Mitch McConnell, US Senate majority leader, with a fellow Kentuckian, Jennifer Yue Barber, whom President Trump intends to nominate as the US envoy to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. A lawyer who speaks Cantonese, she has no foreign service experience. MITCH MCCONNELL PRESS OFFICE
In the UN Security Council on Dec. 19, Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador, spoke about the Iran nuclear deal. To his right is Joanne Wronecka, Poland’s ambassador. Russia delayed two separate votes on dueling Syrian cross-border humanitarian-aid resolutions that day. The next day, Russia vetoed the one submitted by Belgium, Germany and Kuwait but voted for its own proposal. Both resolutions failed, creating a bah-humbug mood for the holiday.
Kelly Knight Craft, the US envoy to the UN, leads the Security Council in December. She said she wanted to restore “credibility” to the Council. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
GLASGOW, Kentucky — “There’s no place like home for the holidays” is the United States’ theme for the Security Council presidency in December, while at the same time, in a slight contradiction, the US wants to tackle the problem of the Council’s credibility.
Kelly Knight Craft speaks to the media after her first day in the UN Security Council as US ambassador, Sept. 12, 2019. As her country assumes the rotating presidency of the Council in December, Knight Craft is planning a Council trip to her home state of Kentucky. ESKINDER DEBEBE
While most countries use their presidency in the United Nations Security Council to visit war zones and pivotal peacekeeping missions around the globe, the United States ambassador, Kelly Knight Craft, is taking her counterparts to her home state of Kentucky in December.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, center, meeting US embassy staffers and families in Ottawa, Aug. 22, 2019. It was the last day of Kelly Knight Craft, right, as the American ambassador to Canada, yet the US can’t say when she begins her post as ambassador to the UN. ASHLEY FRASER/US EMBASSY
Donald Trump must have known just what he was getting into when he named Kelly Knight Craft to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations.
Kelly Knight Craft, the newly confirmed US ambassador to the UN, with members of the Youth Ambassadors Program at the US embassy in Ottawa, in her former role as US diplomat to Canada, July 16, 2019.
She calls herself a homemaker, a philanthropist and a consultant, but who, exactly, is Kelly Knight Craft, the newly confirmed United States ambassador to the United Nations?
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, second from left, and his entourage about to attend the UN Security Council meeting on peace and security in the Middle East. He talked about Iran’s role in sowing unrest in the region. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
In the middle of a muggy August afternoon in New York, the United Nations Security Council gathered once more to figure out how to “maintain peace and security” in the Middle East. But the recurring topic always leaves conversations wide open for interpretation by the Council’s 15 members.
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil with President Donald Trump of the United States, March 19, 2019, in the White House. Both men are scheduled to attend the annual opening session of the UN General Assembly, which will feature not only the parade of leaders but also a climate-change conference. ALAN SANTOS/PR
Donald Trump will shake hands with Emmanuel Macron, Jair Bolsonaro and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. But will Benjamin Netanyahu; Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel be there, too?
Kelly Knight Craft, hosting an event in Ottawa, June 26, 2019, as US ambassador to Canada. On July 31, she was confirmed by the US Senate to be the next US ambassador to the UN, moving on to New York.
The Senate has confirmed Kelly Knight Craft to be Washington’s top ambassador to the United Nations, even as a key Democrat pronounced her “unfit to serve.” The move ends a seven-month vacancy in one of the country’s most senior diplomatic posts.
Andrew Bremberg at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. A group of human-rights and global-health nonprofit organizations has recommended that the Senate reject the nomination of Bremberg as US ambassador to the UN in Geneva. GAGE SKIDMORE
