Diplomacy takes a backseat as leaders perform for domestic audiences
The United Nations General Assembly is supposed to be a forum where nations exchange goodwill and understanding. Instead, what we witness are influencers broadcasting to their own followers, speaking in the language of viral clips. The world body has effectively turned into a stage for Instagram-style soundbites.
This week in New York, leaders from roughly 190 nations gathered to address the planet, yet ended up courting their domestic vote banks instead. Turtle Bay served merely as the backdrop. The real audience sat in Ohio, Buenos Aires, Ankara and Lahore. With internal politics heating up nearly everywhere, a clip that goes viral now carries more weight than containing an actual conflict or crisis.
Donald Trump led off. Given the venue was New York, that made sense. He informed the world he faced "a big decision to make" — whether to strike a deal allowing Iran to rebuild, or to "annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly." He further remarked that he anticipated reaching an agreement only after the midterm elections, revealing which assembly he was truly addressing — not the General one, but the electoral one. Such a statement might suit a campaign rally, but delivered from a platform designed to prevent global conflict, it comes across as unsettling.
Next came Javier Milei, Argentina's self-styled "chainsaw president," who walked in and branded the institution "a useless organisation whose only purpose is to sustain a caste of fatally arrogant parasites masquerading as well-intentioned bureaucrats." It was rather like attending a wedding, eating the feast, and then insulting the groom as a parting gift. Why travel across continents simply to declare the venue pointless? Because the soundbite went viral as "the man who tore into the UN to its face." Objective achieved — Argentine supporters are thrilled, hailing him as their next hero after Messi.
Then Benjamin Netanyahu entered to a mass walkout. The Palestinian delegation had called for one, dozens of representatives complied, and the chamber cleared out faster than a cinema screening a flop film. He branded them "moral cowards" and dared anyone remaining to leave as well. Last year, Israel itself tallied 77 absent nations; this year, nobody even bothered keeping count. The walkout has become an annual ritual. Both sides ultimately went home satisfied — the departing nations got their empty-chair photo-op and claimed courage, while he secured his image as the solitary figure standing in a deserted hall. Diplomacy was the real loser. Worse still, he seized the moment to display the infamous pager device Mossad had used to target Hezbollah commanders — a move widely seen as crossing a line.
The UNGA exists precisely so that opposing sides can find common ground. Instead, walking out has replaced the handshake as the customary gesture. A day earlier, the American delegate had walked out during Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian's address. Nobody listens anymore, everyone exits, and everyone wears it as a badge of honour. Over at the Security Council, Poland's RadosÅ‚aw Sikorski confronted Russia's Sergey Lavrov directly: "You can still kill a lot more people, but you cannot win" — in a forum meant to discuss how to stop the killing altogether.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan followed his usual September script, positioning himself as champion of the Muslim world nearly a hundred years after the caliphate's abolition. He brought up Kashmir, urging that "all disputes, including the Kashmir issue" be resolved through UN resolutions — coming just weeks after Turkey signed the Mecca joint defence agreement alongside Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The move surprised no one, nor was there any doubt about its intended audience — Ankara and Islamabad, delivered via New York.
Shehbaz Sharif is scheduled to speak Friday. Meanwhile, his address from last year is recirculating online, misleadingly captioned as though the Pakistani premier had warned that his country's terrorists would have wreaked havoc in New York and London had they not been kept occupied domestically. What he actually said in 2025 was: "Had these terrorists not been encountered by us, they would have been roaming on the streets of New York and London." Yet the distorted caption spread further simply because it fit existing assumptions. That's precisely the issue — when it comes to Shehbaz and Pakistan, the world readily believes the worst. Incidentally, Pakistan has trimmed its UNGA delegation size as a cost-cutting measure — apparently even the theatrics now come with a budget, courtesy of tensions in the neighbourhood. Then again, when has Pakistan ever been without one?
Traditionalists might argue the Assembly has always been theatrical, and that's a fair point. Recall Khrushchev's shoe-banging in 1960, Castro's marathon four-and-a-half-hour speech that same year, Chavez claiming he could smell sulphur in 2006 because "the devil came here yesterday," Gaddafi tossing aside the UN Charter in 2009, Netanyahu's cartoon bomb illustration in 2012, and India's own VK Krishna Menon speaking for nearly eight hours on Kashmir at the Security Council, at least having the grace to faint afterward.
Those, however, were exceptions — which is exactly why they made headlines. Today, the exception has become the norm. Once, leaders performed for the assembled hall. Now the hall itself is merely a backdrop, reduced to something like a heritage building rented out for pre-wedding photography.
Antonio Guterres delivered his farewell address this week, cautioning major powers that their influence isn't as commanding as they believe. The session's theme was "Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation." The transformation — from a forum for dialogue into a war room — has certainly been managed. Trust, less so.
The UN finds itself financially strained, squeezed by the very member states that criticise it. The Secretary-General is preparing to depart, with seven contenders lined up to take charge of the troubled institution. The Palestinian president had to address the gathering via video link after the host nation refused him a visa. The Israeli prime minister avoided the arrest threatened by New York's mayor — a favour he can attribute to Trump.
The institution established after two world wars to foster peace now hires out its podium for threats of annihilation, accusations of parasitism, and walkouts.
Diplomacy was once defined as the art of delivering the harshest message using the gentlest words. At this 81st General Assembly, it has become the art of saying virtually nothing, using the harshest words possible, at maximum volume, aimed squarely at audiences back home. The language of political rallies has overtaken the language of diplomatic halls.
Once again this year, the General Assembly generally convened to a largely pointless conclusion. Not because Milei called the UN useless — but because the week's events proved him correct.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
