UN General Assembly
2022

Unfortunately, I am expressing that commitment at a time when we are getting further away from those noble goals. After decades during which we overcame walls and blocs — a time when we marked the fall of the Iron Curtain and German reunification. After the technological revolution of the Internet and the digital transformation, which have made us more interconnected than ever before, we are now facing a new fragmentation of the world. New wars and conflicts have emerged. Major global crises are piling up before us and are combining and reinforcing one another. Some have even seen this as a harbinger of a world without rules. It is true that the risks to our global order are real. And yet I do not hold with the image of a world without rules — for two reasons: