Reflecting on a crazy week at the UN
Ruth Anne and Brandi are sucking back Marlboro Lights, escaping the heat, and drinking bourbon and cokes. They are talking about their kids and deadbeat boyfriends in a bar in the town of Grapevine, near Fort Worth in Texas.
They want to be good parents, meet a good man and get ahead.
They like Donald Trump and what they know about the United Nations, they don’t care for. ‘‘I had been asking God for a change, and the good Lord delivered,’’ Ruth Anne says before telling me that she has just got her first passport. She hopes to visit her brother in Mexico.
After a week at the would-be world government, I am involuntarily stuck in DallasFort Worth for 24 hours.
Although irritating, it gives a chance to reflect on the crazy week following Jacinda Ardern around New York at a global confab of diplomats, presidents, prime ministers, plutocrats and dictators.
The UN is a curious place of contradictions. Its severe architecture looks like it was designed by committee – which in a post-war Cold War world it sort of was.
Father of modernist architecture Le Corbusier was one of several architects who worked on the palace of compromise, which was completed in 1952.
Walking through the sterile complex, the whole thing is a sort of homage to itself. Inspirational quotes from current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres litter the walls, as do photos and theme walls of factoids and the work that the UN is doing around the world. These range from the concrete – clearing landmines – to the trite. There are sections with something akin to ‘‘sponsor’s content’’: so the People’s Republic of China had a big display celebrating its 70th anniversary – all Mao Zedong, no Tiananmen Square.
Add a lot of sensible shoes, illfitting suits, military uniforms and national dress and you get the picture. I even saw one person genuflecting, presumably before the altar of the UN.
Its high vaulted walls and post-war concrete and timber panelling is at odds with its mocha stucco ceilings, which seem to run around much of the complex, even continuing into the grand UN General Assembly.
As an institution, it is also an odd mix of idealism, recriminations, fashionable causes and contradictions. There was even a disappointingly unfabulous Eurovision tent.
For the Fourth Estate it’s less glamorous, crammed into a big airconditioned tent as there are not enough seats. Journalists try an equivalent of the Germanstyle towel-on-the-poolsidelounger trick, with mixed success, putting bags and handwritten notes down to claim a spot. The Europeans seem to do it best.
Then there’s the Australians. There’s a great episode of Flight of the Conchords where Kiwi diplomatic attache´ Murray is being hassled by obnoxiously Australian diplomatic officials. ‘‘How are New Zealand’s mineral exports Murray . . . is that them there in your briefcase?’’
‘‘Oh Murray, I think you’ve dropped New Zealand’s mineral exports 08-09!’’
I had a similar real-life experience. An Australian journo fresh from covering Scott Morrison’s big Trump banquet, meetings and even rallies joked in reference to Jacinda Ardern’s short, no-media, meeting with Trump: ‘‘Luke got a pull aside, which is not as a good as a reach around!’’ Cue laughing. Bloody Aussies.
During the speeches the microphone is turned down quite low so that people can hear the translations through little white earphones.
At the start, the UN President, a spot dished out on a rotating basis and currently held by Nigeria, warned delegates that speeches must be kept to 15 minutes. But, of course, there was no bell, and no way of getting gibberers off the stage.
The odd thing about the UN is that its higher levels are run, not by idealists, but by hardened politicians. Current SecretaryGeneral Guterres was once Prime Minister of Portugal.
Think aspirants Helen Clark, who the New Zealand government backed for the top job, and Kevin Rudd, who the Australians did not. These are people comfortable with, and experienced in, the acquisition and use of power.
Going back to Ruth Anne and Brandi. The UN General Assembly was truly a gathering of what British author David Goodhart calls the ‘‘anywheres’’.
It’s the global elite, those with education, skills and labour mobility that can take them around the world and give plentiful options in life.
Freed from the immediate stress of making ends meet, this group tends to coalesce around global goals. This group – particularly the unelected bureaucratic class – seem to agree on most things.
But they aren’t tasked with the nuts and bolts of national democratic politics: improving the lot of people, about which there is lots of legitimate disagreement.
That’s what Jacinda Ardern faces back in New Zealand now. In 2017 she was elected on getting Kiwis ahead beyond headline GDP numbers. Over the next 12 months she has to prove it.