From Watts Up With That?
Essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently, UN favoured candidates are not impressing Team Trump. But there is another potential candidate who might tick everyone’s box.
In a world of wars and climate crisis, a new leader could save the UN. But would Trump allow it?Steve Bloomfield
Sun 20 Sep 2026 23.38 AESTAs the organisation meets this week, it remains the best hope for restoring order. But it relies on goodwill from the US president – and that is lacking
If all goes to plan, at some stage in the coming weeks 15 diplomats will emerge from a small sound-proofed room deep in the bowels of the United Nations headquarters in New York and announce the organisation’s next secretary-general.
The person they choose will face a combination of challenges unlike any that their predecessors have had to deal with. Two of the security council’s permanent members, the US and Russia, are engaged in wars of choice that have no end in sight. A UN commission of inquiry has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, but the UN has effectively been reduced to the role of bystander, pushed out by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. The climate crisis is creating a cascade of new humanitarian disasters, while every day now seems to bring a new security threat caused by the unregulated rise of AI.
All of this is happening in a world in which the very principles of the UN – multilateralism, a rules-based order and international law – are under threat.
…It is not easy to argue you are best placed to save the UN when the man you need to persuade would rather it fails.
…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/20/un-new-leader-wars-climate-crisis-donald-trump
Obviously a new kind of candidate is needed – someone who fulfils President Trump’s wishes for a less influential United Nations, yet who also fulfils the UN requirement for a dedicated globalist climate warrior.
I once again present former Australian PM and former Aussie ambassador to the USA, Kevin Rudd.
The following video is Kevin Rudd’s unique diplomatic talent on display. Shortly before his appointment as Australia’s ambassador to the USA, Rudd frantically deleted a whole bunch of disparaging public comments about President Trump, but to Rudd’s surprise, the President got to hear about his disparaging comments anyway.
Rudd in my opinion has a long track record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In the words of former political colleague and Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett, from last time Kevin Rudd was in the running as UN Secretary General;
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In an extract from the memoir, read out by interviewer Melissa Doyle, Garrett wrote supporting Kevin Rudd was “certainly the biggest” mistake he made in his political career.
He didn’t back down from that position in the interview.
“I’ve been particularly strong in this book about leadership and Rudd’s leadership and I think it needed to be said,” Garrett said.
“I’m critical of him, that’s true, very critical, but I think for good reason.”
Another of his criticisms is that Mr Rudd jeopardised the safety of Australia.
“It’s a big call, but I stand by it,” Garrett said. He added Mr Rudd treated people with “an enormous amount of contempt” and made “the business of the country almost ungovernable”.
When pushed on what danger he feared Mr Rudd posed, Garrett said the former PM was “unpredictable” and he didn’t know what he “could or would do”.
Other political figures are also scathing – though Rudd draws some surprising support;
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Some conservative MPs and ministers are opposed to Mr Rudd being nominated.
“This guy did his best to ruin our country,” South Australian MP Tony Pasin said in April. “That we would think about imposing him on the rest of the world beggars belief.”
But he has received public endorsements from prominent figures including UK economist Lord Nicholas Stern and former East Timor president and Nobel prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta.
Another endorsement, this time from the leftist Sydney Morning Herald;
You cannot be serious: Kevin Rudd would be a disaster as UN chief
Nicholas Stuart
July 22, 2016 — 5:02pmThere’s no need to explain why Kevin Rudd would be a disaster for the UN: that’s a given.
The functioning human being vanished long ago, consumed by hatred. Back then he worked, unrelentingly, to destroy Julia Gillard, even if it meant pulling Labor’s house down around him. When reinstalled in office he suffered one of the most precipitate declines in polling ever recorded by a PM. Then his disastrous re-election campaign ran off the road. It remained bogged, spinning out ever-wilder ideas in a desperate attempt to cut through. He promised he’d set things to rights, but that was always the critical failing of the Rudd project – it relied completely on him. There was never any room for anyone else. In those final days in office he was travelling around the country in a bubble of his own imagination, utterly detached from reality.
Today the fantasy continues. At first he genuinely thought he might have a role here as an elder statesman. His colleagues urged him to go and he shuffled off overseas. Amazingly, and by all accounts, he does appear to have reinvented himself. But that’s a long way from being a viable contender for Secretary General of the UN.
He hasn’t really managed to convince anybody other than himself that he’s actually got a chance at achieving the top job. It’s ludicrously wishful thinking. To believe he has any chance of heading the world body is stunningly, breathtakingly naive. The scenario he’s peddling has all the obvious contenders fighting one another to a standstill allowing Rudd to glide, untouched and seemingly unassailable, through the middle. It won’t happen.
Despite everything, Rudd ticks all the boxes for his globalist and climate beliefs. He apparently even speaks fluent Mandarin.
My only reservation about advocating Kevin Rudd is the remote possibility he might start World War Three. But the man’s ability to alienate his strongest supporters, to cause disunity where formerly there was harmony, to offend, to divide, to break the unbreakable, is a gift to the world. The damage such a person would do to the UN in my opinion would likely be irreparable.
If you know someone who has the ear of the President, please suggest Kevin Rudd. Rudd has repeatedly demonstrated an uncanny ability to win enough support to secure important diplomatic posts, yet has a near unbroken track record of making a complete mess of whatever post he wins, until he is finally ejected in a flurry of embarrassment and damage control.
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