Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, September 29, 2025

President Donald Trump lambasted the United Nations on opening day for its failure to stop global crises in the midst of major regional wars, humanitarian disasters, looming security threats, never mind costly bureaucratic waste. But like a stern professor, yet as the leader of the most prominent and founding UN member state, he then added that the world organization isn’t living up to its potential, and scathingly challenged, “What’s the purpose of the United Nations?”

The old rebuke, “You can do better!” Sometimes it works.

Among the 193 members under the General Assembly’s golden dome there was disquiet but attention. But this was not the last rebuke to the UN’s very essence.

The 80th General Assembly, what was supposed to originally be a celebration of the UN’s founding in San Francisco in 1945, turned out to be a gloomy and plaintive session as most of us sadly expected. Founded from the ruins the Second World War, the new multinational organization would offer the brave new world a future of peace and security. Then postwar reality intervened.

Key crises confront the UN and the global community.

Ukraine’s conflict, the largest war in Europe since WWII, devastates a central European country and as importantly imperils neighboring states. Thus, beyond millions of refugees and massive human carnage, the war is spilling over into neighboring NATO countries.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in a powerful address to the Assembly stated bluntly; Ukraine has no security guarantees “except friends and weapons.” What can the UN really do he asked? He rhetorically cited, “What can Sudan or Somalia or Palestine or any other people living through war really expect from the UN or the global system?” He added, “For decades, just statements and statements.”

“Weapons decide who survives” he stated bluntly. Zelensky’s address was assertive, confident and combative. He earned the right.

“We are at a turning point in history,” with the principle of sovereignty increasingly trampled upon,” echoed Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki, adding Moscow views “other nations as colonial property and justifies invasion as a historical correction.”

Peace negotiations are a process; often slow, stop/start, jolt and then movement. Ukraine’s long-awaited ceasefire is yet to happen. Russia’s war slogs on.

Sec. Gen. Antonio Guterres commended the efforts by the United States and others seeking to facilitate diplomatic solutions to the conflict. Nevertheless, progress on achieving a ceasefire and a lasting peace settlement remains “painfully slow.” He added, “We cannot afford to lose the current diplomatic momentum, fragile as it may be.”

The perennial Palestine debate continued energized by the ongoing fighting and Gaza’s humanitarian tragedy.

As promised key Western powers recognized the State of Palestine, which holds UN Observer status; France, Britain, Canada and Portugal among others made the controversial diplomatic gesture. Palestine’s President Mahmud Abbas spoke by video-link to the Assembly thanking the Europeans and at the same time condemning the horrific Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas “will have no role in governing,” he promised.

All of this gives the diplomatic blessing to the so-called Two State solution whereby a sovereign Palestine State would live theoretically side by side with the State of Israel.

Very theoretically.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke defiantly before the General Assembly he was publicly insulted by a crass walkout of Arab and Muslim diplomats who left the hall to the cheers of many remaining delegations. Netanyahu responded reminding delegates of Israel’s stand and Why he opposes the Two State solution.

He intoned, “The Palestinians, they don’t believe in this solution. They never have. They don’t want a state next to Israel. They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel.”

Netanyahu demanded Hamas free the hostages: “Let my people go.”

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan underscored the necessity for a Gaza ceasefire and rejected any potential Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories during a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in New York.

The UAE Minister “stressed the urgent need to end the war in Gaza, reach a permanent and sustainable ceasefire, prevent further loss of life.” The Trump Administration is working in overdrive with both sides to get a deal to stop the fighting and gain the release of the Israeli hostages.

During a meeting with the Secretary General, President Trump stressed, “I think the potential of the United Nations is incredible, really incredible. It can do so much. So, I’m behind it. I may disagree with it sometimes, but I am so behind it because I think the potential for peace with this institution is so great.”

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

  For its 80th birthday, praise for ‘potential’, UN gets stern rebuke by President Trump