America: The UN's Chatterbox
President Barack Obama spoke for an astounding 38 minutes at a recent UN General Assembly. Not only did his speech exceed the maximum speech length of 15 minutes, President Obama spoke for the longest out of all of the representatives assembled at the meeting.
On Sept. 20, following President Obama’s UN speech, The Economist published a map entitled “Rabbiting On” showing the average lengths of UN speeches in countries around the world. Representatives spending more than 20 minutes are a small minority and tend, surprisingly, not to be other global superpowers. If not a remnant of colonialism, or vehicle to exert influence over developing countries, what does this long-windedness tell us? The US, Iran and Argentina share no obvious similarities at first glance, but all share a desire for a completely sovereign status in the global arena. Each culture has manufactured a national identity whose health depends on autonomous rule, a value system which even when advocating for the opposite needs an authoritarian voice in the international sphere. In international spaces like the UN, these countries are forced into an awkward situation. They must participate in the UN to advocate for its values while simultaneously dreading being forced into macroeconomic servitude. It is this paradox, this double standard, that causes these nervous leaders to ramble on without purpose.
These speeches contrast with their Scandinavian counterparts. For example, the statement of Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg, at the same, recent Assembly, contained imperative phrases like “We cannot let fear guide our actions.” It did not struggle in a disjointed address to put words to the paradoxes of its national identity and difficulty in transitioning to the modern age.
America is a nation born of a desire to separate itself from its colonizer. From its beginning, it has sought to differentiate itself from Europe and the old country by being at the forefront of so called “Western advancements” in science, technology and the overall evolution of societal norms. However, since the Cold War, other countries have compromised the United States’ role as the metaphorical big brother of developing nations and purveyor of so called “true democracy.” As President Obama put it in his address at the General Assembly, “And perhaps those of us who have been promoting democracy feel somewhat discouraged since the end of the Cold War, because we’ve learned that liberal democracy will not just wash across the globe in a single wave.” As a result of the changing geopolitical climate in the past 60 years, America has increasingly become a more self-contained and sovereign nation. This sentiment has been taken to extremes by the Republican nominee for president Donald Trump, with broad, nativistic policy plans like banning all Muslim immigrants from entering the country, and building a wall between America and Mexico. Should Trump be elected, a future of American isolationism is foreseeable.
America is a nation born of a desire to separate itself from its colonizer. From its beginning, it has sought to differentiate itself from Europe and the old country.
However, Trump is not the only leader banging the drum to retreat into isolation. Carrying a history of political corruption, Argentina has often been manhandled by global financial sectors and pressured into paying debts. In a speech in 2015, the President, Cristina Kirchner, asked that the UN prioritize Argentina’s national sovereignty over stable economic exchange, to let sovereign countries “decide on their macroeconomic policies and also to decide how countries will restructure such debts….” She used her plea against economic inequality to disguise an effort to shake off international intervention and influence. As the people of her country are reduced to bartering clubs needing, arguably, external stability, she and her other verbose counterparts have put up a case for internal self-preservation and independent resurrection.
In his speech the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, adamantly defended an almost identical position regarding internationally imposed economic sanctions: “The people of Iran, who have been subjected to pressures especially in the last three years as a result of continued sanctions, cannot place trust in any security cooperation between their government with those who have imposed sanctions and created obstacles in the way of satisfying even their primary needs such as food and medicine.” As he tapped into the concept of “trust” he blamed insensitive international bodies for imposing their connectivity on Iran while it is trying desperately to evade their constructs to form a level of social stability.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s speech at the General Assembly in September focused on giving supplies and support when needed to developing countries. She emphasized the importance of “promoting a multilateral world order” to combat issues such as poverty, terrorism and climate change. These modest proposals contrast starkly with those of the American, Argentine and Iranian leaders whose speeches were layered with propositions constructed to deconstruct international cooperation and vision. As politicians talk more, we understand less, and our identity crisis grows. All the while our global communities draw us, inch by inch, closer together without any knowledge of how to navigate our own interface.