United we would stand, but divided we shall fall

[pyesetz]

The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, gave a speech (11 minutes) at the UN on Friday.  It's quite a barn-burner!  “The system is broken,” he said.  “Not just because of COVID-19,” but due to “our collective inability over the past decades to make the tough decisions and sacrifices needed to fight Climate Change and save future generations.”  He had nothing nice to say about the International Monetary Fund, nor the World Bank.

Starting at 5:10, where his voice gets louder and more strident, he also blamed countries like Iran, Russia, China, and the US, the “regimes that think might makes right” and those where “no one has any rights at all”.  Isn't it pleasant to have a national leader who isn't embarrassing?  But at 9:04 he refers to “the four corners of the planet” which implies that the Earth is both flat and square.  Trudeau is apparently switching back and forth between English and French during his speech, making extra work for the poor translator.

In other UN news, Armenia and Azerbaijan are two former Soviet republics who are now at war.  At issue: an unproductive piece of land the size of Delaware that is inside Azerbaijan but filled with ethnic Armenians.  This is the same piece of land and same belligerents as in the 1918-1920 wars; nothing has changed in a century.  Principal exports of the region: mulberry vodka, hydroelectric power, mined copper and gold.  Total value of all exports: $200,000 per year, or about $1 per resident.

In other other news, my IP address has apparently been banned from LiveJournal.  Ooh, those Russians!

Comments

[frith]

So... they're keeping all the gold they produce?

[pyesetz]

I don't think they're producing very much.  Some Armenians have spent the last 10 years protesting a certain gold mine (not in the Artsakh area), because the tailings from that mine would interfere with farming.

[rain_gryphon]

I'm rather disappointed that he didn't wear a costume this time. The UN's just slam full of foreigners - surely he could have found some colourful ethnic dress to wear while talking to them?

More seriously,

Mr. Trudeau recalled that following war and economic collapse, previous generations established the UN, and international finance organizations in the mid-20th century, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, thus laying the foundations for a rules-based international order and shared global prosperity.

"Today, all those institutions no longer serve us well enough on what they were designed for – defending multilateralism and international law, protecting human rights and open markets"

And here, he hits upon the very heart of the matter - the WWII generation's dream has become our nightmare. Everyone was so sure of themselves when they set this system up, so certain that everyone would see reason, and pull together to build a peaceful, prosperous world. But somehow, multilateralism has become a smothering, entangling trap; international law often seems as much a suicide pact as anything; human rights a weapon for terrorists to wield against the West; and open markets a rush toward the bottom, enriching the Third World at the expense of the bottom tier of Western workers.

It's a pretty dream, and I can still feel the pull of it, but Trudeau, like the UN, is fundamentally an agent of the dead past. That world needs to finish dying, so we can get on with building a new one.

[pyesetz]

גְּמָר טוֹב!

That world needs to finish dying, so we can get on with building a new one.

Yeah!  How do you feel about Strass & Howe's generational theory?  We need to finish the Millennial Sæculum and move on!  I am so done with late-stage Capitalism!


Trudeau, like the UN, is fundamentally an agent of the dead past.

I think he prefers to see himself as a transitional leader, with one foot in the past but trying to help the new sæculum get started.


some colourful ethnic dress to wear

Yes, Trudeau did make a fool of himself in India.  But at the UN he was pretending to be "leader of Canada" so he dressed in business-formal.

[rain_gryphon]

That's new to me. There's certainly some element of reaction against prior generations' priorities and practices which plays a role in shaping a generation's ideals, and I can see it running in a vague fixed cycle, but I'm wary of the seeming neatness and simplicity of the system. Specifically, their generations are largely based on Anglo/American events. How, then, do they account for Germany's instigation, and Japan's eager participation, in the Second World War? Were their societies driven by the same forces that drove America? How about the collapse of the Chinese Empire, the Age of Warlords, and their Civil war, culminating in the Korean War?^1 They seem to be on a completely different course than we were, yet we still ended up fighting them in Korea.

What I think really went wrong in the Post-War era was that the UN was designed to allow the major powers to talk out their differences, like an improved League of Nations, but there wasn't any anticipation of how rapidly and completely Europe would abandon their colonies. America, sadly, bears a lot of the blame for this. Despite the recent example of what happened in Germany when we deposed the Kaiser, we still persisted in believing (or at least professing to believe) that allowing oppressed people to select a government was the sovereign cure for all ills. In effect, it allowed the former colonies to have a voice in the UN, but without any sort of supervision. It went about the way one would expect.


^1 And the Age of Warlords playing, arguably, a major role in the beginning of the Second World War.

[loganberrybunny]

Isn't it pleasant to have a national leader who isn't embarrassing?

I wouldn't know...

[pyesetz]

Yeah, Blair and Brown were both in favour of the folly in Iraq, while all the others were Conservative.

[i_kender]

You're banned in Russia! Kudos on making it big :)

[pyesetz]

Thanks!  I got them to unban me.