U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (L) and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (R) look on as President Joe Biden speaks in regards to the government response and recovery efforts in Maui, Hawaii, and the continuing response on Hurricane Idalia, within the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Aug. 30, 2023.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden will address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, where he plans to advertise democracy and advocate for increased support for Ukraine.
For Biden, it’s one other opportunity to advance the ideas of diplomacy and democracy against those of aggressive autocracies, as he did on the recent Group of 20 summit earlier this month.
“[Biden] will lay out for the world the steps that he and his administration have taken to advance a vision of American leadership that’s built on the premise of working with others to resolve the world’s most pressing problems,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a briefing Friday.
Biden’s meetings, speech
Leaders from at the least 145 countries are slated to attend with a couple of notable exceptions: France, the UK, China and Russia will all be absent, meaning 4 of the five countries that hold everlasting seats on the U.N. Security Council is not going to be in attendance.
The absence of China and Russia gives Biden a gap to advance ties between the US and smaller, developing nations.
Biden is slated to satisfy Wednesday with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, a key leader within the Global South who has also been a proponent of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Lula has argued the U.S. and other Western nations are prolonging the war with their defense support.
The president may even meet with the leaders of the five central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, marking the primary time a U.S. president has done so jointly. He may even meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the primary time the pair have met because the prime minister won reelection last fall.
This will likely be the primary time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has attended the U.N. summit in person because the war began in February 2022. He gave a prerecorded speech to the body finally yr’s session.
“President Biden looks forward to hearing President Zelenskyy’s perspective on all of this and to reaffirm for the world and for the US, for the American people, his commitment to continuing to guide the world in supporting Ukraine,” Sullivan said.
A “substantial section” of Biden’s speech will likely be dedicated to the war in Ukraine, Sullivan said.
“He’ll talk in regards to the fundamental undeniable fact that the United Nations Charter … speaks to the fundamental proposition that countries cannot attack their neighbors and steal their territory by force,” Sullivan said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “That was also a proposition that was on the core of the G20 statement last weekend.”
U.S. support for Ukraine
Biden’s message of support for Ukraine is complicated by the undeniable fact that a handful of hard-line Republicans in Congress are actively opposing more funding.
The White Home is searching for $24 billion in additional aid to Ukraine, which it hoped could be passed alongside a continuing resolution to maintain the federal government open while budget negotiations proceed. The measure has bipartisan support within the Senate but is held up within the House of Representatives, where some members, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., have said they are going to not support any additional aid.
GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in a precarious position on the difficulty of Ukraine as his slim majority places him on the whims of each member of his caucus. Conservatives balked at McCarthy’s proposal last week to pair Ukraine aid with additional border funding.
Zelenskyy will travel to Washington, D.C., on Thursday to satisfy with Biden on the White House and speak with lawmakers. Unlike his visit in December, Zelenskyy is not going to address a joint session of Congress. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, the chair of the House intelligence committee, said Zelenskyy will likely be “very, very persuasive.”
“Zelenskyy is an ideal spokesperson,” Turner said on CBS News on Sunday. “He really makes the case higher than anyone.”
It is a position the White House agrees with.
“He has proven over the course of the past 18, 19 months, that there isn’t any higher advocate for his country, for his people, and for the urgent and continuing need for countries like the US and our allies and partners to step up to offer the mandatory tools and resources that Ukraine needs,” Sullivan said.
