Yet More On Zelensky As Rhetorician

The text of Ukraine President Zelensky's Tuesday address to the UN Security Council is available here. As rhetoric, it's up there with the speeches that, without a text avaialble, the ancient historians would compose as the speech a statesman would presumably have given taking into account the circumstances he faced and the goals he meant to achieve. But I'm no longer sure if Zelensky has modern parallels -- Lincoln, Churchill, and Roosevelt in their wartime addresses spoke primarily to national audiences or specific groups of allies.

Kennedy and Reagan apostrophized Soviet leaders, again with domestic and allied secondary audiences. In his address to the UN, as well as in individual addresses to other world legislatures, Zelensky is rallying much of the civilized world, looking not just to invigorate a base but to bring over the uncommitted. He begins by referencing the particular atrocities the Russian army committed in Bucha, but he moves beyond that to the central issue:

How is this different from what the ISIS terrorists were doing in the occupied territory?

Except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

It destroys the internal unity of states.

Destroys state borders.

. . . So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened.

So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee?

It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively.

, , , Ladies and Gentlemen!

I would like to remind you of the first article of the first chapter of the UN Charter. What is the purpose of our organization? To maintain peace. And to force to peace. Now the UN Charter is being violated literally from the first article. And if so, what is the point of all other articles?

. . . Why did Russia come to Ukraine, tell me?

I will answer. Russia's leadership feels like colonizers - as in ancient times. They need our wealth and our people. Russia has already deported tens of thousands of our citizens to its territory. Then there will be hundreds. It abducted more than two thousand children. Simply abducted thousands of children. And continues to do so. Russia wants to turn Ukrainians into silent slaves.

. . . If this continues, the finale will be that each state will rely only on the power of arms to ensure its security, not on international law, not on international institutions.

Then, the UN can simply be dissolved.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Are you ready for the dissolving of the UN? Do you think that the time of international law has passed?

If your answer is no, you need to act now, act immediately.

The power of the UN Charter must be restored immediately.

The UN system must be reformed immediately so that the right of veto is not a right to kill. So that there is a fair representation of all regions of the world in the Security Council.

. . . It is now clear that the goals set in San Francisco in 1945 during the creation of a global international security organization have not been achieved. And it is impossible to achieve them without reforms.

Therefore, we must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generations an effective UN with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges and thus guarantee peace.

. . . And now we need decisions from the Security Council. For peace in Ukraine. If you do not know how to adopt this decision, you can do two things.

Remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war from blocking decisions about its own aggression, its own war. And then do everything that can establish peace.

. . . Or show how you can reformat and really work for peace.

Or if your current format is unalterable and there is simply no way out, then the only option would be to dissolve yourself altogether.

I am convinced that you can do without the third option.

He went further in a Facebook address later on Tuesday, as reported by the BBC:

"The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world doesn't," Zelensky says in his nightly Facebook address after his virtual speech to the UN panel in New York on Tuesday.

The UN, he says, "is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created". He goes on to blame Russia - a permanent Security Council member, for its dysfunction.

Russia, Zelensky says, "discredits the UN and all other international institutions where it still participates".

The Ukrainian president has called for Russia to be removed from the panel, where it wields veto power, saying in his Facebook address that Russia's role at the UN is "to block everything constructive and use global architecture in order to spread lies and justify the evil it does".

. . . Ukraine, he says, is preparing for visits from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell in the coming days.

"Now Kyiv is the capital of global democracy, the capital of the struggle for freedom for all on the European continent," says Zelensky.

I almost think we have to go back to the classical period, to ancient Athens and Sparta, or to the Maccabees, to find this historic level of leadership and fight from small-state players. I'm still trying to absorb what this means. UPDATE: The YouTube below from Rabbi Henry Abramson, a specialist in Ukraine history, provides more historical and religious context: