UN-likely saviours: Small states to the rescue as the mighty undermine UN

The UN’s dysfunction is real — but so is the quiet resolve of Singapore and other like-minded nations to keep it working.

- Bhavan Jaipragas Deputy Opinion Editor

What might have been the most striking takeaway from the last few weeks of United Nations summitry?

Chances are, what’s etched in most minds is US President Donald Trump using his General Assembly speech to vent about personal grievances — the escalator that stalled on him and his wife entering the building, the recalcitrant teleprompter that left him on his “lonesome” for much of his rambling speech.

If not that, then the walkout by representatives of dozens of countries when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began speaking.

Throughout the Sept 23-29 High-Level Week, as sideline meetings were held and agreements struck, what animated much of the UN cognoscenti — and a global audience — were these frivolities, alongside commentaries predicting impending doom for the world body and the multilateral system it anchors.

Yes, Mr Trump has ordered America out of the World Health Organisation, the Paris Agreement and the Human Rights Council, among others.

Still, the conclusion for the rest of the world cannot be the same as that of Mr Trump - who in the same breath asked “What is the purpose of the UN”? and concluded “empty words”.

Is that truly the case? There is an irony in the gloom, perhaps most visible to unabashed boosters of multilateralism, such as this columnist.

The reams of doomsaying - the video clips of Mr Trump’s stream-of-consciousness rant — are transmitted to us via the internet, on devices whose technical standards are developed by the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency with a lineage stretching back to the electrical telegraph.