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The UN at 80: Reform, multilateralism & the Global South’s voice
"It’s the only space right now that the Global South has for multilateralism," says Ambassador Philip Thigo, special envoy on technology for the Republic of Kenya.
At 80 years, the UN faces calls for reform. Leaders argue that the Global South is driving consensus on key resolutions and that future multilateralism must also include private sector, civil society, and academia.
Watch more Global Stage coverage from the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly here: gzeromedia.com/globalstage
Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak during a meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, on September 1, 2025.
China’s plans for the new world order
The leaders of China, India, Russia, and over twenty countries from the “Global South” gathered in Beijing yesterday, marking another milestone away from the US-led global order. Monday’s meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) saw China unveil a new, US-free vision for global development.
Xi’s plans include an SCO development bank that would lend in currencies other than the US dollar. Diminishing the dollar would make it harder for the US to use sanctions against rogue states, an outcome that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cautioned against in August. It would also limit the power of Trump’s “America First” strategy to draw countries and companies away from Beijing to invest in or relocate production to the US.
Beijing also pledged 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in loans to an SCO banking consortium and 2 billion yuan ($280 million) of free aid to member states in 2025. The sums are not insignificant, but are dwarfed by spending on Belt and Road Initiatives in the first half of 2025 alone, where China's investments and construction contracts across 150 countries totaled $125 billion.
Winning the “memory war”
But China’s ambitions are not purely economic. Xi also launched a challenge to US political influence, saying, “We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism.”
Those sentiments will be on full display Wednesday, at China’s upcoming military parade commemorating the country’s role in defeating Japan in World War Two. According to the Brookings Institution, China is seeking to win the “memory war,” countering the Western narrative of the Allies’ victory by emphasizing Beijing’s role in the fight against Axis powers. The goal? To reposition China as a defender of the rules of the post-war international order, rather than an authoritarian regime bent on geopolitical supremacy.
India is a lynchpin
As the most populous country on earth, India plays a key role in Xi’s plan. Fortunately for him, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the trip to Beijing this week, despite border clashes with Chinese troops in 2020 and a recent “near-war” between Pakistan and India involving Chinese-made fighter jets. After meeting Xi, Modi stated that “an atmosphere of peace and stability” had been restored between the two countries.
US President Donald Trump’s reaction? To call America’s relationship with India “a totally one sided disaster.”
Modi took advantage of the trip to also deepen ties with Russia “in all areas, including trade, fertilizers, space, security, and culture. He was clearly undeterred by Trump’s 50% tariffs on Indian goods last week, which were putatively punishment for buying Russian oil. China is also further cementing relations with Russia, announcing this morning the signing of a memorandum of understanding to build the long-delayed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which will ship 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year from West Siberia to northern China.
Mixed messages on parade?
Xi’s parade tomorrow will take place in Tiananmen Square, where authorities infamously massacred student protestors in 1989. What’s more, some of the highest profile leaders in attendance hail from the world’s most repressive regimes: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The only Western leaders on the dance card? Slovakia’s Robert Fico and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, both of whom have been criticized for their own authoritarian leanings.
Why Pakistan sees China as a "force for stability"
Pakistan’s most important relationship may be its deep strategic partnership with China. The two countries have close security ties and economic alignment, especially when it comes to managing their mutual adversary India. On GZERO World, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Khar gives her view on the China-Pakistan relationship, which she sees as a stabilizing force in Southeast Asia. Given so much geopolitical uncertainty right now, Khar explains, the world has just started noticing Pakistan and China’s strong ties. But the relationship goes back decades.
Khar says Pakistan doesn’t see the world in competing blocs, and believes there’s value in maintaining friendly relations with Western countries as well as its immediate neighbor, China. Beijing’s Belt and Road program has made significant investments in Pakistan, which has sped up Pakistan’s development and allowed it to strengthen economic partnerships with its neighbors. When multilateral institutions stopped financing infrastructure projects, China was able to provide goods and investment loans, helping to build trains and highways in Pakistan, as well as Iran, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan.
“This is a country [the world sees] as very belligerent, very hegemonic. We’ve always seen in our region, an immediate neighbor to China, that it only relies on economic relationships,” Khar says, “Within Pakistan and the broader region, China has been a force of stability.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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Pakistan needs to stand up to India, says former Foreign Minister Hina Khar
After nearly eight decades of on-again-off-again conflict, India and Pakistan neared the brink of all-out war last spring. The intense, four-day conflict was an unsettling reminder of the dangers of military escalation between two nuclear-armed adversaries. Though the ceasefire was reached and both sides claimed victory, Delhi and Islamabad are still on edge and tensions remain high. On the GZERO World Podcast, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Khar joins Ian Bremmer to discuss Pakistan’s response to India’s strikes, which she believes were unjustified, and why Pakistan needs to defend itself from further aggression.
One fifth of the world’s population lives on the Indian subcontinent, and Khar says putting them at stake because of a political conflict is dangerous because “you do not know how quickly you can go up the escalation ladder.” Bremmer and Khar also discuss the US role in mediating the conflict with India, Pakistan’s domestic and economic challenges, its strategic partnership with China, and the dangers for global security if the world abandons a rules-based international order.
“As someone who was representing this country as foreign minister, I used to wonder, why were we reduced to eating grass to become a nuclear power?” Khar says, “And now, that is the only thing providing deterrence and security against a country which feels it can attack us anytime, any day.”
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're publishedPresident Joe Biden addresses the 78th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, U.S., on Sept. 19, 2023.
Biden to deliver final UNGA address at precarious moment for US and world
President Joe Biden will deliver his last address as a world leader to UNGA on Tuesday at a moment of disarray for both the US and the international community. Biden’s speech comes amid deepening political divisions in the US — just weeks ahead of a historic presidential election — and in the face of multiple major wars. The war in Gaza, and the tensions it’s fueling across the Middle East, will hang particularly heavy over Biden’s remarks.
Biden is also leaving office at a time when countries across the Global South are pointing to major double standards in terms of how the West — especially the US — approaches and upholds international values and norms. Critics of the US, for example, feel it has shown far more concern for civilians in the war in Ukraine than Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
A new report from the Munich Security Conference, which was discussed Monday at an event on the sidelines of UNGA, found that the US scored worst — alongside Russia, China, and European countries — among five out of nine countries surveyed on whether these actors treat countries like theirs with respect. To put it another way, there appears to be a growing perception in the Global South that Western countries like the US talk the talk when it comes to upholding international rules but don’t always walk the walk.
“We are all in a mess” and dealing with “fractured” societies, Samir Saran, president of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, said at the event. Saran pointed out that a presidential candidate in the US, which tends to view itself as an example for the world, has recently experienced two assassination attempts.
To rebuild trust in Western-dominated institutions like the UN, the world “needs to go back to the design table,” said Obiageli Ezekwesili, chair of the board of Women Political Leaders, another speaker at the event.
We’ll be watching to see what themes Biden hits on during his address on Tuesday, and whether he uses the opportunity to reassure skeptics that the US remains a steadfast partner and global leader.
At the Munich Security Conference, Trump isn't the only elephant in the room
The Munich Security Conference (MSC) is all about providing a space to address the elephant in the room and fostering discussion on that one big topic people would rather avoid, says Benedikt Franke, the forum’s vice-chairman and CEO. But there’s more than just one elephant this year — a herd.
GZERO’s Tony Maciulis spoke with Franke in the lead-up to the conference about the various “elephants” on the agenda: The war in Gaza, Donald Trump, AI, and the war in Ukraine, to name a few.
They also delve into how the conference has always been defined by turning points for the world, recounting times when the forum collided with major historical moments — or made history itself. The 2024 MSC comes amid a year in which a record number of voters will head to the polls in dozens of critical elections across the globe when many people feel increasingly pessimistic about the future.
Franke says the conference hopes to answer the question of how to inject some optimism back into discourse on the world’s problems. “We don't want this to be a doom and gloom conference, we want to do everything we can to look for the silver lining at the horizon, for the low-hanging fruits, and there are many,” he says.
Join Ian Bremmer and a panel of experts this Saturday, February 17, at 12 pm ET/9 am PT/6 pm CET for our Global Stage discussion at the Munich Security Conference: Protecting Elections in the Age of AI.
Keep up with GZERO's Global Stage coverage of MSC 2024 for more.
AI is an opportunity to build trust with the Global South: UN's Amandeep Singh Gill
AI is a test case for addressing the ballooning trust deficit with the Global South, says the UN Secretary-General's special technology envoy Amandeep Singh Gill. If the Global South is not included meaningfully, it will widen the gap, with real geopolitical implications.
At a GZERO Global Stage discussion broadcast from the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gill warns that we can equitably spread the benefits of AI only if we step outside current business models, working with the Global South to integrate more practices like public-private partnerships. If we're truly serious about bridging the digital divide, says Gill, "we need to work together on those issues. That'll build you the trust with the Global South."
The conversation was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
Watch the full conversation here: How is the world tackling AI, Davos' hottest topic?
AI for all: Leave no one behind, says Microsoft's Brad Smith
Artificial intelligence could level the playing field for individuals across an array of disciplines...if people have access to it. Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, points out that access to AI tech remains a privilege that is still unavailable to hundreds of millions around the world.
Speaking in a GZERO Global Stage discussion from the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith points out that while the conversation about AI seems advanced in Davos, a lot of people in the Global South don't yet have access to AI, let alone basic needs like electricity, access to electronic devices, and internet connectivity.
“In a sense, we do the Global South a tremendous disservice if we talk about AI all the time as the next thing,” he said. First, "close the electricity divide, the broadband connectivity divide, the device divide, and then you can close the AI divide on top of it."
The conversation was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
Watch the full conversation here: How is the world tackling AI, Davos' hottest topic?
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