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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
The UN at 80: Can multilateralism survive AI, war, and fragmentation?
A world beset by war, widening inequality, climate stress, and runaway AI demands institutions that can still deliver. In a Global Stage conversation recorded live on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly, moderated by journalist Julia Chatterley, our expert panel probes whether multilateralism can adapt amid crisis and competition.
The panelists test the resilience of global cooperation as conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan strain resources and trust. Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, argues that despite volatility—especially around U.S. policy—existing institutions remain indispensable, even as power dynamics shift. Rebeca Grynspan, secretary‑general of UNCTAD and former vice president of Costa Rica, warns that tariff escalations and budget cuts risk devastating the most vulnerable economies and humanitarian efforts, urging protection for least‑developed countries and smarter, more efficient use of limited funds. Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, highlights how technology and “data center diplomacy” can boost efficiency and service delivery, while Ambassador Philip Thigo, Kenya’s special envoy on technology, underscores the Global South’s growing role in shaping consensus and the need for multistakeholder governance that brings private sector, civil society, and academia to the table.
The discussion zeroes in on AI’s uneven diffusion—and what it will take to close the gap in electricity access, connectivity, and digital skills so adoption translates into productivity and inclusive growth. S. Krishnan, secretary at India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), positions India as a bridge between North and South, leveraging low‑cost digital public infrastructure and frugal innovation to help countries leapfrog in targeted areas. Smith urges nations to focus not on building chips but on deploying AI to amplify existing strengths and talent, while Bremmer notes that pragmatic engagement with both US and Chinese tech ecosystems can help countries avoid dependency. The optimistic takeaway: reform is necessary, cooperation is rising, and leaders have real agency to steer technology toward the common good.
This conversation is presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft, as part of the Global Stage series, which convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.
The world is on fire and the UN is running out of money
Ian Bremmer sits down with UN Secretary-General António Guterres ahead of the 80th UN General Assembly to talk about war, diplomacy, and the existential pressure on global governance.
Guterres doesn’t mince words: “What’s happening today in Gaza is morally, politically, and legally intolerable.” With conflicts raging from Gaza to Ukraine to Sudan, and funding for life-saving aid programs evaporating, the Secretary-General says the international system is failing when it’s needed most.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Guterres addresses the West’s retreat from multilateralism, the need to reform outdated global institutions, and why mid-sized powers are increasingly driving conflict—often with total impunity. He also discusses the UN’s dramatic internal cost-cutting push (an initiative he dubbed “UN80”) and why, despite a 15% budget reduction, he believes the organization can still become more effective.
“We are more capable,” Guterres says. “When you make the system more slim and more unified, you gain in efficiency."
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations(check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube.Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Watch: Global Stage live from the 80th UN General Assembly
WATCH: On the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, our panel of global experts will discuss the future of global cooperation and governance in the age of AI. How can the UN and multilateralism keep pace with a technology transforming economies, societies, and geopolitics? And what will it take to ensure no country or society is left behind in the new AI economy?
Our livestream panel discussion, "Global Stage: Live from the 80th UN General Assembly" examines these key issues today at 11:30 AM ET, live from the sidelines of UN headquarters on the first day of high-level General Debate. Watch live at gzeromedia.com/globalstage.
The discussion will be moderated by Julia Chatterley, Emmy-nominated journalist and moderator, and will feature a distinguished panel including:
- Ian Bremmer, President and Founder, Eurasia Group and GZERO Media
- Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
- S Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India
- Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft
- Ambassador Philip Thigo, Special Envoy for Technology for the Republic of Kenya
This livestream is the latest in the award-winning Global Stage series, a partnership between GZERO and Microsoft that examines critical issues at the intersection of technology, politics, and society.
Join us on Tuesday, September 23, 2025 at 11:30 AM ET at gzeromedia.com/globalstage to watch the discussion live.
Global Stage: Live from the 80th UN General Assembly
Graphic Truth: The BRICS+ in a "G-Zero" world
The BRICS, a loose grouping of ten “emerging market” economies led by Brazil, Russia, India and China, held their 17th annual summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this weekend. While the official readout from the summit emphasized their commitment to multilateralism, the guestlist begged to differ. Five of the 10 leaders were no-shows, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While the group’s declaration took aim at tariffs increases and recent attacks against Iran, it stopped short of mentioning the US or naming President Donald Trump directly. For more, here’s GZERO writer Willis Sparks’ explainer on why the BRICS are a bad bet.
Ian Bremmer on the forces behind the geopolitical recession
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take for you today. I want to talk to you about the geopolitical recession that we, the world, are now in. What is a geopolitical recession you ask?
Well, economic recessions you kind of understand. We have boom cycles and bust cycles. They happen frequently. So frequently that we even have solid measurements for when an advanced industrial economy is in a technical recession. That's two quarters in a row of negative growth. Or when the world is experiencing a recessionary year. They happen frequently in the United States since World War II, every seven to 10 years on average. And that means that we have been through many of those cycles, and we can recognize them and we know that we don't like them. We want to respond to them.
And whether you are an advanced industrial economy, a free market economy, or whether you are an authoritarian state and a state capitalist system, either way, you've got central bankers and finance ministers or treasury secretaries that are using monetary and fiscal tools to try to minimize the impact of a recession and get back towards effective more sustainable growth.
Okay, so that's the economic side. But I'm not an economist. I'm a political scientist. Are there cycles in geopolitics? And the answer is yes. But they're a lot longer. And because the cycles are longer, playing out over several generations, we don't live through a lot of them individually. And so, we don't recognize them as a pattern. But we are right now in a geopolitical recession.
What causes a geopolitical recession? Well, basically it's when the balance of power becomes misaligned, out of whack, with the rules of the road geopolitically. With how the world order is structured, the institutions, the architecture. So, for example, the global order that we have been living through both after World War II through the Cold War, and then through Soviet collapse, was all about a number of global institutions and architecture that the United States created with its allies, its friends, after World War II was over.
So, the world has just gone through this horrible cataclysm, a geopolitical depression, and now we've got a boom cycle. And the United States is creating the United Nations and the WTO and the IMF and all of these other global institutions with the idea being support for collective security, support for a multilateral free trade architecture, support for rule of law, promotion of human rights, promotion of democracy all over the world. Generally speaking, the United States created a whole bunch of global institutions that reflected what the United States thought about how the world should be run.
Then over time, the balance of power changes, but the institutions don't. At least not as much because they're sticky, because it takes a lot of political capital to change them. People kick the can down the road. Let somebody else do it. And when that gap grows too wide, then the geopolitical order starts to shake. It becomes much more unstable.
So, what happened here? Three big reasons why we are now in a geopolitical recession. Number one, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia was not integrated into the West, not into the EU, not into NATO. They're angry about it. They blame the United States. They are now a chaos actor on the global stage, at least insofar as the advanced industrial economies. The G7 are concerned, and their top allies are fellow chaos actors: North Korea and Iran. That's reason number one.
Reason number two, China was integrated into the global order, particularly the global economy on the notion that as they got wealthier, as they benefited from that, they would become responsible stakeholders. And what that means for Americans is that they're going to align with these US led global institutions and values and norms. They'll support rule of law. They'll become more politically liberalized. They'll become more economically free market in orientation. The Chinese have gotten much wealthier. They're now a technological peer to the United States, no one else is close, ahead in some areas, behind in others. But they absolutely have not aligned with the United States. And that is making a lot of Americans and a lot of American allies very concerned, and it's leading to confrontation between the two most powerful countries.
Number three, while those first two things were going on, lots of people in the West, and especially the United States, increasingly felt like their own leaders, their political leaders, their business leaders, their corporate leaders, their media leaders, their elites, were promoting globalism, were promoting a bunch of things for a global order that didn't help them. So, all of those ideas about collective security and promotion of democracy and promoting free trade, not interested, because the average American doesn't feel like they're benefiting from it.
And certainly that is a big reason why Trump won, not just once, but twice, and more decisively the second time around. And so now, not only do you have the Russians acting like rogues with allies, and the Chinese much more powerful, but not aligned with the US-led global system. But you have the Americans saying, "We're not very interested in promoting that global system anymore. In fact, we're more interested in the law of the jungle."
It's a worldview that's closer to the Chinese. Not multilateralism but just one-on-one relations where you are stronger and you tell the other country what you want to have done. It's very transactional, it's very pragmatic. Doesn't really matter what kind of values that country holds. If you're Trump, you'll do a deal with Russia or China or an ally, and you'll criticize and pressure anybody if they're not behaving the way you want to. The fact that there are common values doesn't really matter. The fact that you're part of the same infrastructure and architecture doesn't really matter. It's, "What are you doing for me now?"
So given all of that, we are now in a serious geopolitical recession. What I call a G-Zero world. Not a G7, not a G20, where there's an absence of global leadership. Now, what's very interesting about that G-Zero world, what's very interesting about this geopolitical recession that I believe that we're in is that the United States is in a particularly strong position right now. Particularly strong compared to its adversaries like China facing the worst economic conditions since the 90s, maybe even the 70s. Like Russia in a period of severe economic decline, and other decline, national security, political. And Iran, which has basically just lost their empire, their empire by proxy, the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East. The US is also much stronger relationally to its allies. America's technology capabilities becoming so dominant compared to what the Europeans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Canadians don't have. America's military capabilities. The strength of the US economy coming out of the pandemic compared to every other G7 democracy shows that the United States can get a lot more done in a geopolitical recession. Can ensure that its will is followed.
Also, the fact that Trump is consolidated so much more power this time around compared to 2017 when he was first president. Last time, he had all of these establishment Republicans that didn't really support him, all the way from Mike Pence, his vice president, to Mad Dog Mattis, to Mike Pompeo, to Nikki Haley, to Gary Cohn, and on and on and on. This time around, not at all. Everyone is aligned with Trump.
Also last time, the GOP, the Republican Party, didn't feel like they had to ride Trump's coattails. He wasn't as popular as a lot of they were in their own individual campaigns. This time around not at all. Trump's much more popular than them, they need him much more. And that's happening at a time when so many allied governments are very, very weak. And that's a problem, right? For them. If you're Canada and your government's imploding, or you're South Korea and your government's imploding, or you're Germany, your government's imploding, or France and your government's imploding. Or even countries like the United Kingdom and Japan where the establishment is very, very vulnerable, and very unpopular, Trump's ability to tell you, "This is what we want. And by the way, we are a lot more effective at playing the law of the jungle than either our allies or our adversaries."
It's going to be very hard for them not to kiss the ring, not to provide big wins for the Americans. So, lots of wins for Trump, and that's what we're going to see over the course of the coming year, and a lot of defense being played by a lot of those other countries around the world. But is that sustainable?
Because to get out of a geopolitical recession, you ultimately need to create new rules of the road. You need new global architecture, especially because our challenges, whether it's climate change or an arms race, nuclear weapons, whether it's AI and new disruptive technologies, for good and for bad, they all are global challenges and global opportunities. But we are increasingly fragmenting our responses to national and even local levels.
So, this is not a sustainable trajectory, and that is what we're going to spend an awful lot of time looking at over the coming year, over the coming administration, and going beyond. Because, of course, this is the first time that any of us have experienced a country, the United States, essentially unwinding, undoing its own order. These global institutions that Trump and others are saying are globalist and not useful for the Americans to align with are institutions the United States initially created to help run the world in America's own image, but the US no longer believes that that works for it. And that is a fantastically interesting, but also unnerving, unsettling, and unstable time for us all geopolitically.
So, that's what a geopolitical recession is. I hope you found this worthwhile, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel’s geopolitical missteps in Gaza
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Back to the Middle East. We are now over a month of war between Israel and Hamas following the October 7th terror attacks. And frankly, it is not going all that well. What I mean by that is, it's an awful lot of carnage. It's an awful lot of political division around the world. And Israel, with the exception of a strong relationship with the United States, feels increasingly isolated. That's certainly in the message I was hearing from the Europeans over the last week, getting more and more uncomfortable as this war goes on. The Americans privately saying that to the Israelis, though publicly, certainly standing very, very strongly with them. And members of the Israeli cabinet increasingly believing that the pressure on them is going to grow significantly over the next few weeks as the war continues.
So is there anything else they could have done, right? Because I mean, if you're saying, well, this is really challenging, the fight and it's leading to enormous backlash and, you know, from the region and from the Global South and even from countries that are quite friendly and well-disposed to Israel, then what might you have suggested they do instead?
And here my view is, when you have enormous support from the West in particular, but also sympathies more broadly, following these horrible terrorist attacks on October 7th. And let's remember, I mean, this was civilians that were targeted, that were brutally murdered. This was not Israeli settlers who were fighting on the right. It certainly wasn't the military, was actually progressives on the left. It was the people that were most oriented to peace, were the ones that were gunned down and tortured and taken hostage by Hamas in Gaza. So if there was ever a time that the Israelis were going to have sympathy, it would be right after this. And my view is use that in the same way the United States did after 9/11. And they built a coalition of the willing with dozens of countries that were prepared to support them to go into Afghanistan, and specifically to take out Al-Qaeda. You build that coalition. There were countries, of course, NATO's allies, no surprise, the UK and France and Canada. But I mean, countries like Georgia were involved in sending people to UAE.
And this, I think, is an opportunity that the Israelis really did have. When French President Macron traveled to Israel, he said that they were prepared to join the fight against Hamas, join the fight on terror with the Israelis. The Americans, of course, immediately sending, you know, sort of troops to the region, as well as troops on the ground to act as advisors, a lot of intelligence support. I think you would have gotten significant support from the Germans in this environment, from the UK, in this environment. And the point here is that in the immediate weeks after the attacks, instead of massive bombing attacks and then a ground war instead, work first and foremost on a coalition, build multilateral support, heck, work with the Saudis. The Gulf states are strongly interested in working with Israel. They hate Hamas. They want the end of Hamas. They find, you know, this would be a dangerous movement that's much more aligned with their enemies. The Iranians. So Israel had a very strong geopolitical position and the ability to use it if their initial response was, “we're going to be stronger, we're going to build on all of this sympathy to have not just us fighting against Hamas, but everybody.”
Now, would that have constrained what Israel would have done? Would it have meant that they would have been more pinpoint in their bombing? It would have taken longer, that there wouldn't have been a ground war? Maybe so. But having said all of that, Israel is massively more capable militarily than Hamas is, and they have vastly better border security and they have incredible missile defense and they would have gotten more technological and military support from allies and friends all over the world following these attacks. I don't believe that there is an existential risk to Israel from Hamas. I don't believe there's an existential risk from anybody in the region in terms of military capabilities.
I remember when I was with Netanyahu once at a conference in Herzliya in Israel, and he came and spoke to some of us, a small group, I think it was 30 or 40 folks. And there were some investors in the room and he was talking. The first half of the meeting was all about how Israel was the best possible place to invest. And of course, had, you know, very high ratings in terms of credit and transparency and rule of law. And as a democracy in the region, all of these things. And, you know, everyone's nodding along. And then the second half of the meeting is how the Iranians need to be contained and how they represent an existential threat to Israel. And I mean, both of these things cannot be true at the same time, right? I mean, if you're saying that it's a fantastic place to invest, then it probably isn't really a place that other people can take out.
Israel, of course, has, though, unstated, a serious nuclear force, and they have massive military capabilities and incredibly well-trained Israeli Defense Force. Now, the point here is that, you know, Netanyahu took his eye off the ball, stopped paying attention to border security, undermined the Israeli defense Force's capacities as they were focused on the West Bank, took his eye off the ball on intelligence. But after October 7th, that was never going to happen again. The entire people, the entire country, with a massive additional number of troops being sent precisely to defend Israel. So I don't think it's credible to say that, if the Israelis didn't strike back massively within days and then engage in a massive ground war, that they were suddenly facing an existential further risk from Hamas. No, the risk came because the Israelis, who have every right to defend their borders, weren't doing so before October 7th and needed to do so after October 7th. There's no question that no one should expect Israel to be living next to a territory that is governed by Hamas. And they were going to need to take that leadership at a very least out and have vastly better security capabilities.
But that could be done at a time of Israel's choosing when they had built up much more multilateral support and when they were engaging not by themselves, but with others. And that was absolutely possible, certainly more possible than what we have today. The fact that the French government is saying that they're calling for a ceasefire, they certainly weren't doing that even a week ago. The Americans are privately, increasingly telling the Israelis that you're going to need to stop this relatively soon or the US will limit the military support that's being provided to Israel, three plus billion dollars a year. The fact that, you know, the Gulf states are having summits in the region, Israel's not a part of it. They're not being invited. They're working together. They're not condemning Hamas directly. This is a problem. And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, as much as everyone out there should have sympathy for the brutality that Israel was experiencing on October 7th and the 200 plus hostages that Hamas is still holding today. I mean, any human being has to have sympathy for Israel and for the Jewish people on the back of that.
It is a horrible, horrible thing. But the steps that they have taken geopolitically, the military steps they've taken on the ground, frankly, in my view, is weak in their position. The only thing that is going to ultimately cause an existential risk to Israel and to the Jewish people in Israel, is if they continue to fall into the trap that Hamas has played for them, has placed for them. And so far that appears to be, unfortunately, where they're going. So anyway, that's my view on all of this. I'm sure that nobody agrees with it 100%. But, you know, I promise to always give you my best sense and tell you what I think can be authentic with everybody. And I certainly hope that this doesn't continue to explode and that at the very least, we can keep the fighting itself contained to Gaza and that the humanitarian damage and devastation that we're seeing on the ground gets more limited going forward as opposed to continuing to expand.
I'm not hopeful. I don't expect it. I expect more violence from the settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. And I even think that the northern front with Lebanon and Hezbollah appears to be opening up a little bit more. But that is certainly what none of us want. And we will see where we go from there.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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The state of multilateralism: Shaky, fragile & stretched to capacity
Dr. Comfort Ero of the International Crisis Group has spent her career tackling the most difficult conflicts in the world, often exacerbated by severe environmental or social disasters. But as the climate crisis and war in Ukraine compound the forces pushing many fragile societies to the brink, she says multilateral institutions like the United Nations are not prepared to meet the challenge.
Faced with state collapse, food insecurity, and lack of governance, countries like Libya, Lebanon and Sri Lanka are not able to access the help they need to stabilize, build resilience and thrive.
“Countries are already facing difficult trend lines with a multilateral system that is shaky, that is fragile, that is already stretched to its capacity, not able to deal.” she said during a Global Stage livestream event at UN headquarters in New York on September 22, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic and was held by GZERO Media in collaboration with the United Nations, the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.
Watch the full Global Stage conversation: Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer?
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