gain more attention than other crises, including Russia’s aggression against Ukraine or the civil war in Sudan. The third will be the lurking question of what the future holds for the U.N. itself, as the organization reels from the Trump administration’s budget cuts and as candidates to replace António Guterres as secretary-general in 2027 begin to ramp up their campaigns.
Delegates and U.N. officials will go through the motions of pretending that this is a more-or-less normal U.N. General Assembly meeting, nibbling on miniature croissants at innumerable “breakfast dialogues” and exchanging pleasantries at cocktails receptions. They may even get some real diplomacy done in bilateral meetings on the margins of these events. But it will be hard to avoid an overarching sense that the U.N. – and the global order it sits within – is in a deep funk.
Trump
The main focus of the event will, inevitably, be Trump, who will address his counterparts on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 23. The president enjoyed his three in-person outings to the General Assembly from 2017 to 2019 (he, like other leaders, stayed away in 2020 due to COVID and sent a video message). His speeches have tended to meander but include pithy soundbites that play well on social media, such as his 2017 description of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “rocket man.” Diplomats expect Trump to lean into his penchant for describing his claimed domestic and foreign policy wins since the start of his second term. In 2018, he sparked a spontaneous burst of laughter from other leaders by declaring his administration had achieved more than any other in two years. This time, he may bring up his ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize, based on peace efforts in cases including the Democratic Republic of Congo and the India-Pakistan flare-up. As one recent White House Executive Order put it, “the President has ended more wars in 8 months than the U.N. has in 80 years,” which is debatable at the very least but is a snappy one-liner.
Trump’s audience will be listening for clues about the administration’s ever-shifting foreign policy priorities. The U.S. mission to the U.N. has said that his themes will include sovereignty and liberty, while the United States will also use the General Assembly to promote restrictions on asylum rights. In 2019 and 2020, Trump used his U.N. appearances to berate China on everything from unfair trade practices to COVID and overfishing. After a year in which the administration has vacillated between declaring heavy tariffs on Beijing and offering more conciliatory messages, the president’s tone on China will be an indicator of where it may go next. European leaders will hope that he adopts a tough stance on Russia, especially after this month’s drone incident in Poland, but it is equally possible that Trump will emphasize his engagement with President Vladimir Putin. U.N. camera crews also will be ready to capture reaction shots of the Canadian, Panamanian, and Danish delegations in case the president raises his interest in taking over chunks of their territory.
It remains to be seen whether Trump will say much about the U.N. itself. Just weeks into his term, on Feb. 4, he noted that the institution has “great potential,” even “tremendous potential,” even as he was signing off on an executive order gutting funding to several parts of the organization and reviewing the U.N. and all multilateral organizations in which the United States is a member. That order for a root-and-branch review of U.S. multilateral commitments spurred worries among some senior U.N. officials that this was a prelude to Washington quitting the U.N. entirely. Although that examination – originally slated for release in early August – is still pending, fears of a total U.S. withdrawal have ebbed a little. But the administration recently released a recission package effectively halting nearly $400 million of U.S. funding for U.N. peacekeeping, and insisted that the Security Council should agree to shut down the long-running U.N. force in Lebanon in 2027, despite fears that this will create a security vacuum. Trump may offer a few encouraging words about the U.N.’s ability to return to what his team call its “founding purpose” of international peace and security, but his administration’s actions belie the notion that he really wants to work through the organization.
Whatever the president actually says, a lot of leaders will tiptoe around anything that could be construed as criticism of U.S. policy. Many will be hoping to snatch a brief moment with U.S. officials. A few older and more confident hands may be more pointed. Brazilian President Lula Inácio da Silva, who by U.N. tradition gets to speak immediately before the U.S. president, has been notably critical of U.S. trade and climate change policy and could use the U.N. pulpit to repeat his criticisms – although Trump has suggested that he could deny the Brazilian delegation visas after the conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro on coup charges and earlier spats over Gaza and tariffs. While Chinese President Xi Jinping is missing the annual U.N. leaders gathering again, having only attended once in person in 2015, Premier Li Qiang is currently slated be present. Li may not criticize the United States head-on, but is likely to lean heavily into China’s stance as a responsible multilateralist in an attempt to draw an implicit contrast with Washington.
Gaza and Other Crises
If most leaders are likely to make nice with Trump in general, they will split with the United States on one topic: Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The Israeli-Hamas war was the main focus at last year’s high-level week (my colleagues at Crisis Group counted 146 references to the conflict in leaders’ main statements, compared to 116 for Ukraine and fewer than 70 for the civil war in Sudan). The focus on the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, if anything, be more intense this year.
On Monday, Sept. 22, the day before world leaders begin their main round of speeches, the General Assembly will reconvene a special summit on the two-state solution that began in July. This process, led by France and Saudi Arabia, has been a demonstration of the U.N.’s ability to act as a platform for high-level political signaling. France, Canada, the U.K., and Malta indicated their intention to recognize the State of Palestine bilaterally in the summer, and Belgium and Australia are now preparing to follow suit (while the U.K. indicated it might hold off recognition in the event of a Gaza ceasefire, the chances of a cessation of hostilities before the high-level week now appear remote). The United States has tried to disrupt the event by denying President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials visas, but Abbas is likely to join the session via video-link.
European diplomats say that U.S. officials appear resigned to the summit taking place, even though they frame it as handing Hamas a victory. There are more concerns about Israel’s response to the summit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will join the high-level week despite Israeli objections that it coincides with Rosh Hashanah, has a long track record of defying the rest of the U.N. membership. During his last visit to the U.N., he ordered the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah from his hotel room. One scenario that worries diplomats is that Netanyahu — who declared last week that “there will be no Palestinian state” — could respond to the recognitions process by announcing plans to formally annex parts of the Palestinian territories in his speech.
One irony of the whole debate is that, while the discussion is taking place at the U.N., it will not have any immediate impact on the State of Palestine’s position in the organization. While three quarters of U.N. members recognize Palestine bilaterally already, and it is a permanent observer State at the U.N., and cannot become a full member of the organization without a positive vote from the Security Council. The Biden administration vetoed a resolution on the issue in 2024, and the Trump administration would do the same if given the opportunity.
Gaza will continue to be a focus throughout the high-level week — with the Security Council also likely to hold a special meeting on the war — and no other crisis will get the same level of attention. This includes Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, although a high-level Council meeting on the war is already on the books for the afternoon of Sept. 23. European representatives will focus on Russia’s actions, and there has been talk of a meeting in New York of the “coalition of the willing,” the group of countries ready to offer Kyiv post-war security assistance. But the Europeans also fret that U.S. officials might signal differences over how to deal with Moscow — as they did in February by trying to block a Ukrainian-EU-drafted General Assembly resolution reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a basic statement that the United States had supported each year under Biden. Politicians from the Global South also have increasingly held back from condemnations of Russia.
Other crises will receive even less attention. There will be a ministerial event on Sudan, but there is little sense of momentum on ending the war, despite its huge human costs. Immediately after high-level week, the U.N. will host a one-day conference on the plight of the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh, although few senior figures will stay for this.
There is a possibility of backchannel diplomacy between the U.S., European and Iranian delegations on Tehran’s nuclear program. On Aug. 28, Britain, France, and Germany triggered a Security Council process, known as “snapback,” to reimpose sanctions on Iran that had been suspended as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. Under the terms of Security Council Resolution 2231 which endorsed the deal, this process is set to complete after 30 days (i.e. on Sept. 28). Some sort of last-minute compromise, involving Iran restoring cooperation with the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which it suspended after the Israeli and U.S. air strikes on its nuclear facilities in June, is possible. But it is far from certain that the two sides can hammer out a deal before the deadline. If an off-ramp is not possible, the sanctions will be a subject of more bickering, as Russia and Iran contend the Europeans forfeited the right to trigger snapback as they did not fulfill economic pledges they made to Iran in 2015.
Another topic of discussion at the General Assembly will be the future of Syria. Despite still being under U.N. sanctions – imposed in the 2010s when he had ties to Al-Qaeda – Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa will be attending the high-level week. Having charmed Trump and other leaders in previous meetings, he is likely to be the subject of considerable attention in New York. His main goals will be lifting U.N. sanctions — an aim that the U.S. supports since the administration lifted its own Syria sanctions — and attracting support for Syria’s reconstruction.
Existential Questions about the U.N.
Given all the other drama at the U.N. in high-level week, the future of the organization itself may get short shrift. Since March, Secretary-General Guterres has been working on a cost-cutting and reform process dubbed “UN80” (a nod to the institution’s birthday). This has become an obsession for U.N. staffers, as Guterres has insisted that the secretariat should shrink by 20 percent, and some staff should move from expensive bases like New York and Geneva to cheaper duty stations such as Nairobi. But while U.N. members have broadly supported the initiative — often without knowing much about its details — heads of State won’t get bogged down in its minutiae.
Nonetheless, the broader question of where the U.N. and multilateralism are headed will recur throughout the high-level week. A year ago, when the wars in Gaza and Ukraine were hanging heavy on the institution — and the possibility of a Trump comeback was widely discussed — it was hard to ignore a low thrum of skepticism about the U.N.’s direction that permeated conversations in the margins of high-level week. Diplomats whose job it is to make the U.N. work frankly asked if it had a future. Those concerns will be heightened this year. Guterres, who has a history of scolding leaders for defaulting on multilateral commitments, will likely use his speech as secretary-general on Sept. 23 to underline the need to defend international cooperation. U.N. officials also have been saying that he wants to generate a “wow” moment for the event, possibly by floating ideas for reforms beyond cost-cutting, such as merging some U.N. entities.
Guterres is, however, entering the twilight of his term, which is slated to conclude at the end of December 2026 (a recurrent rumor that he might step down early to run in presidential elections in Portugal this winter remains just that). He has acknowledged in conversation with diplomats that really big reforms will have to wait for his successor. Who that person may be is likely to feature in gossip the U.N. General Assembly’s sessions. The answer is far from clear. Until this year, the conventional wisdom was that the U.N.’s next leader must be a woman for the first time, and that — following an unofficial principle of regional rotation — it is the “turn” for a Latin American or Caribbean candidate. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados and a leading voice in U.N. debates on development and climate change, was the apparent front-runner. Since Trump returned to office, however, the conventional wisdom in New York has flipped and many diplomats now presume that the U.S. will insist on promoting a man, if only to spite what it considers as liberal opinion. The person now most often cited as the apparent front runner is Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, who has pitched that his experience of negotiations over Iran and nuclear sites in Ukraine mean he can wheel and deal with the major powers.
The secretary-general selection process still has a long way to go. The Security Council agrees on a nominee for the General Assembly to rubber stamp, but many Assembly members want to scrutinize the candidates closely. There is still a sizable constituency that wants a woman to take the job. There are more candidates lurking in the wings, and a decision could come very late in 2026. Some of them will be at the General Assembly this year to schmooze. U.S. diplomats have indicated to other Council members that Washington is intrigued by the opportunity of finding a candidate aligned with the current White House’s philosophy – a prospect that may unnerve U.N. officials.
Finally, the vexed question of Security Council reform will be at the front of some minds. In the last few years, this has been a hot topic at the General Assembly, as States have despaired at the Council’s blockages over Gaza and Ukraine. The Biden administration encouraged this tendency, and last year announced it would support two (unspecified) African States to take permanent seats on the Council, albeit without vetoes, in addition to Germany, India ,and Japan. Many leaders may refer to this theme this year too. U.S. officials have indicated, however, that the current administration does not share its predecessor’s stance, so calls for change could ring hollow as any changes to the U.N. Charter have to be ratified by all five veto powers to take effect.
If the future of the Security Council is uncertain, the current president of the Council, the Republic of Korea, will at least try to make other members think about the future. President Lee Jae Myung is set to oversee a high-level Council briefing on artificial intelligence. This has become an increasingly popular topic at the U.N. in recent years, in part at the urging of Guterres, who will be a briefer. The Council is mainly a platform to elevate discussions about AI – nobody thinks that it will pass Chapter VII resolutions dictating what Silicon Valley should do.
Beyond the High-Level Week
Overall, this General Assembly meeting may do more to spotlight the U.N.’s current weaknesses than help find solutions to them. There is a danger that — just as Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah ended up overshadowing much of what happened at last year’s high-level week — a shock in the Middle East or Ukraine could come to overshadow the proceedings.
Those who tune into the U.N. annually for the General Assembly session should spare a thought for the U.N. officials and diplomats who keep the organization ticking, on dwindling resources, for the other 51 weeks of the year. As my colleagues at the International Crisis Group and I have underlined, the organization’s place on the world stage is much diminished, but it plugs away at a huge range of important humanitarian, peacemaking, and other initiatives that get little attention. Whatever transpires during high-level week, that work will have to go on once the last leader’s limousine sweeps out of midtown Manhattan.
