The Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped the session because he would not have wanted the focus on his Washington visit to be diluted. USA’s Donald Trump made a speech peppered with boasts, including an old saw about how he stopped the India and Pakistan conflict in 2025, a year which saw a record number of conflicts around the world. And he also repeated the threat of annihilating Iran. — Internet

They came, they spoke and they left as the United Nations General Assembly once again offered the floor to leaders to vent their feelings over where the world is headed. It might make no difference to what lies ahead for an increasingly multipolar world that had long ago failed in giving real authority to the international forum which has progressively been reduced to a talking shop.

The one tangible outcome of one of the weakest general assembly sessions held — which also marks the last in the tenure of Secretary-General Guterres — was the meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia and Germany. Their meeting when there is so much turmoil around the Ukraine war that threats are being perceived even against Nato countries in possible Russian action was significant.

The Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped the session because he would not have wanted the focus on his Washington visit to be diluted. USA’s Donald Trump made a speech peppered with boasts, including an old saw about how he stopped the India and Pakistan conflict in 2025, a year which saw a record number of conflicts around the world. And he also repeated the threat of annihilating Iran.

The beauty of talking shops where conflicting views can be aired freely is that Emmanuel Macron could tell the world that it must stand up to the US, Russia and Israel who were acting as if might is right. While India spent more time, perhaps in a futile way, in publicising Pakistan’s preference for sponsoring cross-border terror, it also tried to help the building of a partnership for multilateralism along with the EU, which seems quite determined to stress that the influence of the US as the world’s lone superpower was rapidly diminishing.

It is moot whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence would have lent India’s arguments greater weight. But as a country that helps technology rule the world because of a large Indian presence in governance of global companies, India may have needed to say something about the dangers of a runaway artificial intelligence that is bothering the world now. Even then, it would have been all talk anyway as AI charts its own path with little government control.

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