United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened the General Assembly’s annual high-level debate on Tuesday with a speech in which he repeatedly expressed appreciation to the administration of President Donald Trump for its efforts to resolve conflicts around the world.
Though Guterres condemned budget cuts — a clear reference to Trump’s policies of limiting American taxpayer spending on international institutions — and promoted ideas anathema to the Trump White House such as the existence of an alleged “climate crisis,” his speech remained largely favorable to the conservative president, who spoke later on Tuesday and did not mince words in his disapproval of Guterres’s organization.
The two met in person following their respective speeches and were highly complimentary; Guterres thanked Trump for using America’s leverage to seek ceasefires around the world, while Trump told Guterres his administration was fully supportive of the tremendous potential of the United Nations.
The General Assembly’s high-level debate is an annual gathering of world leaders, where each is given a “voluntary” 15-minute segment to deliver an address on a topic of their choosing. Guterres traditionally opens the event as the leader of the United Nations, followed by the president of the General Assembly, the president of Brazil, and the president of the host country, the United States.
In his remarks, Guterres celebrated the United Nations as the world’s “moral compass.”
“A force for peace and peacekeeping. A guardian of international law. A catalyst for sustainable development. A lifeline for people in crisis. A lighthouse for human rights,” he said of the institution.
“We have our work cut out for us… as our ability to carry out that work is being cut from us. We have entered an age of reckless disruption and relentless human suffering,” he warned. “The principles of the United Nations that you have established are under siege. Listen. The pillars of peace and progress are buckling under the weight of impunity, inequality, and indifference.”
Guterres broke down his speech into several major demands, including the pursuit of peace, more funding for the United Nations, and accepting the alleged “climate crisis” as an unquestionable reality. During his segment on peace, he thanked the United States specifically for its efforts, naming several conflicts in which Trump directly intervened to bring about their end.
“In Ukraine, relentless violence continues to kill civilians, destroy civilian infrastructure, and threaten global peace and security. I commend recent diplomatic efforts by the United States and others,” Guterres stated. “We must work for a full ceasefire and a just, lasting peace in accordance with the Charter, U.N. resolutions, and international law.”
While lamenting rampant war and violence across the globe, Guterres said, “The past year has brought glimmers of hope, including the ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand and the agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, brokered by the United States.”
Trump has repeatedly called for an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began during the tenure of former President Joe Biden in 2022. In August, Trump held back-to-back meetings with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the White House has endeavored to convince Putin to agree to meet with Zelensky for an end to the war as soon as possible.
In Cambodia and Thailand, a border dispute erupted into a bloody conflict that displaced tens of thousands of people in July. The Trump administration directly intervened, with the help of the government of Malaysia, and brokered a ceasefire across the border that is still holding at press time.
“We were very happy we stopped the Cambodia war with a very nice local rival that frankly they have had wars for many, many years — over 500 years — and we got it stopped as you probably know,” Trump told Breitbart News at the time. “That just came out in the news right now. We worked on it yesterday and we got it stopped today.”
The government of Cambodia nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in August.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan signed a peace agreement at the White House in August. Azerbaijan conducted a genocidal attack on the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, traditionally inhabited by ethnic Armenians, in 2020 that escalated into the full extermination of the Armenian Christian population of the region. Hostilities were exacerbated by Russia, a longtime Armenian ally, abandoning its commitment to granting Armenians security guarantees and arguing that Nagorno-Karabakh was not technically Armenian territory. The conflict persisted until the White House negotiated an agreement to ensure Azerbaijan would cease its hostilities. The peace deal has had the effect of improving America’s relationship with both parties, an especially welcome result in light of Armenia’s longstanding ties to Russia.
The U.N. chief notably offered this praise while omitting condemnation of other Trump policies he had previously decried, including military strikes on Iran in June and the White House’s support for the government of Israel.
Guterres reserved what could be interpreted as his most negative comments about Trump’s policies for the French language portion of his speech, where he lamented that “aid cuts are wreaking havoc” on U.N. activities. Trump has withdrawn America and its money from several key U.N. institutions, such as the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and UNESCO, over antisemitism and mismanagement.
Guterres did not call for America to spend more money, however, but instead offered as a solution that the rest of the world increase the share of the U.N. burden they carry.
“To choose dignity, we must choose financial justice and solidarity. We need to reform the international financial architecture so it drives development for all,” he stated. “With bigger and bolder Multilateral Development Banks — lending and leveraging more private investment and finance. With faster and fairer debt relief — reaching every country in crisis, including middle-income economies.”
In his meeting with Trump later in the day, Guterres was once again enthusiastic about America’s role in the institution.
“The United States was absolutely essential to the founding of the United Nations and, for decades, we have relied on the United States as our major political and financial supporter,” Guterres noted. “I believe that there are many areas where we can cooperate in a positive way and I think the most important is peace.”
“You have selected peace as a central objective of your mandate and you have been going north and south, east and west, in all possible situations trying to get ceasefires, alleviating tensions,” Guterres told Trump, “making peace agreements, or the building blocks of peace agreements, and I want to reassure you that the United Nations, from me to our teams on the ground to our missions — we are entirely at your disposal to be able to work together for just peace in the world based on our common values.”
Trump similarly complimented the United Nations under Guterres, though he made time to joke that both an escalator and the president’s teleprompter broke today.
“Today was a little more exciting because of the escalator and the teleprompter, these things happen,” Trump said, “but I will tell you that you people have treated us with great respect.”
“Our country is behind the United Nations 100 percent,” he continued. “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 of this institution is so great.”
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