The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced her resignation from her post on Tuesday, October 9th. Haley, 46, plans to complete her work at the end of the calendar year.
The former governor of South Carolina, Haley was picked to be the American ambassador to the UN by President Trump on November 23, 2016, shortly after Donald Trump won the Presidency. Her confirmation was nearly unanimously approved in the Senate, 96 to 4. She is the first Indian-American to hold a Cabinet-level position in the American government.
Haley has also been a major lightning rod as regards US foreign policy. As many readers of The Duran know, her stated foreign policy positions on record are strongly pro-Israel, strongly against Iran and in all fairness, time after time she has drawn the ire of many geopolitical observers for holding nothing less than the common standard American position on many foreign policy matters.
This has drawn ridicule, as known by a prank call two Russian comedians did with her, and lots of ire, especially because she appears to hold a Zionist position more strongly than other recent American ambassadors. However, while appearing notably hawkish in reported incidents in UN meetings, her points of view are not always echoes of the will of the President.
One fairly recent example was in April of 2018, immediately after the alleged chemical weapons attack in Idlib that was answered by a most peculiar three-nation, 103-missile strike that was reported later to have killed no one, and damaged nothing of importance. Haley spoke about how the US was getting ready to impose very harsh new sanctions against Russia, only to be stopped in her tracks by the President who said that this was not to take place; that there would be no new sanctions taken against Russia.
The mainstream media immediately tried to launch into all manner of speculation as to why it was that Nikki Haley was leaving the post, including:
- outrage over Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed as Justice to the Supreme Court
- as a corollary to this above reason, Haley was reported as “believing Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s” story
- intent to run against President Trump in the 2020 presidential elections
- Senator Lindsey Graham was going to succeed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and Haley would run for his vacated Senate seat
However, all this speculation was erased in this press conference:
Sorry, MSM, you’re wrong, yet again.
Nikki made plans for her resignation several months ago. She simply stated that she believes in term limits and that it is time for someone else to serve in this post. She wants to take a break from public service and then perhaps come and campaign for Mr. Trump in the 2020 race.
In this press conference, Nikki offered her summary of the results of her work in the UN in concert with the President, and understandably, it was resoundingly full of positives, often about the very points she received so much criticism from so many people about, notably the US withdrawal from the JCPoA “Iran Deal” and the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem from its former home in Tel Aviv, Israel.
It is very often (if not always) the case that the best way to understand someone’s perspectives is to listen to them directly, and not to take someone else’s interpretation and opinion of their words as being more true than the person’s own witness. This methodology is applicable to great effect for example, when comparing what the press (even Fox News) says about President Trump, contrasted with what President Trump himself actually says about any given topic.
The same litmus test may be very applicable to Ambassador Haley as well. Her summary stated in this conference, backed by the President, gives some interesting perspective to issues that many readers of geopolitical news from a non-US perspective might do well to weigh and evaluate.
Haley made the following points in her account:
Serving as ambassador was “the honor of a lifetime” in her own words
- She considers it an honor to have been able to lead the state that raised her and to serve the country she loves so much, the US.
- Now the US is respected – maybe not liked, but respected, in that the world now knows that the US does what it says it will do.
- Cited as examples were the Syrian chemical weapons situation
- Getting NATO member nations to pay their dues
- Cut 1.3 billion in the UN budget, streamlining the UN operations (the US pays the bulk of the budget for this organization’s existence)
- Arms embargo against South Sudan
- three North Korean sanctions packages that eventually led Kim to the negotiating table
- The withdrawal from the Iran deal (JCPoA)
- Addressing anti-Israel bias and moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem “We will put our embassy where we want…”
- The US, for Nikki Haley, is “strong again.”
- very high praise for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, especially in regard to the Middle East peace plan (admittedly a VERY underreported matter)
She indicated her intention to make sure that all things are in place and ready for the next ambassador to come in.
Admittedly, many of the very things Ambassador Haley listed here as positive accomplishments are precisely those matter for which she (and President Trump) have often received unsparing criticism for, such as the move of the US Embassy in Israel and the notorious JCPoA deal. She was often reported to be something like a “warmonger” a “hawk” or a “loose cannon” in the UN. Sometimes, an even worse criticism of Haley was that she was a laughingstock, making the US look out of touch and uninformed or stupid.
These matters, and how well she actually performed, are left to the reader in the short term, and history in the longer term, to appropriately assess.
It is probably fair to say that Haley’s presentation of American views was anything but globalist in composition, though the American perspective is often notably different than the perspective that Russia or China offer on the same given situations affecting the world.
Yet perhaps, the three great powers in the world today – Russia, China and the United States have managed to bring about some real positive changes in the world through debate, disagreement and discussion. As Haley’s time in the UN draws to a close, this is something significant to reflect upon.
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