‘Paradigm Issue’ With UN Security Council_ Retired Navy Captain

Joining us now is National Security Analyst and former Navy Captain Armin Kurdian. Armin, welcome to Newsroom. This was likely Biden's last speech at the UN. What are some of his key achievements from a foreign policy perspective? Good afternoon. Well, I'm trying to be impartial here, but frankly, the world is less safe and more disorderly than it was approximately four years ago. We have two relatively major wars that are occurring in different parts of the world, along with a lot of issues happening in the South China Sea, with China threatening its neighbors, taking over islands or being a big bully towards the Philippines and some of its neighbors. I don't think the legacy has been very good. It's been widely reported in the comments about how former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said that Joe Biden was on the wrong side of pretty much every foreign policy decision. We saw it happening. And we have to throw in, of course, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think a lot of folks understood that perhaps we needed to bring that war to a close, but that is not the way to do it. So, yes, this was his last conference at the UN, but his legacy is not going to be bright on the world stage. Today, Biden called for a reformed and expanded UN Security Council. In light of your previous comments, curious what you think he meant by that. Well, he leaves it kind of open. I don't know that you want to necessarily expand the UN Security Council. I understand everybody gets on there on a rotating basis. But when nations such as Iran or North Korea or Venezuela and Syria get to be on the UN Security Council, I think you have a little bit of a paradigm issue in terms of what the Security Council is actually supposed to accomplish. By the same token, you have a lot of the same nations do a Human Rights Council. So, the UN is the only organization we have. It's the only one that we have in the world, and we have to use it as best we can. But in terms of reform, I would be careful about, definitely would not want to expand it anymore. And otherwise, you're just never going to get anything done. It's hard enough to get, I think, nine or 10 votes as it is sometimes with a veto, which could eliminate actions. But by virtue of the same token, I just don't think that the Security Council is really accomplishing the goals that it was set out to do when the UN was first established almost 80 years ago. Yeah. With Russia being on the Security Council, leading into my next question, what role should the UN even play with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East? Maybe do they have a better shot at helping in Sudan? What can we expect from the UN? Well, let's go back 33, 34 years at the outset of the first Gulf War. You had George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker pulled the world together, had basically Israel and the Arabs virtually on the same side, unanimous consent about what Iraq had done going into Kuwait, got the world together, and got them expelled from Kuwait. That is the kind of work that the UN Security Council can do. I think right now with the administration, with a lot of it speaking out of both sides of its mouth, a lot of the backhanded support has been given to Israel and the country's issues with getting a constant steady stream of weapons to Ukraine, and there's faults on both sides of the aisle here in the United States for making that happen. When you don't have U.S. leadership in the world, then all those international organizations just start to fail. By nature of who we are, by the strongest economy, greatest economy, most powerful military, we have a place, whether we like it or not, in terms of leading world events. And when we are absent, or when our course is not clear, or when we give mixed signals to the rest of the world and we are not firm and committed to our forces of action, then everything else below us starts to fail. And I think we've seen the effects of that over the last four years. Yeah. When you mention this, I think of how the UN has put out opinions that the war crimes committed by Hamas and Israel are sort of mentioned in the same go. I'd be curious of your reactions to that. Well, I'll call your attention to UNRWA's latest comments about wanting amnesty for anyone who was involved in the October 7th attack last year. The U.S. and the Western nations rightfully pulled our funding from UNRWA and then said, okay, we'll trust you that you clean your house and come in. And now they make comments like this. It really begs the question as to what the UN is actually out there trying to accomplish. There are a lot of anti-Semitic forces within the UN, maybe not overtly so, but that are pulling strings behind the scenes. I think that the U.S. has to do a better job of pulling it out. And frankly, the U.S. needs to do a better job of pulling together Western and free nations around the world in common goals, bringing us together so that in the General Assembly, in the Security Council and all these other organizations that we are aligned in terms of the self-determination of people, peace, peace through strength, not peace through appeasement, which seems like what the UN is trying to do right now. And frankly, the lack of response against Russia in their assault against Ukraine, I think is also very, very troubling. So with strong leadership, I think the UN can be a more effective organization. With weak leadership, it's just a bunch of people in a room yelling at each other. Moving on from the topics of Russia and Israel in the UN to where China plays a role. In his speech, Biden stressed the importance of responsibly managing the competition with China. That included cooperation in stopping the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. Does the fact that both countries are part of the UN create some sort of inherent competition? Or how does that get managed to be in competition and also huge trade partners when it comes to what we can get out of the UN to resolve some of these differences? No, it's an interesting perspective when you look at the U.S. with conflict with China. We talk a lot about, is China going to go into Taiwan? Are they going to do all these things? China does have a strong military. They're making themselves stronger, I believe, with the intent of showing that China has great strength, but not seeking an armed conflict with the United States. It would be very painful for the U.S. We would still win, but it'll cause a lot of damage and cost an inordinate amount of damage on China because a fight would be in their backyard. From an economic perspective and, frankly, from a geopolitical perspective, China is playing a very, very long game of chess. Basically, they've been at this for about 60 years and increasing their sphere of influence around a lot of their neighbors. I think the U.S. has failed for the last 30 years in really porting a lot of these smaller nations around the Pacific Rim. We forget that there are some 230, 240 nations or so in the world, and a lot of them are very small, but they matter. Cooperating with them economically, militarily, diplomatically, and showing that the U.S. is here to stay, that we are going to be their friends and allies to push back against some of the hegemony that we've seen from China in terms of trying to influence our neighbors is a big deal. In terms of economy and China's unfair trade practices, we've seen a lot of cyber hacks coming from China. They're doing whatever they can to be the preeminent geopolitical power in the world. They don't necessarily need to defeat the United States militarily to achieve it. I know there are some people within the administration and within government who understand that, but the direction that comes from the very, very top needs to be very, very clear. I think, again, Republicans and Democrats both need to do a much better job of managing and containing Chinese aggression and hegemony. As we conclude, I'd ask you to look into your crystal ball, not to predict the outcome of the election, but what does the U.N.-U.S. partnership look like under both scenarios? With a Kamala Harris presidency, I see things continue to deteriorate. Joe Biden, at the very least, has decades of experience both on the national and the world stage. At the very least, regardless of some of his issues in the latter stages of his presidency, he still had a number of relationships out there and he still commanded a lot of trust and respect with some other world leaders. Kamala Harris has none of that. In fact, we've seen that she's unable to stand on her own two feet with a Polish prime minister or snubbing the Israeli prime minister, so that would be exceptionally bad for relations. A lot of world leaders were very, very skeptical of Donald Trump when he came onto the world stage. He seemed like a blunt instrument instead of the fine pen of diplomacy. I think he showed that there is some room for being very direct and very clear or being the proverbial Alexander Gordian Knot type of approach to diplomacy. But at the same time, some of that rhetoric also just, quite frankly, rubs people the wrong way. Call it hurt feelings, call it misunderstandings, call it mistrust, whatever you want. I think we'd be better off under a Trump presidency. Of course, it's not just the president, it's the entire diplomatic corps and staff and moving forward in one unified effort. We'll see what happens. Thanks for your insights. Retired Navy Captain Armin Kurdian. Thank you.