Don’t let our next UN secretary-general be a shill for China, Cuba and Hamas

Excerpt The race to choose the next U.N. secretary-general has yet to produce a clear frontrunner, but at least one candidate currently making headway should ring alarm bells in Washington. The most recent straw poll of U.N. Security Council members showed Rebeca Grynspan, a former Costa Rican vice-president who has led the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development since 2021, with a razor-thin lead. But right behind her was Guyana’s current ambassador to the U.N., Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who had led in the previous straw poll. To win the position, a successful candidate needs the backing of nine of the 15 members of the council while avoiding the vetoes of any of its five permanent members — the U.S., China, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. Richard Goldberg is a Senior Advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ben Cohen is a Research Fellow.