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

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.

The U.S. has good reason to doubt the suitability of Rodrigues-Birkett, who will be stepping up her efforts to win the post, especially as several world leaders said at the recent U.N. General Assembly that they wanted to see a woman at the helm of the U.N. Although Guyana is a U.S. ally, Rodrigues-Birkett’s positions are more aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, the Cuban regime and Hamas than the U.S. and its closest allies. Indeed, China — Washington’s principal global adversary — appears likely to endorse her.

Amid an increasingly torrid domestic debate about the regulation of Artificial Intelligence, Rodrigues-Birkett has endorsed China’s newly launched World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. Among the 29 members who signed this........

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