Human nature itself must be
attuned to walking out before a speech by political leaders who intentionally
have enemy civilians killed and severely injured, and to being attracted to hear
leaders who represent the victims. So, at the UN in September, 2026, many
delegates at the UN’s General Assembly walked out before a speech by Israel’s
Netanyahu, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes
against humanity in Gaza (and arguably even in the West Bank), and Russia’s
Putin did not even attend the opening session of speeches, whereas the address
by Ukraine’s President Zelensky was to a full room. The contrast between
Zelensky and the other two men could not be starker, and yet the UN was open to
all three, serial violations of the UN Charter notwithstanding. The international
organization can be said to have its legs wide open, and paradoxically to be
impotent even with regard to enforcing its own charter. As a visiting research
scholar at Harvard in 2025, I had the opportunity to speak personally with
former UN officials, all of whom admitted that, given the vetoes in the
Security Council, the UN itself could not even be reformed so the organization could
even pass meaningful resolutions against a powerful member’s ally; something
stronger at the global level would be needed if international law stood a
chance of being enforced rather than merely given lip service. In 2026, even
the notion of international law risked being relegated as an oxymoron, assuming
that law itself—to be considered law rather than guideline or policy—requires
a viable enforcement mechanism. To say that something is a law but is not
enforced is to say that something really isn’t a law.
The full essay is at "Russian Bombs Usher Ukraine's UN Address."