As the Israel-Hamas war intensifies, the UN's influence is dwindling. [Bloomberg](
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a network of hidden ditches filled with Bloomberg Opinionâs opinions. [Sign up here](. Todayâs Agenda - The UN is [failing](.
- [Walls]( are prevailing.
- Xiâs [economy]( is ailing. The UN Is on a Road to Nowhere Remember these? Back in the day, no Halloween costume was complete without a heavy, coin-filled UNICEF box tied around your neck. Everyone from Selena Gomez](to [Jennifer Lopez]( to [the Brady Bunch]( endorsed the organizationâs efforts to help kids around the world â as exemplified by that box. Nowadays, however, UNICEFâs month-long [Halloween campaign]( relies on [QR codes]( instead of cardboard. Thatâs progress, I guess: People are more likely to have Venmo than spare change. Still, by replacing the tangerine-colored box with a digital square of black and white pixels, UNICEF has lost a ubiquitous symbol. For more than 70 years, those boxes were in classrooms, churches and playgrounds. Now, theyâre only on our phones, amid dozens of other attention-seeking apps. And itâs not just UNICEF: The influence of the United Nations itself is dwindling, too. âOne way or another, pretty much every one of its 193 member nations is fed up and increasingly convinced that the UN is fast making itself irrelevant,â Andreas Kluth [writes]( (free read). And part of it is the international equivocation over the Israel-Hamas war. According to Bloomberg Newsâs Henry Meyer, Israelâs [current campaign](to destroy [Hamas]( involves ground forces moving gradually into the Palestinian territory while backed up by tanks and artillery. The civilian death toll â including [from a lethal strike]( Tuesday on the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza â âhas sparked growing international criticism, while leading to a dire humanitarian crisis,â Henry writes. âWhereâs the United Nations in all this?â Andreas asks. âOh, right, nowhere.â Although the organization is meant to facilitate multilateral cooperation and collective peacekeeping, itâs failing to live up to its principles. The watered-down [resolution]( recently passed by the General Assembly may demand âan immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truceâ but it fails to mention Hamas, the hostages or Israelâs right to self-defense: Making matters worse is the gridlock within the UN Security Council, which consists of five permanent veto-wielding members â the US, UK, France, Russia and China â and a rotating cast of 10 other countries. The council can dispatch troops to keep peace in trouble spots, but thereâs a catch: Resolutions are only approved when all permanent members [agree](, and they rarely do. Initially, the USâs [proposed]( council resolution got shot down by Russia and China. âThen it was Russiaâs turn to get rejected. Its resolution called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned all violence against civilians. Thatâs rich coming from a nation thatâs been bombing, abducting, maiming and killing Ukrainian civilians for more than 600 days,â Andreas writes. This inability to come up with a solution is costing both Israel and Palestine dearly. Just today, UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder [said](: âGaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. Itâs a living hell for everyone else.â And the longer the UN fails to act, the fewer children there will be for UNICEF to help. Bonus Israel-Hamas Reading: - Emmanuel Macronâs tour of the Middle East highlights [Europeâs struggle]( to make diplomatic headway on Israel and Gaza. â Lionel Laurent
- While the US focuses on Gaza and Ukraine, Taiwan should beef up its own [military capabilities](to deter China. â Karishma Vaswani The [Walls]( Given the millennial obsession over [open-concept]( kitchen plans, youâd think governments would feel the same way. But nope. They LOVE walls! There are 74 in the world, to be exact: âTear down this wallâ may be one of historyâs great quotes, but the world that emerged after the Cold War turned out to be full of fortified walls rather than open borders, Adrian Wooldridge [says](. Some of these walls work better than others, and Iâm not just talking about Donald Trumpâs [fail in Mexico](: âThe most sophisticated wall is probably Saudi Arabiaâs 560-mile wall on its border with Iraq, along with a similar border fence with Yemen. Another world-class wall is Pakistanâs 2,000-mile wall with India, consisting of a dual chain link fence and barbed wire, reinforced by a 400-mile-long ditch, 14 feet wide and 11 feet deep and 1,000 forts and border posts. Unlike the Great Wall of China, the Great Wall of Pakistan is visible from space thanks to permanent floodlights. Compared with these two goliaths, Israelâs âiron wallâ with Gaza is both short and unsophisticated,â he notes. According to David Betzâs new book â [The Guarded Age: Fortification in the Twenty-First Century]( â walls make up only a fraction of the fortifications arising across the planet. Israel has a defense system in the sky made of radar beams and interceptor missiles. The new US Embassy in London is protected by a âpondâ and a network of hidden ditches. Barriers are all around us, from barbed-wire fences to concrete barricades. Even Wall Street was [named after]( a nine-foot-high wall that Dutch settlers built in the 17th century to keep out the British and pirates. To this day, fear of disorder continues to inspire humans to erect new fortifications, Adrian explains: âSome 17 million Americans live in gated communities. The emerging world is splitting into a world of slums and a world of walled cities.â What does that mean for globalization? Try not to put your guard up before reading [the whole thing](. Chinaâs Challenging Times Thereâs really no way to tell whether Xi Jinping is giving the Chinese people the ick these days, because the country has no regular [presidential-job-approval survey]( and heavily censors its social media. But there are context clues, courtesy of our data visualization columnist Elaine He. For example: Real-estate developers have literally *run out of money* to build and deliver all of the homes theyâve pre-sold: âSeeking a fast churn, developers relied on the so-called pre-sales model, where apartments are often bought 18 months to two years before completion to pull in operating cash early,â Shuli Ren [writes](. But now they have no money left to build them. Can you imagine?? I feel like demanding a refund when my Uber Eats order doesnât come with the container of dipping sauce I ordered. I canât fathom how Iâd feel if I put a deposit down on an apartment that never got built. An unfortunate knock-on effect of the property blowup is Chinaâs faltering economy. âAs indebted developers could no longer deliver homes, angry buyers staged protests and threatened mortgage boycotts,â Shuli writes. Xiâs common prosperity isnât very common these days: Given the slumping property prices, the ever-widening urban income gap and the fact that more than one in five young people are [jobless](, Iâm guessing that not many of Chinaâs citizens are feeling chipper right now. Who needs approval ratings when you have facts like that? Crash Course âThe entire population of Alaska is smaller than San Francisco. Itâs about 750, 000 people. So in terms of troops to population, itâs pretty high.â
Liam Denning
Energy and climate columnist for Bloomberg Opinion
On [the latest episode]( of Crash Course, Tim OâBrien is joined by a colleague who has traveled to the Arctic several times for a series of features about the ever-changing dynamics of Alaskaâs [military](, [oil and gas](, and [fisheries](. Further Reading Stop complaining about [clean-energy subsidies]( and start agreeing on better rules to govern them. â Bloombergâs editorial board Small business [bankruptcies]( tell us a lot about the economyâs vulnerabilities. â Jonathan Levin Japanâs central bank is moving away from yield curve control, but donât tell anyone. â Daniel Moss and Gearoid Reidy Without a proper paper trail, Googleâs [culture of secrecy]( is far from damning. â Dave Lee Americaâs vast [safety net]( helped strengthen its economy. â Betsey Stevenson Loadshedding isnât South Africaâs only problem â its [logistics network]( is also in dire straits. â Alexander Parker If your default password is âpassword,â youâre obviously committing [securities fraud](. â Matt Levine ICYMI Immigrants are [getting out]( of Canada. [Homeschooling]( is on the rise in America. Zillow [plunged]( after a real estate verdict. Earth's freshwater is getting [saltier](. A school [ban]( on cellphones is working. Kickers Buy this home and get [a meth lab](, too! Ron DeSantisâs [boots]( appear to be a tall order. Chandler Bingâs [job]( defined a generation. (h/t Henry Seltzer) Culture wars are always [in fashion](. (h/t Ale Lampietti) The watermelon emoji is a [symbol of protest](. Notes: Please send cowboy boots with lifts and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before itâs here, itâs on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals canât find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox.
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