The UN braces for Donald Trump's second appearance - and he should prepare for blowback

[timosman]

https://www.businessinsider.com/united-nations-donald-trump-speech-2018-9


The world will be on tenterhooks next week when Donald J. Trump returns to the United Nations, reprising his role as an America-First bull in the globalist china shop.

After a surprisingly smooth 2017, US relations with the world body have deteriorated, thanks to hardline positions on Iran, the Human Rights Council, and Palestine. The administration's unilateralism is wearing thin, as member states tire of America's browbeating and unwillingness to compromise.

The president is discovering the limitations of his hyper-nationalist, unilateral approach to diplomacy, which provides few incentives for other countries to align themselves with American purposes.
Leadership, it turns out, requires followers.

A year ago, in his maiden appearance before the annual opening of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the President exceeded expectations. These were admittedly low: in the previous months, he had withdrawn from the historic Paris climate agreement, approved a budget to slash UN funding, and appointed a UN envoy, Nikki Haley, who promised to "take names" of countries that thwarted US aims.

To the relief of his UN audience, Trump declared himself prepared to help the UN live up to its potential. He aligned himself with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' UN reform agenda, even co-hosting a meeting of member states on that topic.
He also won plaudits from UN delegations by dispensing with shopworn presidential rhetoric about American exceptionalism and for invoking the principle of sovereignty— a word he used twenty-one times in his speech to the General Assembly — as the ultimate foundation of world order.

Getting down to brass tacks, the president declared: "I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first." This was the president's biggest applause line. It suggested that America First was compatible with inter-governmental cooperation among sovereign, self-interested, independent states.

Next week, the president will encounter a more skeptical global audience, woke to the reality that his administration's diplomacy is all take and no give.
During the past year, the United States has repudiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program, over the entreaties of its closest allies. It has defected from the UN Human Rights Council, allowing the world's foxes free rein in that henhouse.

It has unilaterally moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, while ham-handedly threatening UN member states with the temerity to condemn that decision in the General Assembly. It has ended funding for the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, while planning to eject the Palestinian embassy from Washington.

It has embraced discrimination and protectionism, embarking on a trade war with China and even hinting that it may leave the World Trade Organization. Finally, it has launched an all-out assault on the International Criminal Court, to which more than half of UN member states belong.
This month, the United States holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council. In an unprecedented development, Council members could not even agree on a program of work, given disagreement over whether to include a discussion on the deteriorating political situation in Nicaragua.

More provocatively, the United States previously scheduled a special session on September 26—which President Trump himself will chair—on "Iran's violations of international law," including its destabilizing regional activities. As Haley explains, the president is "very adamant" about holding Iranians accountable and forcing them "to stand up and explain themselves.

The meeting has now been expanded to cover a "broader range of issues," including the "proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." U.S. officials—and perhaps even allies Britain and France, still committed to the JCPOA—convinced Trump that the Iran-driven session would likely backfire diplomatically, underscoring American rather than Iranian isolation. No doubt this meeting would have made good theater, particularly if Iran's delegation showed up, as protocol allows. But Iran is still likely to come up, and Trump will no doubt hammer them on their alleged violations.

The final red flag concerns personnel changes within the Trump administration. This time last year, "nationalists" and "globalists" were vying for ascendancy within the White House. Today the former are triumphant.

The uber-sovereigntist John Bolton, who openly disdains the UN, has replaced the pragmatist H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor. Bolton has long advocated treating all US financial contributions to the UN — including legally binding, annual assessments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets — as purely voluntary. Besides violating international law, such a step would create financial havoc for the world body.
All of these trends could well make life impossible for Antonio Guterres, who has skillfully cultivated working relationships with Trump, Haley, and internationalist members of Congress. That would be a tragedy. Guterres is as good a UN Secretary-General as Washington could hope for. The former leader of a democratic ally (Portugal), he is committed to pragmatic reform of the UN's budgetary and management systems, peacekeeping operations, and development programs. Critically, he possesses credibility across the UN membership.

The Trump administration's belligerent style could well upend Guterres fragile balancing act, however, forcing him to choose between the UN's wealthiest and most powerful nation and other UN members, forever anxious that the secretary-general will become America's lackey.

Almost two years into the America First era, the United States is reaping the consequences of abdicating global leadership and retreating into narrow-minded nationalism.
One of the casualties of US conduct, as Gutteres lamented last week, is American "soft power." Other UN member states no longer look to the United States as a natural leader, or even a reliable partner. They have tired of Trump's my-way-or-the-highway act and are increasingly hitting the road — or looking to China to fill the vacuum left by the US retreat.

Unless the president offers a more positive UN agenda, grounded in a shared multilateral purpose, America's loss of diplomatic leverage and global influence will only continue.

[timosman]

https://www.cfr.org/blog/narcissistic-nationalism-trumps-second-un-general-assembly-address


September 25, 2018

File Donald J. Trump’s address to the UN General Assembly today under the category of “narcissistic nationalism.” The central themes of his thirty-five-minute address were the forthright defense of American sovereignty against the imagined depredations of multilateral bodies and an insistence that nobody will ever take advantage of the United States again. The president was speaking to the United Nations, but his emphasis was less on uniting the world behind common purposes than demanding respect for the independence and uniqueness of each assembled nation—not least his own. Entirely absent was any discussion of U.S. global leadership or the common purposes of the world body.

The speech began awkwardly for the president. He opened by reciting a laundry list of domestic achievements as if he were delivering a state of the union address to Congress rather than world leaders. When he bragged that he had accomplished more in under two years than any previous U.S. president, the hall dissolved into laughter.

Pivoting to foreign policy, Trump explained the assumptions behind his “America First” policy. After too many years during which others had exploited and taken advantage of the United States, “We are standing up for America and the American people.” At the core of this new orientation is a rejection of global treaties and bodies that Trump believes seek to subordinate U.S. popular sovereignty (such as the International Criminal Court) or that have gone off the rails (like the UN Human Rights Council). “America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination,” the President declared. “We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy.” Nor, Trump added, would the United States presume to tell other countries—each with their “own customs, beliefs, and traditions”—how to conduct their affairs. “We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”

Permeating the president’s speech was what might be called a sucker’s narrative. Foreigners, Trump repeatedly complained, had exploited U.S. generosity and naiveté. America’s allies had freeloaded on its security guarantees, its aid recipients had failed to support U.S. policies, and its trade partners—led by China—had devastated the U.S. economy by violating international trade rules. Those days were over. The United States would now demand that allies “pay their fair share” for U.S. protection, that countries benefitting from U.S. assistance adopt “friendly policies,” and that trade “be fair and reciprocal,” rather than one-sided.

Trump’s promise that America would finally stand up for itself should play well with his domestic supporters—his intended audience, of course. But his description of current global realities is off base, and his browbeating style is counterproductive, promising to accelerate U.S. diplomatic isolation. To begin with, Trump’s defensive approach to national sovereignty is based on a straw man: the ridiculous notion that the United States invariably sacrifices its independence when it embraces multilateral treaties and organizations. In fact, the U.S. decision to cooperate within the UN and to abide by treaties, provided it is done voluntarily and through constitutional means, is an expression and indeed an embodiment of sovereignty—not its abdication.

Nor are multilateral agreements and organizations as constraining as Trump contends. Consider the UN-led draft Global Compact on Migration, which the Trump administration rejected on sovereignty grounds. It is a benign, aspirational document whose signatories merely pledge to treat migrants humanely. Perhaps that requirement for basic decency, rather than any constitutional concern, is why the Trump administration rejected it.

Trump’s narrow-minded, transactional approach to diplomacy is also ill-founded and counterproductive. The U.S. global alliance system, which has been the handmaiden of globalization, has rewarded the United States handsomely, underpinning its global influence, ensuring international stability, and guaranteeing that America can handle any adversary. Debates over burden sharing are longstanding. But Trump’s decision to treat NATO and alliances in Asia as a mafioso protection racket undermines allied solidarity and is already leading allies to hedge their bets, as the United States becomes more erratic. Similarly, the administration’s miserly position on U.S. foreign assistance ignores both its modest size and the fact that is intended not just for strategic allies (like Israel or Egypt) but directed at reducing poverty, sickness, and suffering around the world, so that others may begin to prosper and join the global economy—long-term ends that both resonate with U.S. values and advance U.S. interests. Finally, Trump’s trade complaints, particularly about China, have some merit. But his scattershot protectionism—which has hit Europeans and other partners, not just China—has undercut the merits of his case.

The risk in Trump’s America First mania is that it will translate into America Alone. This is nowhere more obvious than in Trump’s ramped-up denunciations of Iran and his efforts to destroy the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program. The president berated the Islamic Republic today, denouncing it as a menace to regional and global stability and the world’s major exporter of transnational terrorism. He promised to tighten sanctions to bring Iran to heel.

Unfortunately, Trump does not have much company. In a startling move, the other parties to the JCPOA (erstwhile U.S. allies France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as China and Russia) met without the United States on Monday evening. Beyond recommitting themselves to the agreement, they boldly declared that they would establish a parallel financial system, outside of U.S. banking influence, to ensure that Iran can continue to sell its oil and do business with their nations’ companies. President Trump hopes to hold Iran’s feet to the fire tomorrow when he hosts a special UN Security Council session on weapons of mass destruction. But he could well find himself isolated by friend and foe alike.

The most atavistic aspect of Trump’s UNGA speech was his reflection that each country assembled in New York has its own “distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on earth.” Accordingly, he suggested, each nation is entitled to be left alone, to pursue their own respective destinies. Initially, this sounded like an ode to tolerant pluralism. But the more one listened, and the president spoke of building “walls” to “secure national borders,” the more it came across as a blood-and-soil nationalism—of the sort advocated by Stephen Miller, White House advisor and speechwriter. The president’s repeated warnings about “illegal immigration,” and the “vicious cycle of crime, violence, and poverty” that it brings, reinforced the sense that for Trump, America First means Fortress America.

Trump may have been speaking at the “United Nations,” but the emphasis was clearly on the second word—nations—rather than the ties that bind those independent countries. Toward the end of his address, the president tried to give a label for his foreign policy, describing it as “principled realism.” Given that his worldview lacks any clear principles and is at odds with reality, it’s hard to see how this moniker will stick.

[TER]

Nice!

With those kinds of remarks by the CFR, I would say Trumps speech was a complete success! Thank you!

[goldenequity]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWG6jaBFYtU

[RonZeplin]

He needed to inform the world that he's a buffoon?