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President Biden Gives High-Stakes Speech at U.N. General Assembly; President Biden Gives His First Address at U.N. General Assembly. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 21, 2021 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:06]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: Also, new tensions with ally, France, and the fallout, fallout among multiple allies of the U.S. from the U.S. summary withdrawal from Afghanistan. A European diplomat tells me to suggest the U.S. is not consulting with its allies on those and other issues is, quote, an exaggeration.

A U.K. diplomat adds they simply cannot believe that this dispute will have genuine strategic consequences, that, of course, a different message than we're hearing from French diplomats and the French president expressing outrage at that agreement.

The pandemic has forced the U.N. this year to limit the size of each delegation. Still, more than 100 heads of state or government representatives are expected to attend in-person today. President Biden just one of a handful of leaders set to speak today. Moments ago, the president of Brazil finished his comments. As I mentioned, Biden is up next. Some will be live. Some have prepared pre-recorded remarks for the General Assembly.

Moments ago, Bolsonaro, who declared last week that he would not get vaccinated, went on to speak.

Let's stop now here. Here comes President Biden to begin his comments. Let's listen in live.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, my fellow delegates, to all those that dedicate themselves to this noble mission of this institution, it's my honor to speak to you for the first time as president of the United States.

We meet this year in a moment of intermingled with great pain and extraordinary possibility. We've lost so much to this devastating pandemic that continues to claim lives around the world and impact so much on our existence. We're mourning more than 4.5 million people, people of every nation, from every background. Each death is an individual heartbreak.

But our shared grief is a poignant reminder that our collective future will hinge on our ability to recognize our common humanity and to act together. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the clear and urgent choice that we face here at the dawning of what must be a decisive decade for our world, a decade that will quite literally determine our futures. As a global community, we're challenged by urgent and looming crises wherein lie enormous opportunities if, if we can summon the will and resolve to seize these opportunities.

Will we work together to save lives, defeat COVID-19 everywhere, and take the necessary stem to prepare ourselves for the next pandemic, for there will be another one? Or will we fail to harness the tools at our disposal as a more virulent and dangerous variants take hold?

Will we meet the threat of challenging climate, the challenging climate we're all feeling, already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather? Or will we suffer the merciless march of ever worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heat waves, and rising seas?

Will we affirm and uphold the human dignity and human rights under which nations and common cause more than seven decades ago formed this institution? Will we apply and strengthen the core tenets of the international system, including the U.N. Charter and the universal declaration of human rights as we seek to shape the emergence of new technologies and deter new threats? Or will we allow those universal principles to be trampled and twisted in the pursuit of naked political power?

In my view, how we answer these questions in this moment, whether we choose to fight for our shared future or not, will reverberate for generations yet to come. Simply put, we stand, in my view, at an inflection point in history. And I'm here today to share with you how the United States intends to work with partners and allies to answer these questions and the commitment of my new administration help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future for all people.

Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we are fixing our eyes on devoting our resource and the challenges and hold the keys to our collective future.

[10:05:03]

Ending this pandemic, addressing the climate crisis, managing the shifts in global power dynamics, shaping the rules of the world on vital issues, like trade, cyber and emerging technologies, and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today.

We've ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan, and as we close this period of relentless war, we're opening a new era of diplomacy, of using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world, of renewing and defending democracy, proving that no matter how challenging or how complex the problems we're going to face, government by and for the people is still the best way to deliver for all of our people.

And as the United States turns our focus to the priorities and the regions of the world, like the Indo-Pacific that are most consequential today and tomorrow, we'll do so with our allies and partners through cooperation and multilateral institutions like the United Nations to amplify our collective strength and speed, our progress towards dealing with these global challenges.

It is a fundamental truth of the 21st century within each of our countries and as a global community that our own success is bound up in others succeeding as well, to deliver for our own people who must also engage deeply with the rest of the world, to ensure that our own future, we must work together with other partners, our partners toward a shared future. Our security, our prosperity and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view, as never before. And so I believe we must work together as never before.

Over the last eight months, I've prioritized rebuilding our alliances, revitalizing our partnerships and recognizing they're essential and central to America's enduring security and prosperity. We have reaffirmed our sacred NATO alliance to Article 5 commitment. We're working with our allies toward a new strategic concept that will help our alliance better take on evolving threats of today and tomorrow.

We renewed our engagement with the European Union, a fundamental partner in tackling a full range of significant issues facing our world today. We elevated the quad partnership among Australia, India, Japan and the United States to take on challenges ranging from health security to climate to emerging technologies.

We're engaging with regional institutions from ASEAN, to the African Union, to the organization of American States to focus on people's urgent needs for better health and better economic outcomes. We're back at the table in international forums, especially the United Nations, to focus attention and to spur global action on shared challenges.

We are reengaged at the World Health Organization and working in close partnership with COVAX to deliver life-saving vaccines around the world. We rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement and we're running to retake a seat in the human rights council next year at the U.N.

And as the United States seeks to rally the world to action, we will lead not just with the example of our power but, God willing, with the power of our example. Make no mistake, the United States will continue to defend ourselves, our allies and our interest against attack, including terrorist threats as we prepare to use force if any is necessary, but to defend our vital U.S. national interests, including against ongoing and imminent threats. But the mission must be clear and achievable, undertaken with informed consent of the American people and, whenever possible, in partnership with our allies.

U.S. military power must be our tool of last resort, not our first, and should not be used as an answer to every problem we see around the world. Indeed, today, many of our greatest concerns cannot be solved or even addressed through the force of arms.

[10:10:01]

Bombs and bullets cannot defend against COVID-19 or its future variants. To fight this pandemic, we need a collective act of science and political will. We need to act now to get shots in arms as fast as possible and expand access to oxygen, tests, treatments to save lives around the world.

And for the future, we need to create a new mechanism to finance global health security that builds on our existing development assistance and global health -- and a global health threat council that is armed with the tools we need to monitor and identify emerging pandemics so that we can take immediate action.

Already, the United States has put more than $15 billion toward the global COVID response. We've shipped more than 160 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to other countries. This includes 130 million doses from our own supply and the first tranches of a half a billion doses of Pfizer vaccine we purchased to donate through COVAX.

Planes carrying vaccines from the United States have already landed in 100 countries, bringing people all over the world a little dose of hope, as one American nurse termed to me, a dose of hope directly to the American people and importantly no strings attached.

And tomorrow at the U.S.-hosted global COVID-19 summit, I'll be announcing additional commitments as we seek to advance the fight against COVID-19 and hold ourselves accountable around specific targets on three key challenges, saving lives now, vaccinating the world and building back better.

This year has also brought widespread death and devastation from the borderless climate crisis. The extreme weather events that we have seen in every part of the world, and you all know it and feel it, represent what the secretary general has rightly called code red for humanity. And the scientist and experts are telling us that we're fast approaching a point of no return in a literal sense.

To keep within our reach the vital goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, every nation needs to bring their highest possible ambitions to the table when we meet in Glasgow for COP26. And then we have to keep raising our collective ambition over time.

In April, I announced the United States' ambitious new goal under the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the United States by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels and by 2030, as we work toward achieving a clean energy economy with net zero emissions by 2050. And my administration is working closely with our Congress to make critical investments in green infrastructure and electric vehicles that will help us lock in progress at home toward our climate goals.

And the best part is making these ambitious investments isn't just good climate policy, it's a chance for each of our countries to invest in ourselves and our own future. It's an enormous opportunity to create good-paying jobs for workers in each of our countries and to spur long-term economic growth to improve the quality of life for all of our people.

We also have to support the countries and people that will be hit the hardest and that have the fewest resources to help them adapt. In April, I announced the United States will double our public international financing to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis. And today, I'm proud to announce that we'll work with the Congress to double that number again, including for adaptation efforts.

This will make the United States a leader in public climate finance, and with our added support together with increased private capital from other donors. We'll be able to meet the goal of mobilizing $100 billion to support climate action in developing nations.

As we deal with these crises, we're also encountering a new era, an era of new technologies and possibilities that have the potential to release and reshape every aspect of human existence.

[10:15:13]

And it's up to all of us to determine whether these technologies are a forced to empower people or to deepen repression. As new technologies continue to evolve, we'll work together with our Democratic partners to ensure that new advances in areas from biotechnology to quantum computing, 5G, artificial intelligence and more are used to lift people up to solve problems and advance human freedom, not to suppress dissent or target minority communities.

And the United States intends to make a profound investment to research and innovation working with countries at all stages of economic development, to develop new tools and technologies, to help us tackle the challenges of the second quarter of the 21st century and beyond. We're hardening our critical infrastructure against cyberattacks, disrupting ransomware networks and working to establish clear rules of the road for all nations as it relates to cyberspace.

We reserve the right to respond decisively to cyberattacks that threaten our people, our allies and our interests. We will pursue new rules of global trade and economic growth, describe level the playing field so it's not artificially tipped in any one country at the expense of others. And every nation has the right and opportunity to compete fairly.

We will strive to ensure basic labor rights, environmental safeguards and intellectual property are protected and that the benefits of globalization are shared broadly throughout all our societies. We'll continue to uphold the longstanding rules and norms that have formed the guardrails of international engagement for decades that have been essential to the development of nations around the world. Bedrock commitments, like freedom of navigation, adherence to international laws and treaties, support for arms control measures to reduce the risk and enhance transparency.

Our approach is firmly grounded and fully consistent with the United Nations' mission and the values we've agreed to when we drafted this charter. These are commitments we all made and that we're all bound to uphold. And as we strive to deal with these urgent challenges, whether they're longstanding or newly emerging, we must also deal with one another. All the major powers of the world have a duty, in my view, to carefully manage their relationships so they do not tip from responsible competition to conflict. The United States will compete and will compete vigorously and lead with our values and our strength, will stand up for our allies and our friends and oppose attempts by stronger countries that dominate weaker ones, whether through changes to territory by force, economic coercion, technical exploitation or disinformation.

But we're not seeking, I'll say it again, we are not seeking a new cold war or a world divided into rigid blocks. The United States is ready to work with any nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to share challenges, even if we have intense disagreement in other areas, because we'll all suffer the consequences of our failure if we do not come together to address the urgent threats, like COVID-19 and climate change or enduring threats, like nuclear proliferation.

The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. We're working with the P5+1 to engage Iran diplomatically and to seek a return to JCPOA. We're prepared to return to full compliance if Iran does the same.

Similarly, we seek serious and sustained diplomacy to pursue the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We seek concrete progress for an available plan with tangible commitments that would increase stability on the peninsula and in the region as well as improve the lives of the people in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

[10:20:09]

We must also remain vigilant to the threat of terror imposed to all our nations, whether emanating from distant regions of the world or in our own backyard. We know the bitter sting of terrorism. It is real. We've almost all experienced it. Last month, we lost 13 American heroes and almost 200 innocent Afghan civilians in a heinous terrorist attack at the Kabul airport. Those who commit acts of terrorism against us will continue to find a determined enemy in the United States.

The world today is not the world of 2001 though, and the United States is not the same country we were when we were attacked on 9/11 20 years ago. Today, we're better equipped to detect and prevent terrorist threats and we are more resilient in our ability to repel them and to respond. We know how to build effective partnerships to dismantle terrorist networks, by targeting their financing and support systems, countering their propaganda, preventing their travel, as well as disrupting imminent attacks.

We'll meet terrorist threats that arise today and in the future with a full range of tools available to us, including working in cooperation with local partners so that we need not be so reliant on large-scale military deployments.

One most important ways we can effectively enhance security and reduce violence is by seeking to improve the lives of the people all over the world who see that their governments are not serving their needs. Corruption fuels inequality, siphons off a nation's resources, spreads across borders and generates human suffering. There's nothing less than a national security threat in the 21st century.

Around the world, we're increasingly seeing citizens demonstrate their discontent, seeing the wealthy and well-connected grow richer and richer, taking payoffs and bribes, operating above the law, while the vast majority of the people struggle to find a job or put food on the table or to get their businesses off the ground or simply send their children to school.

People have taken to the streets in every region to demand that their governments address people's basic needs, give everyone a fair shot to succeed and protect their God-given rights. And in that chorus of voices across languages and continents, we hear a common cry, a cry for dignity, simple dignity.

As leaders, it is our duty to answer that call, not to silence it. The United States is committed to using our resources and our international platform to support these voices, listen to them, partner with them, to find ways to respond and advance human dignity around the world.

For example, there's an enormous need for infrastructure in developing countries. But infrastructure that is low quality or that feeds corruption or exacerbates environmental degradation may only end up contributing to greater challenges for countries over time.

Done the right way, however, with transparent, sustainable investment and projects that respond to the country's needs and engage their local workers to maintain high labor and environmental standards, infrastructure can be a strong foundation to allow societies and low and middle-income countries to grow and to prosper. That's the idea behind the build back better world.

And together with the private sector and our G7 partners, we aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investment. We'll also continue to be the world's largest contributor to humanitarian assistance, bringing food, water, shelter, emergency health care and other vital lifesaving needs to millins of people in need.

When the earthquake strikes, the typhoon rages or disaster anywhere in the world, the United States shows up, we'll be ready to help. And at a time when nearly one in three people globally do not have access to adequate food, just last year, the United States has committed to rallying our partners to address immediate malnutrition and to ensure that we can sustainably feed the world for the decades to come.

[10:25:171]

To that end, the United States is making a $10 billion commitment to end hunger and invest in food systems at home and abroad.

Since 2000, the United States government has provided more than $140 billion to advance health and strengthen health system, and we will continue our leadership to drive these vital investments to make people's lives better every single day, just give them a little breathing room.

And as we strive to make lives better, we must work with renewed purpose to end the conflicts that are driving so much pain and hurt around the world. We must redouble our diplomacy and commit to political negotiations, not violence as a tool of first resort, to manage tensions around the world, to seek a future of greater peace and security for all people of the Middle East. A commitment the United States' social (ph) securities, without question, our support for an independent Jewish state is unequivocal. But I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the best way to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish democratic state, living if peace along side of viable, sovereign, and democratic Palestinian state.

We're a long way from that goal at this moment. We must never allow ourselves to give up one the possibility of progress. We cannot give up on solving raging civil conflicts, including in Ethiopia and Yemen, where fighting between warring parties is driving famine, horrific violence, human rights violation against civilian, including unconscionable use of rape as a weapon of war. We'll continue to work with the international community to press for peace and bring an end to this suffering.

As we pursue diplomacy across the board, the United States will champion the democratic values and go to the very heart of who we are as a nation and the people, freedom, equality, opportunity, and a belief in the universal rights of all people. It's stamped into our DNA as a nation and critically it's stamped into the DNA of this institution, the United States.

We sometimes forget, I quote the opening words of the universal declaration of human rights, quote, the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, the founding ethos of the United Nations, placing the rights of individuals at the center of our system. And that clarity and vision must not be ignored or misinterpreted.

The United States will do our part but we'll be more successful and more impactful if all of our nations are working toward the full mission to which we are called. That's why more than 100 nations united around a shared statement, the Security Council adopted a resolution outlining how we'll support the people of Afghanistan moving forward, laying out the expectations to which we'll hold the Taliban when it comes to respecting universal human rights.

We all must advocate for women -- the rights of women and girls to use their full talents, to contribute economically, politically and socially, and pursue their dreams free of violence and intimidation, from Central America to the Middle East to Africa to Afghanistan, wherever it appears in the world.

We all must call out and condemn the targeting and oppression of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, whether it occurs in Xinjiang or Northern Ethiopia or anywhere in the world. We all must defend the rights of LGBTQI individuals so they can live and love openly without fear, whether it's Chechnya or Cameroon or anywhere.

As we steer our nations towards this inflection point and work to meet today's fast-moving, crosscutting challenges, let me be clear, I am not agnostic about the future we want for the world.

[10:30:07]

The future will belong to those --