What Trump's UN Opening Day Reveals About the Coming Fracture

The show comes first, the rules come last

Donald Trump returned to the UNGA podium on September 22 and made one thing unmistakably clear: he does not revere the institution, but he will use it exactly the way he wants.

His speech was equal parts vanity project and threat display. He praised his own record as a peacebuilder while issuing blunt warnings that Iran could be crushed, Cuba could collapse, and that the United States would no longer tolerate military footholds anywhere in the Western Hemisphere — including the quiet announcement of a new US base in Greenland.

He also branded artificial intelligence as something new: “Superintelligence,” or SI. According to Trump, the word “artificial” makes the technology sound counterfeit, and “in fact it is not fake, it is wonderful. It just requires caution.” He then invited the world into the new era of SI.

The rebranding is less cosmetic than it sounds. Trump has spent the past week insisting that America must win the AI race. Last week he said, “whoever wins at AI wins.” Now he wants the name changed to reflect that victory — before the rules are written.

The AI war of words is a proxy war

Trump’s resistance to regulation puts him on direct collision course with the rest of the room. Most member states, the European Union, and the UN’s own secretary-general want guardrails on rapidly advancing AI — particularly around autonomous weapons.

Guterres made this explicit in his final UNGA address. He warned that “artificial agents are becoming uncontrollable” and that “lethal autonomous weapons are moving from science fiction into military reality.” He framed the moment as a test of how humanity distributes power over four domains: war and peace, wealth inequality, climate chaos, and AI itself.

Trump’s SI pitch and his opposition to government oversight suggest he sees AI governance differently. Rather than constraining development, the goal is to outpace competitors. That stance gives US tech firms a lobbying advantage inside the American delegation — and puts the United States at odds with the EU’s AI Act, the UN’s own safety push, and growing calls from Global South nations that the technology will deepen existing inequalities.

The ICC comes under fire

Perhaps the most structurally significant moment was Trump’s call for all member states to immediately withdraw from the International Criminal Court.

He called the court “anti-American.” This is not new language for the current administration. The US has sanctioned ICC judges and chief prosecutor Mike Garcia in previous rounds. Marco Rubio described the court as “corrupt, fatally politicized, and abusing its authority with malice.”

The ICC has 124 member states and investigates war crimes. Withdrawing would weaken its jurisdiction and political legitimacy. Trump’s demand is effectively a challenge to the postwar international legal order — a order the US helped build after 1945 and has selectively embraced ever since.

The ICC responded quickly. It called the sanctions against its officials an attack on the rule of law itself, noting that “when judicial figures are threatened for applying the law, what is endangered is the international legal order itself.”

The deeper question is whether other countries will follow Washington’s lead. Several African states have previously considered退出 over perceived bias. If the US pressure campaign gains traction, the court could face its first real membership crisis since its founding.

Cuba walks out

Cuba’s representative delegation left the chamber during Trump’s speech after he labeled the island a “completely failed state” and predicted it would collapse. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called the remarks “false” and wrote on X that the US government “cannot accept that Cuba is a fully sovereign independent state with its rights.”

The walkout was symbolic but meaningful. It echoed a broader pattern: Trump’s rhetoric toward Cuba has intensified over the past year, yet the US has offered no detailed vision of what “fundamental change” in Cuba would look like.

For Latin American governments already wary of US interference, the speech reinforced a familiar grievance — that the United States treats its hemisphere as a sphere of dominance rather than a community of equals.

Japan plays bridge

In the margins of the spectacle, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met Trump at UN headquarters. Their conversation covered AI, semiconductors, and critical minerals — the pillars of Japan-US economic security cooperation. Takaichi said collaboration was advancing and expressed hope for deeper ties. Trump agreed. No journalists were present for the meeting, and no details emerged beyond that.

Japan occupies a rare position at moments like this. It is a US ally bound by the security treaty, but it is also a major economy with deep trade ties to China and significant responsibilities toward Southeast Asian and Global South partners. Tokyo’s silence on the ICC question, the Cuba remarks, and the AI branding signal a deliberate choice: anchor the alliance while avoiding public friction with Washington.

That balancing act will grow harder. As Trump tests the limits of unilateral action, Japan faces pressure to choose between loyalty and multilateral credibility.

Guterres’s last warning

Antonio Guterres used his final speech as secretary-general to draw a stark picture. The world is fracturing. Wars are multiplying. Climate disruption is accelerating. AI is concentrating power. And the US, despite its wealth, is no longer as dominant as it once believed.

He offered two possible futures: one where competition deepens division and distrust, another where multiple centers of influence coexist under shared international law. Which path wins depends on how leaders respond to the four tests he identified.

Trump’s speech was a performance of the first scenario. Guterres’s was an argument for the second. The UN General Assembly will spend the coming weeks negotiating the space between them.

What happens next will depend on whether the institution can survive the gap between its charter and the habits of its most powerful members.