Trump’s Not-So Secret Ill Will Toward the UN

Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011 in Washington. As president, he has let the US ambassadorship to the UN, the country’s second-most important foreign policy role, sit empty for months. GAGE SKIDMORE/CREATIVE COMMONS
More than six months ago, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced that she was leaving her post. Following her decision, President Trump nominated Heather Nauert to be her successor. Then the administration tarried, never submitted Nauert’s name for Senate approval — and in February abruptly withdrew her nomination. It put forward a replacement nominee, the current United States envoy to Canada, Kelly Knight Craft.
In the meantime, Kelley Currie, the deputy to Nikki Haley, departed to take on a new assignment at the State Department. In the interim, this has left an acting permanent representative, Jonathan Cohen, to conduct UN business for the Trump administration. Until a Senate confirmation vote happens on Craft, the US remains without an official ambassador to the UN. With Washington facing multiple crises abroad, what is going on?
The stop-and-go nature of the Trump government’s approach to the UN appointment is obviously unsettling. Remember, the UN post is the second-most important foreign policy office in our government. It is here where a president makes some of his most important international pronouncements, adopts or vetoes Security Council resolutions and sanctions and attempts to influence world opinion.
Notable figures like Adlai Stevenson, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and President George H. W. Bush have held the job in the past. Even lesser appointees in the post have gone on to to be, among other things, a senator, a national security advisor to the president and a secretary of state. Without an authoritative figure in place, the US inevitably loses influence in crucial UN deliberations.
The administration’s odd moves regarding the UN job, in many ways, may be partly explained by sheer incompetence — a failure to do proper background checks — but they also may be seen as part of its thumb-your-nose, semi-isolationist approach to international affairs.
Since adopting his America First doctrine on foreign policy, President Trump has, as is well known, ended US involvement in the Paris accord on global warming. He abrogated the deal with Iran over nuclear weapons. He announced his termination of President Reagan’s agreement with Russia, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, (INF) barring land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in Europe.
His sole foray into the UN since his address to the General Assembly in September came three months ago, when he sent his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to attend a Security Council meeting, on Jan. 26, to denounce the authoritarian Venezuelan regime for its human-rights abuses and electoral fraud. Then Pompeo quickly departed, within an hour.
Even Trump’s original choice of Nauert represents a sort of indifference to, if not conscious downgrading of the UN’s importance. After all, Nauert, as the spokesperson for the State Department, had had no deep foreign policy experience, outside of reading pre-written statements and talking points at departmental briefings. Trump apparently chose Nauert because she was once a broadcaster at the right-wing Fox TV network, from whence he has drawn a large number of his team, and has the attributes of looking good on camera, at least by his lights.
His new nominee, Kelly Knight Craft, appears to suffer from similar lightweight baggage. She won the Canadian post, not because of any notable global policy experience, but because her husband, a coal magnate, was a large donor to Trump’s campaign. In fact, shortly after her arrival in Ottawa,  she exposed her inexperience to the Canadian TV network, CBC, by saying that when it comes to climate change — a major issue in the UN — she believes in “both sides of the science.”
Nonetheless, one cannot be surprised by Trump’s cavalier attitude toward the UN. From the start of his administration, he has been dismissive of the organization. At first, he sought enormous cutbacks in US aid to the UN, up to 30 percent (so far, Congress limited those reductions). He successfully reduced US contributions to peacekeeping operations by an eye-opening $500,000,000. He quit Unesco and the UN Human Rights Council. He publicly admonished the UN for criticizing the extent of poverty in the US.
Still, on the other hand, he has repeatedly used the Security Council to impose severe sanctions on countries like North Korea and Sudan, among others.
What fundamentally most concerns Trump about the body, though, seems to be its impact on his domestic standing — especially regarding those issues where he has planted a visible public flag, as in countries like Israel or Venezuela. For Trump, the UN remains a tool of convenience — to convey his astringent feelings toward the world. His view boils down to: we don’t really need the UN except when we need it. Take it or leave it.
This op-ed originally appeared in USA Today. It has been updated.
The post Trump’s Not-So Secret Ill Will Toward the UN appeared first on PassBlue.

 RELATED POSTS:
 

 Heather Nauert, Trump’s Nominee for UN Envoy, Faces Heated Opposition

by Dulcie Leimbach and Laura E. Kirkpatrick   December 12, 2018
The nomination of Heather Nauert to succeed Nikki Haley as United States ambassador to the United Nations has quickly enraged some international women’s rights groups and a major Islamic advocacy organization based in the United States, portending a tense confirmation hearing in the US Senate for Nauert. The announcement of her nomination last week by ... Read more 

 Senate Hearing for Heather Nauert as US Envoy to UN Could Happen in February

by Dulcie Leimbach   January 14, 2019
President Trump announced that he was nominating Heather Nauert, the chief State Department spokesperson, to succeed Nikki Haley as the United States ambassador to the United Nations on Dec. 7, 2018, after Haley resigned the job in October. Since Trump’s announcement, by tweet, much has been reported on the nomination and bare-bones experience of Nauert ... Read more 

 Ambassador Kelley Currie Is Leaving the US Mission to the UN

by Dulcie Leimbach   February 1, 2019
Kelley Currie, an ambassador who represents the United States on the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and is the alternate representative of the US to the General Assembly, is leaving her post at the US mission to the UN in New York, she told people at a reception on Jan. 31, 2019. ... Read more 

 Heather Nauert, Trump’s Pick for UN Ambassador, Drops Out

by Dulcie Leimbach   February 16, 2019
Heather Nauert, who was nominated by President Trump in early December to succeed Nikki Haley as the United States ambassador to the United Nations, has withdrawn from consideration as of Feb. 16, 2018. Nauert was the chief spokesperson for the State Department from mid-2017 until her nomination in early December. Bloomberg News reported the withdrawal ... Read more 

Source