Crossroads

Sep 26, 2023

UPDATE: Many previous speakers have expressed the idea that our shared planet is experiencing irreversible change. Right in front of our eyes, there is a new world order being born. Our future is being shaped by a struggle, one between the Global Majority in favour of a fairer distribution of global benefits and civilisational diversity, and the few who wield neocolonial methods of subjugation to maintain their elusive dominance.

At the core of our strategy is re-engaging, revitalizing, and reimagining our greatest strategic asset: America’s alliances and partnerships. We’re doing this through what I like to call diplomatic variable geometry. We start with the problem that we need to solve and we work back from there – assembling the group of partners that’s the right size and the right shape to address it. We’re intentional about determining the combination that’s truly fit for purpose.

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Humanity at the crossroads

By Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's statement at the General Debate at the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, New York, September 23, 2023:

“Mr President,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Many previous speakers have expressed the idea that our shared planet is experiencing irreversible change. Right in front of our eyes, there is a new world order being born. Our future is being shaped by a struggle, one between the Global Majority in favour of a fairer distribution of global benefits and civilisational diversity, and the few who wield neocolonial methods of subjugation to maintain their elusive dominance.

Rejections of the principle of equality and a total inability to reach agreement has long been the signature of the collective West. Being accustomed to looking down on the rest of the world, Americans and Europeans often make promises, take on commitments, including written and legally binding ones, and then they just do not fulfil them. As President Vladimir Putin pointed out, it is the West that is truly an empire of lies.

Russia, like many other countries, knows this firsthand. In 1945, when we, together with Washington and London, were vanquishing our enemy on the front lines of World War II, our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition were already making plans for Operation Unthinkable, a military operation against the Soviet Union. Four years later, in 1949, the Americans drafted Operation Dropshot to deliver massive nuclear strikes on the USSR.

These ghastly senseless ideas did remain on paper. The USSR created its own weapon of retaliation. However, it took the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, with the world balancing on the brink of a nuclear war, for the idea of unleashing it and the illusion of winning with it to cease being the underlying basis of US military planning.

At the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union played a decisive role in reuniting Germany and agreeing on the parameters of a new security architecture in Europe. At the same time, the Soviet, and then the Russian leadership, was given specific political assurances regarding the non-expansion of the NATO military bloc to the east. The relevant records of the negotiations are in our and in Western archives and they are openly accessible. But these assurances of Western leaders turned out to be a hoax as they had no intention whatsoever of upholding them. At the same time, they were never bothered by the fact that by bringing NATO closer to Russia's borders they would be grossly violating their official OSCE commitments made at the highest level not to strengthen their own security to the detriment of the security of others, and not to allow the military or political domination of any country, group of countries, or organisations in Europe.

In 2021, our proposals to conclude agreements on mutual security guarantees in Europe without changing Ukraine's non-aligned status were rudely rejected. The West continued its ongoing militarisation of the Russophobic Kiev regime, which had been brought to power as a result of a bloody coup, and to use it to wage a hybrid war against our country.

A series of recent joint exercises by the United States and its European NATO allies was something unprecedented following the end of the Cold War, along with the development of scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons on the territory of the Russian Federation. They stated their aim of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia. This obsession has finally blurred the vision of irresponsible politicians who have grown accustomed to impunity and bereft of the basic sense of self-preservation.

Washington-led NATO countries are not only building up and modernising their offensive capabilities, but are also shifting the armed confrontation into outer space and the information sphere. An attempt to extend the bloc's area of responsibility to the entire Eastern Hemisphere under the pernicious slogan of “indivisible security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific region” has become a new dangerous manifestation of NATO expansionism. To this end, Washington is creating subordinate military-political mini alliances such as AUKUS, the US-Japan-Korea trilateral summit, and the Tokyo-Seoul-Canberra-Wellington Quartet, pushing their members into practical cooperation with NATO, which is bringing its infrastructure into the Pacific theatre. It is obvious that these efforts are targeting Russia and China, as well as the collapse of the inclusive regional architecture of ASEAN, and generate risks for a new hotbed of geopolitical tension on top of the European one, which has already reached its boiling point.

One certainly has the impression that the United States and the “Western collective” fully subordinate to it have decided to give the Monroe Doctrine a global dimension. These ideas are both illusory and extreme, but this does not seem to stop the ideologists of the new edition of Pax Americana.

The global minority is doing its utmost to slow down the natural course of events. In the Vilnius Declaration of the North Atlantic Alliance, the “growing partnership between Russia and China” is described as “a threat to NATO.” Speaking recently to his ambassadors abroad, President Emmanuel Macron said he was sincerely concerned about the expansion of BRICS, seeing it as evidence that the situation was getting “more complex” and that this runs the risk of “weakening the West and our Europe in particular.” That there was a “our international order where the West has occupied and occupies dominant positions is being revised.” He made a few revelations: if someone somewhere is convening without our participation, is becoming closer without us or without our consent, that poses a threat to our dominance. NATO's pushing into the Asia-Pacific region is seen as something good, but the expansion of BRICS is a threat.

However, the logic of the historical progress is undeniable, the main trend of which being that states constituting the global majority are strengthening their sovereignty and defending their national interests, traditions, culture, and ways of life. They no longer want to live under anybody’s yoke; they want to be friends and trade with each other, but also with the rest of the world – only on an equal footing and for mutual benefit. Associations such as BRICS and the SCO are on the rise, providing the countries of the Global South with opportunities for joint development and defending their rightful role in the multipolar architecture, which is emerging beyond anyone’s control.

Perhaps for the first time since 1945, when the United Nations was established, there is now a chance for genuine democratisation of global affairs. This inspires optimism in all those who believe in the rule of law internationally and want to see a revival of the UN as the central coordinating body for global politics – a body where decisions are made by consensus, based on an honest balance of interests.

For Russia, it is clear that there is no other option. However, the United States and its subordinate “Western collective” continue to spawn conflicts that artificially partition humanity into hostile blocs and hamper the achievement of its common goals. They are doing everything they can to prevent the formation of a truly multipolar and fairer world order. They are trying to force the world to play by their notorious and self-serving “rules.”

I would like to urge Western politicians and diplomats once again to carefully re-read the UN Charter. The cornerstone of the world order established after World War II is the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, large and small, irrespective of their form of government, or their domestic political or socioeconomic structure.

However, the West still believes that it is superior to everybody else, in the spirit of the notorious statement made by EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell that Europe is a blooming “garden,” while everything around is a “jungle.” He is not bothered by the fact that in this garden, there is rampant Islamophobia and other forms of intolerance towards the traditional values of most world religions. Burnings of the Quran, desecration of the Torah, persecution of Orthodox clergy and the disdaining of the feelings of believers have all become commonplace in Europe.

In gross violation of the principle of sovereign equality of states, the West is using unilateral coercive measures. Countries that are victims of these illegal sanctions (and there are increasing numbers of them) are well aware that these restrictions harm first and foremost the most vulnerable strata of society. They provoke crises in food and energy markets.

We continue to insist on an immediate and full cessation of the United States’ unprecedented inhumane trade, economic, and financial blockade of Havana and for the lifting of the absurd decision to declare Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism. Washington must, without any preconditions, abandon its policy of the economic suffocation of Venezuela. We call for the lifting of unilateral US and EU sanctions against the Syrian Arab Republic, which openly undermine its right to development. Any coercive measures that circumvent the UN Security Council must be ended, as must be the West's weaponised practice of manipulating the Security Council’s sanctions policy to exert pressure on those they find objectionable.

The Western minority’s obsessive attempts to “Ukrainise” the agenda of every international discussion while pushing onto the backburner a number of unresolved regional crises, of which many have been in place for years and decades now, have become a blatant manifestation of its self-centered policy.

Full-fledged normalisation in the Middle East cannot be achieved without resolving the main issue, which is the settlement of the protracted Palestine-Israel conflict using as its basis UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative put forward by Saudi Arabia. The Palestinians have been waiting for more than 70 years to have their own state, which was solemnly promised to them, but which the Americans, who monopolised the mediation process, are doing everything in their power not to allow this. We call for a pooling of efforts of all responsible countries to create the conditions for a resumption of direct Palestine-Israel negotiations.

It is gratifying that the Arab League has got its second wind and is stepping up its role in the region. We welcome the return of Syria to the Arab family, and we welcome the start of the normalisation process between Damascus and Ankara, which we are shoring up with our Iranian colleagues. All these positive developments reinforce the efforts in the Astana format to promote a Syrian settlement based on UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the restoration of Syria’s sovereignty.

We do hope that with the assistance of the UN, the Libyans will be able to properly prepare for general elections in their long-suffering country, which for more than ten years has been struggling to get back on its feet after the NATO aggression that destroyed the Libyan state and opened the floodgates to the spread of terrorism to the Sahara-Sahel region and to waves of millions of illegal migrants to Europe and other areas. Analysts note that as soon as Gaddafi abandoned his military nuclear programme, he was immediately eliminated. Thus, the West has created the most dangerous risks for the entire nuclear non-proliferation regime.

We are concerned by Washington and its Asian allies who are whipping up military hysteria on the Korean Peninsula, where the US is building up its strategic capabilities. Russian-Chinese initiatives to consider humanitarian and political tasks as priorities have been rejected.

The tragic development of the situation in Sudan is nothing less than the result of another failed Western experiment to export its liberal democratic dogma. We support constructive initiatives to expedite the settlement of the Sudan’s domestic conflict, primarily by facilitating direct dialogue between the warring parties.

When we see the nervous reaction in the West to the latest events in Africa, in particular in Niger and Gabon, it is impossible not to recall how Washington and Brussels reacted to the bloody coup in Ukraine in February 2014 – a day after an agreement was reached on a settlement under EU guarantees, which the opposition simply trampled on. The United States and its allies supported the coup, hailing it as a “manifestation of democracy.”

We cannot fail to be concerned by the ongoing deteriorating situation in the Serbian province of Kosovo. NATO’s supply of arms to the Kosovars and assistance to help them establish an army grossly violates the key Resolution of the UN Security Council 1244. The whole world can see how the sad story of the Minsk agreements on Ukraine is being repeated in the Balkans. There was a stipulation that the republics of Donbass were to have a special status; however, Kiev openly sabotaged this with the support of the West. Such is the case now, when the European Union does not want to force its Kosovo protégés to implement the agreements that were reached between Belgrade and Pristina the 2013 to establish the Community of Serb Municipalities of Kosovo, which would have special rules regarding their language and traditions. In both cases, the EU acted as a guarantor for the agreements, and apparently, they share the same fate. When we see the EU as the sponsor, we can expect the same outcome. Now Brussels is imposing its “mediation services” on Azerbaijan and Armenia, along with Washington, thus bringing destabilisation to the South Caucasus. Now that the leaders of Yerevan and Baku have actually settled the issue with the mutual recognition of the countries’ sovereignty, the time has come for establishing peaceful existence and trust-building. The Russian peacekeeping troops will contribute to this in every possible way.

As for other decisions of the international community that remain on paper, we call for the completion of the decolonisation process in accordance with the resolutions of the General Assembly and for an end to all colonial and neo-colonial practices.

A vivid illustration of the “rules” by which the West wants us all to live is the fate of its commitments that were made in 2009 to provide developing countries with $100 billion annually to finance climate change mitigation programmes. If you compare what happened to these unkept promises with the amounts that the US, NATO and the EU have spent on supporting the racist regime in Kiev – an estimated $170 billion over the past year and a half – you will come to realise what the “enlightened Western democracies” with their notorious “values” really think.

In general, it is time to reform the existing global governance architecture, which has long been failing to meet the needs of our time. The United States and its allies should abandon their artificial restraints on the redistribution of voting quotas in the IMF and the World Bank and the West must recognise the real economic and financial weight of the countries of the Global South. It is also important to unblock the work of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body without delay.

There is an ever-increasing need to expand the composition the Security Council simply by eliminating the underrepresentation of countries from the World Majority – in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is important that the new members of the Security Council, both permanent and non-permanent, be able to use their authority in their regions, as well as in global organisations such as the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

It is time to look at fairer methods of making up the UN Secretariat. The criteria that have been in place for many years do not reflect the actual influence of states in global affairs and artificially ensure the excessive dominance of citizens of NATO and EU countries. These imbalances are further exacerbated by the system of permanent contracts, which link people to positions in host countries of international organisations’ headquarters, the overwhelming majority of them located in capitals that promote Western policies.

A new type of association is being called upon to reinforce the reform of the UN, where there would be no leaders or followers, teachers or students, and all issues would be resolved based on consensus and balance of interests. One of those is certainly BRICS, which has significantly increased its authority following its summit in Johannesburg and has gained truly global influence.

At the regional level, there has been a clear renaissance of organisations, such as the African Union, CELAC, LAS, GCC, and others. In Eurasia, there is an increasing harmonisation of integration processes as part of the SCO, ASEAN, CSTO, EAEU, CIS, and China’s Belt and Road project. A natural formation of the Greater Eurasian Partnership is underway as well, and it is open to all associations and countries on our shared continent without exception.

These positive trends, unfortunately, are being undermined by the increasingly aggressive attempts by the West to maintain their dominance in world politics, economics, and finance. It is in the common interest to avoid fragmentation of the world into isolated trade blocs and macro-regions. But if the United States and its allies do not want to negotiate on making the globalisation processes fair and equitable, those remaining will have to draw their own conclusions and think about steps that will help them make their socioeconomic and technological development not dependent on the neocolonial instincts of their former colonial powers.

The main problem lies with the West because developing countries are prepared to negotiate, including in the G20, as the recent G20 summit in India showed. The main conclusion in its report is that the G20 can and should be free of any political agenda and given the opportunity to do what it was created for: to work out generally acceptable methods for governing the global economy and finance. We have opportunities for dialogue and agreements. We must not miss this opportunity.

All these trends should be fully taken into account by the UN Secretariat as its statutory mission is to seek consent from all member states within the UN and not somewhere on the side.

The UN was established at the end of World War II and any attempts to revise this would undermine the foundations of the UN. As a representative of a country that made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism and the Japanese militarism, I would like to draw attention to a glaring trend to rehabilitate Nazis and their collaborators in a number of European countries, primarily in Ukraine and the Baltic States. A particularly alarming fact is that last year, Germany, Italy, and Japan for the first time voted against the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. This regrettable fact calls into question the true repentance of these states for the mass crimes they committed against humanity during World War II and runs counter to the conditions under which they were accepted into the UN as fully-fledged members. We strongly urge you to pay special attention to this “metamorphosis” that runs counter to the approaches of the global majority and to the principles of the UN Charter.

Mr President,

Today, humanity is at a crossroads again, as has happened many times in the past. It is entirely up to us what will become of history. It is in our shared interest to prevent a downward spiral towards a large-scale war and avoid the final collapse of the mechanisms for international cooperation that were put in place by generations of our predecessors. The Secretary-General has put forward an initiative to hold a Summit of the Future next year. This can only be successful if a fair and equitable balance of interests of all member states is ensured and with due respect for the intergovernmental character of the organisation. At our meeting on September 21, the members of the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter agreed to actively contribute to achieving this.

As Antonio Guterres said at a news conference shortly before this session, “if we want a future of peace and prosperity based on equity and solidarity, leaders have a special responsibility to achieve compromise in designing our common future for our common good.” This is an excellent response to those who divide the world into “democracies” and “autocracies” and dictate their neo-colonial “rules” to others.”

American Diplomacy in a New Era

By United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Remarks to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) (amended)

The end of the Cold War brought with it the promise of an inexorable march toward greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic interdependence, political liberalization, human rights. And indeed, the post-Cold War era ushered in remarkable progress. More than a billion people lifted from poverty. Historic lows in conflicts between states. Deadly diseases diminished – even eradicated.

Now, not everyone benefitted equally from the extraordinary gains of this period. And there were serious challenges to the order – the wars in the former Yugoslavia; the genocide in Rwanda; 9/11 and the Iraq War; the 2008 global financial crisis; Syria; the COVID pandemic – to name a few.

But what we’re experiencing now is more than a test of the post-Cold War order. It’s the end of it.

Decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers, revisionist powers. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is the most immediate, the most acute threat to the international order enshrined in the UN charter and its core principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence for nations, and universal indivisible human rights for individuals.

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China poses the most significant long-term challenge because it not only aspires to reshape the international order, it increasingly has the economic, the diplomatic, the military, the technological power to do just that.

And Beijing and Moscow are working together to make the world safe for autocracy through their “no limits partnership.”

Forging international cooperation has gotten more complex. Not only because of rising geopolitical tensions, but also because of the mammoth scale of global problems like the climate crisis, food insecurity, mass migration and displacement.

Countries and citizens are losing faith in the international economic order, their confidence rattled by systemic flaws:

A handful of governments that used rule-shattering subsidies, stolen IP, and other market-distorting practices to gain an unfair advantage in key sectors.

Technology and globalization that hollowed out and displaced entire industries, and policies that failed to do enough to help out the workers and communities that were left behind.

And inequality that has skyrocketed. Between 1980 and 2020, the richest .1 percent accumulated the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent.

The longer these disparities persist, the more distrust and disillusionment they fuel in people who feel the system is not giving them a fair shake. And the more they exacerbate other drivers of political polarization, amplified by algorithms that reinforce our biases rather than allowing the best ideas to rise to the top.

More democracies are under threat. Challenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition. And challenged from the outside, by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.

Any single one of these developments would have posed a serious challenge to the post-Cold War order. Together, they’ve upended it.

So we find ourselves at what President Biden calls an inflection point. One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come.

The United States is leading in this pivotal period from a position of strength. Strength grounded in both our humility and our confidence.

Now, our competitors have a fundamentally different vision. They see a world defined by a single imperative: regime preservation and enrichment. A world where authoritarians are free to control, coerce, and crush their people, their neighbors, and anyone else standing in the way of this all-consuming goal.

Our competitors claim that the existing order is a Western imposition, when in fact the norms and values that anchor it are universal in aspiration – and enshrined in international law that they’ve signed onto. They claim that what governments do within their borders is their business alone, and that human rights are subjective values that vary from one society to another. They believe that big countries are entitled to spheres of influence – that power and proximity give them the prerogative to dictate their choices to others.

The contrast between these two visions could not be clearer. And the stakes of the competition we face could not be higher – for the world, and for the American people.

Our domestic renewal reinforces, and is reinforced by, American leadership in the world. And that’s where the power and purpose of American diplomacy comes in. At the core of our strategy is re-engaging, revitalizing, and reimagining our greatest strategic asset: America’s alliances and partnerships.

We’re doing this through what I like to call diplomatic variable geometry. We start with the problem that we need to solve and we work back from there – assembling the group of partners that’s the right size and the right shape to address it. We’re intentional about determining the combination that’s truly fit for purpose.

But on certain priorities, if we go it alone, or only with our democratic friends, we will come up short. Many issues demand a broader set of potential partners, with the added benefit of building stronger relationships with more countries.

So, we’re determined to work with any country – including those with whom we disagree on important issues – so long as they want to deliver for their citizens, contribute to solving shared challenges, and uphold the international norms that we built together. This involves more than just partnering with national governments – but also local governments, civil society, the private sector, academia, and citizens, especially young leaders.

This is the heart of our strategy to get from where we are to where we need to be. And we’re pursuing it in four principal ways.

First, we’re renewing and deepening our alliances and partnerships, and forging new ones.

Go back just a few years, and some were openly questioned the capabilities and relevance of NATO – and America’s own commitment to it. Today, the Alliance is bigger, stronger, more united than ever. We’ve added an incredibly capable new member in Finland, Sweden will join soon, and NATO’s doors remain open. We’ve enhanced our deterrence and defense, including adding four new multinational battalions to NATO’s Eastern Flank, and increasing defense investments to address emerging challenges from cyber attacks to climate change.

We’re transforming the G7 into the steering committee for the world’s most advanced democracies, combining our political and economic muscle to not only address the issues affecting our people – but also to offer countries outside the G7 better ways to deliver for their people.

We’ve raised the level of ambition in our relationship with the European Union. Together, we account for 40 percent of the global economy. We’re using that power to shape our technological and economic future to reflect our shared democratic values.

We’re taking critical bilateral relationships to a new level.

Our decades-long alliance with Japan is stronger and more consequential than ever – reaching new frontiers, from space to quantum computing.

We signed the Washington Declaration with the Republic of Korea, bolstering our cooperation to deter threats from North Korea; and the Jerusalem Declaration with Israel, reaffirming our commitment to Israel’s security – and to using all elements of U.S. power to ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.

We agreed to new basing and posture arrangements with allies Australia and the Philippines.

The U.S.-India strategic partnership has never been more dynamic, as we team up on everything from advanced semiconductors to defense cooperation.

And just a few days ago in Hanoi, President Biden cemented a new comprehensive strategic partnership with Vietnam.

We’ve galvanized regional integration. In the Middle East, we’ve deepened both recent and decades-old relations between Israel and Arab states – and we’re working to foster new ones, including with Saudi Arabia.

In our own hemisphere – which is experiencing the greatest mass migration and displacement in its history – we’ve rallied 20 countries and counting around a regional strategy to ensure safe, orderly, and humane migration, while also addressing the root causes that are driving people from their homes in the first place.

And President Biden has hosted summits with leaders from the Americas, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Pacific Island countries, to drive transformational partnerships.

Second, we’re weaving together our alliances and partnerships in innovative and mutually reinforcing ways – across issues and across continents.

Just consider for a minute all of the ways that we’ve rallied different combinations of allies and partners to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s full-scale aggression.

With Secretary of Defense Austin’s leadership, more than 50 countries are cooperating to support Ukraine’s defense and build a Ukrainian military strong enough to deter and beat back future attacks.

We’ve aligned scores of countries in imposing an unprecedented set of sanctions, export controls, and other economic costs on Russia.

On multiple occasions, we’ve marshaled 140 nations at the United Nations – more than two-thirds of all the member states – to affirm Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and condemn Russia’s aggression and atrocities.

We coordinated the G7, the European Union, and dozens more countries to support Ukraine’s economy, to build back its energy grid – more than half of which Russia has destroyed.

That’s what variable geometry looks like: for every problem, we’re assembling a fit‑for‑purpose coalition.

Some once saw threats to the international order as confined to one region or another. We’ve seized on this recognition to bring our transatlantic and Indo‑Pacific allies closer together in defending our shared security, prosperity, and freedom.

When Russia cut off oil and gas supplies to Europe in the winter to try to freeze the country out of – freeze countries out of supporting Ukraine, Japan and Korea joined America’s leading liquified natural gas producers to ensure European countries had the energy needed to keep their homes warm throughout the winter. Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand are now regular and active participants in NATO meetings.

Meanwhile, European countries, Canada, and others have joined our allies and partners in Asia in sharpening their tools to push back against the PRC’s economic coercion. And U.S. allies and partners in every region are working urgently to build resilient supply chains, particularly when it comes to key technologies and the critical materials that are needed to make them.

We created a new security partnership – AUKUS – with Australia and the United Kingdom to build modern nuclear-powered submarines, and to advance our joint work on AI, quantum computing, and other cutting-edge technologies.

Coming out of the first-ever trilateral Leaders’ Summit at Camp David last month between the United States, Japan, and Korea, we are taking every aspect of our relationship to the next level – from increasing joint military exercises and intel sharing to aligning our global infrastructure investments.

We’ve elevated the Quad partnership with India, Japan, and Australia to deliver for our countries and the world on everything from manufacturing vaccines to strengthening maritime security to addressing climate challenges.

When I set out the administration’s “invest, align, and compete” strategy toward China last year, we pledged to act with our network of allies and partners in common purpose. By any objective measure, we are now more aligned, and acting in more coordinated ways, than ever before.

That allows us to manage our competition with China from a position of strength, while taking advantage of open channels of communication to speak clearly, credibly, and with a chorus of friends about our concerns; demonstrating our commitment to cooperate on issues that matter most to us in the world; and minimizing the risk of miscalculation that could lead to conflict.

Third, we’re building new coalitions to tackle the toughest shared challenges of our time.

Like closing the global infrastructure gap.

Together, we’ve committed to deliver $600 billion in new investment by 2027 through the Partnership of Global Infrastructure and Investment, or PGI. And we’re focusing our government support on areas where reducing risks will unlock hundreds of billions more in private sector investment.

So let me just give you a couple of quick examples of how we’re doing this. We’re making a series of transformative investments in the Lobito corridor – that’s a band of development connecting Africa, from Angola’s port of Lobito, across the DRC, to Zambia – with a new port, new rail lines and roads, new green power projects, new high-speed internet.

The project will deliver 500 megawatts of power – enough to provide electricity for more than 2 million people, cut around 900,000 tons of carbon emissions every year, create thousands of jobs for Africans, thousands more for Americans, and bring critical minerals like copper and cobalt to global markets.

And just this past week at the G20, President Biden and Indian Prime Minister Modi announced another ambitious transportation, energy, and technology corridor that will connect the ports of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, the EU will team up with the U.S. and India to turbo charge clean energy production, digital connectivity, and strengthen critical supply chains across the region.

Making a stronger offer for our partners is a good deal for America too.

The same is true for our leadership to address the global food crisis.

More than 700 million people worldwide face food insecurity – fueled by COVID, climate, and conflict – exacerbated now by Russia blocking the flow of grain from Ukraine, the world’s breadbasket.

The United States is the largest donor in the world to the UN World Food Programme – we provide about 50 percent of its annual budget. Russia and China? Less than 1 percent each.

Since 2021, the United States has also provided more than $17.5 billion to address food insecurity and its root causes. That includes more than a billion dollars every year toward Feed the Future – the USAID flagship program – our partnership with 40 countries to strengthen food systems. And it includes our support for something called VACS – a new program we launched with the African Union and the UN to identify the most nutritious African crops, to breed their most climate-resilient varieties, and to improve the soil that they grow in.

The more countries can feed their own people, the more prosperous and more stable partners they’ll be; the less they can be victimized by countries willing to cut off food and fertilizer; the less support they’ll need from international donors; the more abundant the global food supply will be, lowering prices in markets everywhere, including in the United States.

We’re bringing a similar approach to emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence.

In July, President Biden announced a new set of voluntary commitments from seven leading AI companies to develop safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems. And just yesterday, eight more leading companies signed on.

These commitments are the foundation for our engagement with a wide range of partners to forge an international consensus around how to minimize the risks and maximize the potential of rapid AI advances.

We’re starting with our closest partners, like the G7, where we’re designing an international code of conduct for private actors and governments developing advanced AI – and common regulatory principles – and partners like the United Kingdom, which is convening a Global Summit on AI Safety to better identify and mitigate longer-term risks.

Now, for these norms to be effective, we will need to bring a wide range of voices and views into the discussion, including developing countries. We’re committed to doing just that.

Shaping AI’s use is critical to preserving America’s competitive edge in this technology and also fostering AI innovation that actually benefits people everywhere, like helping predict individuals’ risk of deadly disease or forecasting the impact of more severe, more frequent storms. That’s the idea behind a meeting I’ll host at the UN General Assembly next week to focus governments, tech firms, civil society on using AI to advance the Sustainable Development Goals.

Let me give you just one final example of how we’re building a new coalition to address a problem that many people probably didn’t think of as a foreign policy issue: synthetic drugs.

Last year alone, nearly 110,000 Americans died of a drug overdose. Two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids, making synthetic opioids the number-one killer of Americans aged 18 to 49. The crisis cost the U.S. nearly $1.5 trillion in 2020 alone, to say nothing of the suffering it’s inflicting on families and communities across our country.

We’re not alone in this. Every region is experiencing an alarming rise in synthetic drugs, and no one country can solve this problem.

That’s why we created a new global coalition to prevent the illicit manufacturing and trafficking of synthetic drugs, to detect emerging threats and patterns of use, to advance public health responses. More than 100 governments and a dozen international organizations have joined that coalition. Together, we’re aligning joint priorities, identifying effective policies, integrating health care providers, chemical manufacturers, social media platforms, and other key stakeholders in our efforts. We’ll meet next week in New York to broaden this work.

Of course, these are far from the only areas where we’re building or sustaining coalitions. We’re also using them to address security threats, from the multinational task force we set up to protect the ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to the longstanding coalition of countries that we created to defeat ISIS.

We continue to partner with governments, with regional organizations, and citizens to press for diplomatic solutions to conflicts new and old – from Ethiopia and eastern DRC, to Armenia and Azerbaijan, to Yemen where we helped forge and maintain a delicate truce.

Our mediation helped Israel and Lebanon reach a historic agreement to establish a maritime boundary between their countries, enabling the development of significant energy reserves to the benefit of people in both countries and beyond.

The more we bring together allies and partners to make real progress on critical issues like infrastructure, like food security, like AI, like synthetic drugs, like conflicts new and old, the more we demonstrate the strength of our offer.

Take any recent challenge where nations around the world have looked to powerful countries to lead. At best, our competitors have sat on the sidelines, closed their checkbooks. At worst, they’ve made bad problems even worse and profited from others’ suffering – extracting political concessions in order to sell countries vaccines; deploying mercenaries who make unstable places less secure, plunder local resources, and commit atrocities; turning people’s basic needs – for heat, for gas, for food, for technology – into a cudgel to threaten and coerce them.

At this critical inflection point, we’re showing countries who we are. So are our competitors.

Finally, we’re bringing our old and new coalitions together to strengthen the international institutions that are vital to tackling global challenges.

That starts with showing up. When the United States has a seat at the table, we can shape the international institutions and the norms that they produce to reflect the interests and values of the American people and advance our vision for the future.

Upon taking office, President Biden moved swiftly to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, the World Health Organization. We won back a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. We recently rejoined UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – that will play a role in shaping the norms that define artificial Intelligence.

We’ve competed intensely to elect the most qualified leaders to head international standard- setting agencies, like the UN International Telecommunication Union and the International Organization for Migration. Not only were the two Americans who won these races the best candidates for the job – each is also the first woman to lead her respective institution.

Now, however imperfect these institutions may be, there’s no substitute for the legitimacy and capabilities that they bring to bear on issues that matter to our people. So we have an abiding self-interest in working through them and in making them work better – and not just for the U.S., but for everyone.

The more people and nations around the world see the UN and organizations like it representing their interests, their values, their hopes – the more effective these institutions will be and the more we can rely on them.

That’s why we’ve put forward an affirmative vision for expanding the UN Security Council to incorporate more geographically diverse perspectives – including new permanent and non-permanent members from Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.

With Secretary Yellen’s leadership, we’re making a major push to revitalize and reform the multilateral development banks so that they can meet the pressing needs of low- and middle-income countries who are facing a perfect storm of challenges: the growing impact of the climate crisis, economic fallout from COVID, inflation, and crushing debt.

President Biden is working with Congress to unlock new lending capacity for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to provide more financing – at cheaper rates – for investment in climate mitigation, in public health, and other critical issues in these countries.

Together, these U.S.-led initiatives would generate nearly $50 billion in lending for low- and middle-income countries.

And with our strong push, the World Bank will soon enable countries to defer debt payments after climate shocks and natural disasters.

When we strengthen international institutions – and when they deliver on their core promises to ensure security, to expand opportunity, to protect rights – we build a broader coalition of citizens and countries who see the international order as something that improves their lives in real ways and deserves to be upheld and defended.

So when the Beijings and Moscows of the world try to rewrite – or rip down – the pillars of the multilateral system; when they falsely claim that the order exists merely to advance the interests of the West at the expense of the rest – a growing global chorus of nations and people will say, and stand up to say: No, the system you are trying to change is our system; it serves our interests.

For these and so many other reasons, America’s return on the international order far exceeds our investment in it.

In this pivotal time, America’s global leadership is not a burden. It’s a necessity to safeguard our freedom, our democracy, and our security; to create opportunities for American workers and businesses; to improve the lives of American citizens.

We must act, and act decisively.

No one understands this better than President Biden. And America is in a significantly stronger position in the world than it was two and a half years ago because of the actions that he’s taken.

I’m convinced that, decades from now, when the history of this period is written – maybe by some of you – it will show that the way we acted – decisively, strategically, with humility and confidence to reimagine the power and purpose of U.S. diplomacy – we secured America’s future, we delivered for our people, we laid the foundation for a more free, a more open, a more prosperous era – for the American people and for people around the world.

Thank you.

Global Polarity

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