JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Juana Summers in Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And I'm Mary Louise Kelly at the headquarters of the United Nations. I'm standing, actually, looking up at the U.N. flag flapping in the wind above us. It is sky blue, the U.N. emblem in the middle of it in white. And the U.N. emblem, of course, is a map of the world with a pair of olive branches around it, symbol of peace. It's got me thinking back to 1945, October 1945, and the founding of the U.N. The whole point was to try to maintain peace, maintain international security. Leaders were trying to figure out, how do we prevent another world war like the one we just lived through?
Well, you can stand here now. There's protesters on one side of the street, democracy in action. You can watch diplomats streaming in the entrance gates on my other side, gathering for this year's General Assembly. And you can wonder, did the experiment work out? And is the U.N. still relevant?
We've got an American diplomat who spent many hours at the U.N. on the line now to consider that with us. Susan Rice served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Obama. Today, she's a few blocks away from me here in a gridlocked New York City. Susan Rice, good to speak with you.
SUSAN RICE: Good to be with you, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So let's go straight to the is the U.N. still relevant question. We've been reporting here all week. And clearly many, maybe most of the world's leaders are here. They show up. But a lot of the action seems to be on the sidelines, not in the General Assembly. And, you know, if the original founding lofty goal was global peace, it feels like we're about as far from that as it is possible to be.
RICE: We are far from that. And when the president of the United States, the country that was the driving force behind the founding of the U.N., stands up before the General Assembly, as President Trump did yesterday, and calls for the annihilation of another country, we underscore just how far we've strayed from the founding vision of the U.N. But, Mary Louise, its relevance can't be dismissed totally. I would say it is barely still relevant, most importantly because its operational humanitarian agencies are delivering lifesaving assistance to millions and millions around the world.
Whether refugees, people starving, people suffering from Ebola, there's so many ways in which the U.N. is doing work that no one else can replace. And in New York, however, at the Security Council, the body that's supposed to make all of the most important decisions about war and peace, the major countries, the permanent members remain at odds. And so the toughest issues - like Ukraine, like Gaza, like Iran, like North Korea - can't be dealt with adequately.
KELLY: Yeah. I said many if not most of the world's leaders are here. I'll note that the chancellor of Germany skipped it. The prime minister of India skipped it. The president of South Africa skipped it. And I'm wondering, what should it tell us that probably the most closely watched meeting of world leaders this week, during the middle of the General Assembly, it's not even in New York but in Washington, where President Trump is hosting China's Xi Jinping?
RICE: Well, that has the potential to be an important summit meeting. It's the first time a Chinese president has come to the United States since 2015. And the Chinese leader almost never does come to New York to address the General Assembly. So that itself is not so surprising. But this summit meeting really ought to be tackling the toughest issues facing the world today, top of the list being the grave risks posed by rapidly accelerating artificial intelligence, as well as what's going on in Ukraine, what's going on in the Middle East and many other regions of shared interests, most notably the Asia Pacific. So I hope that what we'll see out of this summit is more than just pomp and ceremony. It's already rather puzzling that the president of the United States is giving so many diplomatic gestures of overkindness, some might say, to Xi Jinping, including meeting him at the airport, which American presidents never do.
KELLY: Yeah.
RICE: The Chinese never reciprocate in the same way. There's so many ways - the flyover. It's all pomp. But it needs to be substance because the issues are hugely pressing.
KELLY: Stay with AI, since you raised it. It will, we anticipate, be something that presidents Trump and Xi discuss. It's also high on the agenda, if not top of the agenda at the U.N. this year. Tech industry leaders were here briefing an emergency meeting of the Security Council about AI. What is the role of the United Nations as all of us try to figure out what guardrails there should be on this technology?
RICE: Well, I think it's important to underscore that so many recent developments inside the AI companies have demonstrated very clearly that there are some extremely proximate risks to AI rapidly improving at the rate that it's going. There is the risk that AI can be misused by terrorists or other nefarious actors for biological weapons attacks, for other weapons of mass destruction. There's the risk that AI can escape human control and do very dangerous things. So this needs to be tackled. The Security Council could pass a resolution banning, for example, recursive self-improvement, calling for safeguards and pre-deployment and post-deployment testing. But the most important action...
KELLY: Would it have teeth? I'm just thinking - forgive my jumping in.
RICE: Yeah. Good question, good question.
KELLY: I'm just thinking, Security Council has struggled to address, you know, conflicts...
RICE: Exactly.
KELLY: ...Like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and now Iran.
RICE: It would not have teeth in the sense of it being enforceable. And that's why what happens in Washington matters so much. But it would have teeth in terms of creating a standard and underscoring the importance that the countries of the world attach to dealing with this issue. But I think it's in Washington, Mary Louise, where the focus ought to be.
KELLY: Interesting. And that brings us back full circle to the relevance of the U.N. and what the takeaway from this closely watched meeting of world leaders here will be for UNGA week. We've been speaking with Susan Rice, former national security adviser and former ambassador to the U.N., both under President Obama. Thank you very much.
RICE: Thanks, Mary Louise. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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