Argentina denounces UN’s ‘socialist’ agenda
Javier Milei is the President of the Argentine Republic
To the authorities of the United Nations, to the representatives of the different countries that make it up and to all the citizens of the world who are watching us, good afternoon. For those who do not know, I am not a politician, I am an economist, a libertarian liberal economist, who never had the ambition to do politics and who was honoured with the position of President of the Argentine Republic, in the face of the resounding failure of more than a century of collectivist policies, which destroyed our country.
This is my first speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly, and I want to take this opportunity, with humility, to alert the various nations of the world to the path they have been travelling for decades, and to the danger of this organisation failing to fulfil its original mission.
I do not come here to tell the world what to do; I come here to tell the world, on the one hand, what will happen if the United Nations continues to promote collectivist policies, which it has been promoting under the mandate of the 2030 Agenda, and, on the other, what are the values that the new Argentina defends.
I do want to begin by giving credit where credit is due. The United Nations organisation was born from the horror of the bloodiest war in global history, with the main objective that it would never happen again. To this end, the organisation engraved its fundamental principles in stone, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There a basic agreement was recorded, around a maxim: that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Under the tutelage of this organisation and the adoption of these ideas – for the past 70 years – humanity lived through the longest period of global peace in history, which also coincided with the period of the greatest economic growth in history.
An international forum was created, where nations could settle their conflicts, through cooperation, instead of resorting – instantly – to arms, and something unthinkable was achieved: to permanently sit down the five largest powers in the world [China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States] at the same table; each with the same veto power, despite having totally opposing interests.
All this did not make the scourge of war disappear, but it has meant, for now, that no conflict has escalated to global proportions. The result was that we went from having two world wars, in less than 40 years, which collectively claimed more than 120 million lives, to having 70 consecutive years of relative peace and global stability, under the cloak of an order that allowed the entire world to integrate commercially, compete and prosper. Because where commerce enters, bullets do not enter, Bastiat said, because commerce guarantees peace, freedom guarantees trade, and equality before the law guarantees freedom.
In short, what the Prophet Isaiah recorded was fulfilled and it is read in the park, across the street:
God will judge between the nations and arbitrate for the many peoples; they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning machines. Nation will not take up sword against nation; they will never know war again.
This is what has happened – mostly – under the tutelage of the United Nations, in its first decades, and that is why, from this perspective, we are talking about a remarkable success in the history of nations that cannot be ignored.
We are facing the end of a cycle. The collectivism and moral posturing of the woke agenda have collided with reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer to the real problems of the world
However, at some point, and as usually happens with most of the bureaucratic structures that men create, this organisation stopped watching over the principles outlined in its founding declaration and began to mutate. An organisation that had been thought of essentially as a shield to protect the Kingdom of Men was transformed into a multi-tentacled Leviathan, which seeks to decide not only what each nation-state should do, but also how all the citizens of the world should live.
This is how we went from an organisation that pursued peace to an organisation that imposes an ideological agenda on its members, on an endless number of issues, which make up the life of man in society.
The successful model of the United Nations, whose origins can be traced back to the ideas of President Wilson, who spoke of the “society of peace without victory” and which was based on the cooperation of nation states, has been abandoned; it has been replaced by a supranational model of government of international bureaucrats, who intend to impose a certain way of life on the citizens of the world.
What is being discussed – this week, here in New York, at the Summit of the Future – is nothing other than the deepening of that tragic course that this institution has adopted. Thus, the deepening of a model that – in the words of the United Nations Secretary General himself – requires defining a new social contract on a global scale, redoubling the commitments, of the 2030 Agenda.
I want to be clear about the position of the Argentine agenda: the 2030 Agenda, although well-intentioned in its goals, is nothing more than a supranational government programme, of a socialist nature, which aims to solve the problems of modernity with solutions that threaten the sovereignty of nation states and violate the right to life, freedom and property of people.
It is an agenda, which aims to solve poverty, inequality and discrimination with legislation that only deepens them. Because the history of the world shows that the only way to guarantee prosperity is by limiting the power of the monarch, guaranteeing equality before the law and defending the right to life, liberty and property of individuals.
It has been precisely the adoption of that agenda, which obeys privileged interests; the abandonment of the principles – outlined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which distorted the role of this institution and put it on the wrong path. Thus, we have seen how an organisation, which was born to defend human rights, has been one of the main promoters of the systematic violation of freedom, such as, for example, with the global quarantines during the year 2020, which should be considered a crime against humanity.
In the same place that claims to defend human rights they have allowed bloody dictatorships such as Cuba and Venezuela to enter the Human Rights Council without the slightest reproach. In this same House that claims to defend women’s rights, countries that punish their women for showing their skin are allowed to enter the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
In this same House that systematically votes against the State of Israel, which is the only country in the Middle East, that defends liberal democracy, while demonstrating, simultaneously, a total inability to respond to the scourge of terrorism.
On the economic level, collectivist policies have been promoted that threaten economic growth; they violate property rights and hinder the natural economic process, preventing the most disadvantaged countries in the world from freely enjoying their own resources to get ahead. Regulations and prohibitions promoted precisely by the countries that developed, thanks to doing the same thing that they condemn today.
In addition, a toxic relationship has been promoted between global governance policies and international credit agencies, requiring the most neglected countries to commit resources they do not have to programmes they do not need, turning them into perpetual debtors to promote the agenda of global elites.
Nor has the tutelage of the World Economic Forum, which promotes ridiculous policies with Malthusian blinders such as ‘Zero Emission’ policies that harm, above all, poor countries. To policies linked to sexual and reproductive rights, when the birth rate of Western countries is plummeting, heralding a bleak future for all.
Nor has the organisation satisfactorily fulfilled its mission of defending the territorial sovereignty of its members, as we Argentines know first-hand, in the relationship with the Malvinas Islands. And we have even reached a situation in which the Security Council, which is the most important organ of this House, has been distorted, because the veto of its permanent members has begun to be used, in defence of the particular interests of some.
This is how we are today, with an organisation powerless to provide solutions to real global conflicts, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has already cost the lives of more than 300,000 people, leaving a trail of more than a million injured in the process.
An organisation that, instead of confronting these conflicts, invests time and effort in imposing on poor countries what, how and they should produce, with whom they should link, what they should eat and what they should believe in, as the present Pact of the Future intends to dictate.
This long list of errors and contradictions has not been gratuitous, but has resulted in the loss of credibility of the United Nations in the eyes of the citizens of the free world and in the distortion of its functions.
Therefore, I want to make a warning: we are facing the end of a cycle. The collectivism and moral posturing of the woke agenda have collided with reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer to the real problems of the world. In fact, they never did.
If the 2030 Agenda failed – as its own promoters recognise – the answer should be to ask ourselves if it was not an ill-conceived programme from the beginning, accept that reality and change course. One cannot pretend to persist in the error by doubling down on an agenda that has failed.
The same thing always happens with the ideas that come from the left: they design a model according to what the human being should be – according to them –and when individuals – freely – act differently, they have no better solution than to restrict, repress and restrict their freedom.
We, in Argentina, have already seen with our own eyes what lies at the end of this path of envy and sad passions: poverty, brutality, anarchy, and a fatal absence of freedom. We still have time to depart from that course.
I want to be clear about something so that there are no misinterpretations: Argentina, which is experiencing a profound process of change, has currently decided to embrace the ideas of freedom; those ideas that say that all citizens are born free and equal before the law, that we have inalienable rights granted by the Creator, among which are the right to life, liberty and property. Those principles, which order the process of change that we are carrying forward in Argentina, are also the principles that will guide our international conduct from now on.
We believe in the defence of everyone’s life; we believe in the defence of everyone’s property; we believe in freedom of expression for all; we believe in freedom of worship for all; we believe in free trade for all and we believe in limited governments, all of them.
And since in these times what happens in one country quickly impacts others, we believe that all peoples should live free from tyranny and oppression, whether it takes the form of political oppression, economic slavery, or religious fanaticism.
That fundamental idea should not remain mere words; it has to be supported in facts, diplomatically, economically and materially, through the joint strength of all the countries, which defend freedom.
This doctrine of the new Argentina is no more and no less than the true essence of the United Nations, that is, the cooperation of the United Nations in defence of freedom. If the United Nations decides to return to the principles that gave it life and readapt the role for which it was conceived, count on the unwavering support of Argentina, in the struggle for freedom.
Know, too, that Argentina will not support any policy that involves the restriction of individual freedoms, of trade, or the violation of the natural rights of individuals, no matter who promotes it or how much consensus that institution has.
For this reason, we want to express officially our dissent on the Pact of the Future, and we invite all the nations of the free world to join us, not only in dissenting from this pact, but in creating a new agenda for this noble institution: the freedom agenda.
From this day on, know that the Argentine Republic will abandon the position of historical neutrality that characterised us and will be at the forefront of the struggle in defence of freedom. For as Thomas Paine said, “… those who wish to reap the blessings of liberty must, as men, endure the fatigue of defending it.”
May God bless the Argentines and all the citizens of the world and may the forces of heaven accompany us. Long live freedom, dammit!
This article is based on an Address to the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly delivered 24 September 2024 at the United Nations HQ, New York, NY. Translated from the original prepared for delivery Spanish language document.
