UN security council

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, holds a map as he addresses the Security Council session focusing on the new Trump proposal for the Mideast, Feb. 11, 2020. Abbas described the proposed land configurations by the United States and Israel as resembling “Swiss cheese.” ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
President Trump has made good on his campaign promises to redefine America’s relationship with the rest of the world — for better or for worse — and the United Nations has in many ways been the epicenter of his “American First” policy abroad.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, arrives to address the Security Council on the new Trump plan for the Mideast, Feb. 11, 2020. The meeting was not as fraught as it could have been, given the outright rejection by Abbas and many others to the US proposal. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO

Belgium’s ambassador to the UN, Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, being interviewed in his office in Midtown Manhattan by Stéphanie Fillion, a PassBlue reporter, Jan. 30, 2020. The country is rotating president of the Security Council in February, managing a tight schedule that includes a meeting on the recently announced US proposal for the Mideast.

President Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Jan. 28, 2020, in the White House, unveiling details of the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan, after keeping it secret for three years. It disregards any attempt to ensure a fully sovereign state for the Palestinians. SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD/WHITE HOUSE
When is a peace plan not a peace plan?
Look no further than Donald Trump’s cynically timed initiative to end the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
If a breakthrough does result, it will be in spite of itself.

Susan Rice, US envoy to the UN from 2009 to 2013, with some of her fellow ambassadors, clockwise from left: Peter Wittig of Germany;  Mark Lyall Grant of Britain; Li Baodong of China; Vitaly Churkin of Russia; and Gérard Araud of France, June 9, 2010. A study by a German scholar of US ambassadors to the UN reveals four styles, he writes: unilateralist, moderate unilateralist, moderate multilateralist and multilateralist. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO

The Democratic presidential debate in Iowa, Jan. 14, 2020, Drake University. Few of the candidates have uttered the words “United Nations,” but a close reading of their speeches and other sources reveals a range of positions on “how they would operate in the international system,” the author writes. The unifying topic for the candidates is mitigating climate change.

Melissa Fleming, the new head of the UN’s Department of Global Communications, in New York, speaking at a Holocaust memorial ceremony, marking 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Jan. 27, 2020. Fleming, who is from the United States, was most recently the spokesperson for the UN refugee agency. Her goal now is to reshape the public image of the UN through a solutions-oriented approach. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO

President Trump, with Vice President Pence, White House advisers and military personnel, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, about Iran’s missile strikes against Iraqi military bases housing US troops, days after Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. Much of the current crisis, the author writes in an analysis, stems from Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. WHITE HOUSE PHOTO

Secretary-General António Guterres arriving at the Security Council meeting on upholding the United Nations Charter, Jan. 9, 2020. The debate was scheduled long before the recent US-Iran attacks, but those alarming actions were referred to directly or alluded to by member states as discouragement prevailed. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO

Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy of Vietnam, speaking to media on Jan. 2, 2020, as his country assumes the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council in its first month as an elected member. In the Council, it plans to ally with another current Southeast Asian member, Indonesia.
With tensions becoming more and more serious in the Middle East and with two crucial leadership roles to play internationally, diplomats in Hanoi are probably working hard to make sure Vietnam’s big diplomatic month of January is a success.