While You Weren’t Listening

The first and current President of Kazakhstan is Nursultan Nazarbayev. In his speech to the UN today, he made several recommendations to the council. They were monumental in scope, especially considering the limited international status of his 25 year old country. Then again, based on what Putin said about the UN (or rather, didn’t say,) perhaps there are things in the works about which we don’t yet know.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 1,410 nuclear warheads and the Semipalatinsk nuclear-weapon test site. By April 1995, Kazakhstan had returned the warheads to Russia and, by July 2000, had destroyed the nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk.”

“On 2 December 2009, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Republic of Kazakhstan designated 29 August as International Day against Nuclear Tests, anniversary of the date the Semipalatinsk test site closed in 1991.”

Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in Asia and has the strongest economy in central Asia. They have enormous oil reserves and are a leading exporter of uranium (ironic as that is.) It is also a world leader in coal, iron, and gold production.

Their elections have been largely considered to be unfair and anything but free in the eyes of international observers.

Kazakhstan is vying for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2017. They enjoy good diplomatic relations with both Russia and the Ukraine.

He proposed five main points:

1. That there be one global currency to replace the favoured status of a reserve currency and the unfair advantages it confers upon the country that controls it.
2. That the IMF be folded into the UN’s mandate removing it from US control (since they won’t have the reserve currency, anyways.)
3. That the IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank in Oskemen, Kazakhstan (agreement signed this August,) which removes the need for individual countries to enrich their own uranium by centralizing the distribution thereof, be the only source for enriched uranium. A kind of central bank for fissile material. This bank would be overseen by, and indeed, folded into the UN and included in its mandate.
4. That nuclear weapons be banned, outright.
5. That the UN headquarters be moved out of the US and into Asia.

Given that France and Mexico et al. have proposed that the veto right of the permanent members of the UN Security Council be severely limited, It doesn’t look like the world is going to leave a lot of meat on the bone for the US to cushion its fall from grace. Could this be the impetus for WWIII which the UN was formed to avoid?

There is a short follow-up article here.