United Nations: Looking at Davos and the UN General Assembly with a Psychiatric Super-Ability on SSI in Upstate New York

7:59 AM Wednesday.

The purpose of this blog entry is to pick up and address several of my ongoing conversations simultaneously. For some of you, I am picking up on our most recent email, telephone call, text message, videoconference, or face-to-face conversation. For others, my most recent communication was my 15 January 2026 blog post titled United Nations: Response to PGA Baerbock. Then, for a third group, my most recent communication was my YouTube comment yesterday on The One State Fantasy by Haviv Rettig Gur.

It occurs to me that I can classify you all into one of three contact categories.

First, with respect to my clinical team, I am feeling tremendous gratitude for my mom's cancer-free test results and ongoing good recovery from her mastectomy. We are doing well here at the house together, but we did get a boiler warning signal from a service technician during a cold snap that is a cause of some anxiety. There may come a time when my mom and I are not able to take care of the house on our own, but we are not there yet. My mood and cognition are good. On the downside, I have put on a little too much winter weight, and I have been spending too much time in bed glued to my smartphone and the latest news out of my YouTube feed, The Times of Israel, C-SPAN and the UN Web TV. On the upside, in addition to my psychiatric disability, I think I may also have a psychiatric super-ability. I might be a geopolitical savant. But I am not sure. It could be a delusion of grandiosity on my part, or it could be a real-world, positive aspect of my neurodivergence that comes with unique challenges, such that I have to live on SSI until I am perhaps one day ready and able to return to the responsibilities that accompany formal employment.

My second class of contacts is my political team. Some of you are anti-Trump, which I understand, and some of you are pro-Trump, which I also understand. As an independent, I alternate between both positions. Indeed, right now I am still in awe of Trump's brilliant news conference yesterday, on the one hand, and Sachs' brilliant critique of Trump, on the other hand. If Democrats are serious about 2028, they should be reaching out to Sachs. The split between Sachs and the Democrats is at the root of the problem on the American left, in my view. Gavin Newsom and Ezra Klein should have Sachs on their podcasts for some healthy debate. He does not belong on the Tucker Carlson Network alone. I am intentionally not watching Trump live at Davos in Switzerland this morning. I will catch up on his speech and the reactions to it later this afternoon. Instead, I will tune in for some real-time viewing of the UN General Assembly here in New York starting at 10 AM EST, specifically Intergovernmental negotiations on the question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Council | Informal Meeting of the Plenary, 80th Session | UN Web TV. 

Alright, it is now 11:35 AM and I have listened to enough of the informal meeting of the plenary to form an impression. I am going to limit myself at this juncture to a brief comment on the 4th of the five clusters, namely, the size and working methods of an enlarged Council. With help from Google Gemini AI, it looks like there is strong convergence toward expansion to 25 members: 

https://share.google/aimode/lfkvxgw7VHsgnXHuN

This would mean a revision of the first sentence of Article 23, paragraph 1 of the UN Charter to read as follows:

1. The Security Council shall consist of twenty-five Members of the United Nations.

With respect to working methods, I am further inclined to propose four voting thresholds: 

• 13 Votes for a Procedural Decision
• 15 Votes for a Substantive Decision Short of Military Force
• 17 Votes for a Decision to Use Military Force
• 22 Votes for One Decision Every Ten Years Regarding Veto Powers 

This would involve revision of Article 27 of the UN Charter as follows:

1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.

2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of thirteen members.

3. Decisions of the Security Council on substantive matters other than the use of military force shall be made by an affirmative vote of fifteen members.

4. Decisions of the Security Council on the use of military force shall be made by an affirmative vote of seventeen members.

5. The Security Council shall decide once every ten years by an affirmative vote of twenty-two members, beginning in the 90th session of the General Assembly, what veto powers a number of its members may exercise, if any, with respect to substantive matters and the use of military force. 

This is just a tentative proposal, of course. I may well change my mind as I learn more about other ideas.

Now it is 3:16 PM, and I am going to have a bite to eat while I begin to get caught up on Davos. The landscape heading into Trump's appearance at Davos was well described by Mike Allen in today's Axios AM newsletter. This said, there are some additional aspects to point out. Up until now, I had hoped that we were heading toward sustainable world federalism through UN Charter reform, beginning with an upgrade to the UN Security Council. Now it appears that Trump may be introducing a techno-feudal military-industrial alternative to the UN that is transparently plutocratic, authoritarian, livestock-intensive, fossil-fuel-intensive, and AI-intensive. But this is perhaps much too fearful a reading of our "hinge moment." It's possible that Trump at Davos 2026 is actually a highly complex catalyst of UN Charter reform toward sustainable world federalism. Much depends on how global leaders respond to Trump's lunatic brand of geopolitical genius. He is my alter ego in some ways, and my nemesis in others. I do see, based on some Axios alerts, that he has ruled out the use of military force to acquire Greenland, and that he is backing off a Greenland tariff threat on the basis of a new "solution." I look forward to learning more. Then I will come back here and finish up this entry with a message to my third class of contacts, namely, my spiritual team.

12:12 AM Thursday. 

Well, I am back some nine hours later after eating, listening to some key briefings on my Samsung Galaxy, and sleeping. It seems I am not yet ready to proceed with a message to my spiritual team. I need to remain with my political team for a while longer. We need to talk some more about UN Security Council reform and regime change in Iran.

Here are the two most important briefings I listened to between 3:30 PM and 9 PM:

You can also find them this way: Trump's World and How Has the Islamic Republic Gotten to This Place? 

Regarding UN Security Council reform, it occurs to me that we should really discuss a division of the Council under Cluster 1 into two broad categories of membership. The first category I propose we consider is a change from the "Permanent 5" or P5 to the "Nuclear 8" or N8. Yes, I am actually proposing that we think seriously about adding India, Israel and Pakistan to an expanded Security Council. North Korea, like Iran, is clearly in breach of the NPT, and therefore should not be included in this category, although I am not entirely decided on the issue. There is a case to be made for including it.

The second category I propose we consider is the "Elected 17" or E17. I am not firmly suggesting any term lengths at this point, but I tend to favor a balance between short and long. I could see ten Council membership slots of non-repeatable two-year terms, exactly as is the current practice for elected members, and I could also see seven Council membership "anchor" slots for repeatable terms of ten, twenty, or even thirty years, perhaps beginning with Brazil; South Africa or another sub-Saharan African state; Egypt; Australia; Japan; Turkey or Germany; and Indonesia or an Arab Gulf state.

Regarding Cluster 2 of the IGN Security Council reform process - the question of the veto - I am inclined to suggest that a collective veto on the use of military force against a de facto nuclear weapons state be given to five or more members of the N8 until the first decadal review of the veto power during the 90th session of the General Assembly. If, for example, 17 members of the Council voted to use military force to denuclearize North Korea sometime before 2035, this vote could be blocked by five or more of the N8 under the procedural rule that I am suggesting. But five of the N8 for a veto on the use of military force against a de facto nuclear weapons state may be too high. Three, on the other hand, might be too low. Four might be better than five.

Staying with the veto power for just a moment longer, I am also inclined to consider granting a collective veto on certain Council matters to a subset of the non-nuclear E17, such as any five of the "anchor" states. 

Now concerning regime change in Iran and North Korea, the two states most acutely in breach of the NPT (in contrast to what is arguably a systemic breach by some of the N8), I have divergent thoughts. Toward Iran and any other UN member state that may be considering nuclear breakout, I am inclined to a very hard line. My feeling is that every member of a reformed UN Security Council should commit to the absolute prohibition of horizontal proliferation and the systematic de-escalation of vertical proliferation. Council members should further be committed to the responsible exercise of military force to maintain the absolute prohibition on horizontal proliferation and even, in some cases perhaps, to support the systematic de-escalation of vertical proliferation. 

My feeling toward Iran is one of external support for organic, internal regime change in 2026, including through possible use of military force either by the Security Council under Chapter VII or by the US and/or Israel under Article 51. My feeling toward North Korea is more one of resigned acceptance of an NPT failure, coupled with respect for Korean resilience and sadness at Korean division. I tend to see the path forward for North Korea not in terms of regime change, but in terms of intra-Korean reconciliation. I am even willing to consider a seat for North Korea at the Security Council, as part of an N9 (N8 + 1). This is quite complex, however. Perhaps this should be a joint seat for North and South Korea. They would have to learn how to vote together. They would have to reunify enough to make a single Security Council vote possible. Perhaps there is a way to make this happen sooner rather later - by a kind of quantum leap.

Now I suppose it is time to shift briefly into an update for my spiritual team. Let me just say that there are three issues I want to work on today: the Dalai Lama, the Mahdi, and Christian Vegan Discipleship.

End 6:40 AM.