UN chief says world’s biggest problem is the changing way power is used – Donald Trump’s speech confirms his diagnosis

By Martin Waehlisch, Associate Professor, University of Birmingham
Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

UN secretary-general, António Guterres, used his final address to the general assembly to recast the world’s crises as a single problem. War, inequality, the climate emergency and artificial intelligence, he argued, are not separate crises but chapters of the same story. That story, as he told it, is the story of power: who has it, who is denied it, how it is used and how it is changing.

Guterres identified three shifts. Among states, new centres of economic, political and technological influence have emerged.…

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