[ad_1]
The UN General Assembly could be a moment of truth for the Trump administration
Donald Trump will deliver his second speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. There will be 140 other world leaders present but the US president may steal the show again, despite growing dissatisfaction with him within the supranational body.
The reason most eyes are likely to be on Trump again this year is not just his Tuesday speech, or the summit on drug policy that he is organizing Monday. In addition, Washington is currently President of the Security Council and remains by far the largest contributor to the United Nations budget.
With his speech on Tuesday and his chance to chair a meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday, Trump will have significant decisive power. Previous US presidents, including Barack Obama, took the opportunity to advance multilateral solutions. In 2015, Trump's predecessor submitted a final proposal for a UN climate change agreement, which was finalized later in the year.
Trump, on the other hand, does not have a major multilateral agenda to promote. His big week in New York comes after a year in which Washington reported its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and from UNESCO, the educational and cultural agency of the UN. refused to sign the Global Compact for Migration; and reduces voluntary funding for the United Nations Population Fund.
Although Trump was received politely last September, during his first speech at the UN, there is now a growing backlash. In June, the International Organization for Migration rejected Ken Isaacs, Trump's candidate for the agency, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this month:
Yet the interaction with the UN is just one example of what many see as Trump's foreign policy administration. During the first 18 months of Trump in the White House, other key US decisions – including the withdrawal of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Treaty of Paris – undermined the goodwill of allies and damaged the country's reputation . The president may still regret this for the remainder of his term, given the diversity of international challenges he faces.
The reason most eyes are likely to be launched at this year's General Assembly is not just his speech Tuesday … Washington is currently President of the Security Council and remains by far the biggest contributor to the budget. UN.
Andrew Hammond
Although the idea of soft power – the ability to achieve goals by attracting, engaging and cooperating with others rather than compelling them – is sometimes misunderstood and criticized, history underscores the key role it played for results-makers sought. For example, US administrations cleverly used soft energy resources after the Second World War to encourage other countries to join a system of alliances, such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United States. UN itself. The Cold War was then won by a strategy of containment and cultural vigor.
Yet Trump seems to follow another path and his apparent disregard for international treaties and organizations that do not yield to his will provokes a brutal reaction. An opinion poll conducted by Pew Global last year, for example, revealed that about three-quarters of the thousands of people polled around the world had little or no confidence in his leadership and policies in the United States. global level.
At a time when Washington faces a series of complex foreign policy challenges, the Trump team would benefit from more committed, strong and supportive allies. This is true in their attempts to move forward with the President's promised peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, to combat the continuing threat of international terrorism and to address the various threats posed by the revisionist powers. such as Russia.
Yet a major problem Trump faces is that although he enjoys great popularity in a small number of countries, including Israel, many of his political ideas and sometimes fierce rhetoric threaten to provoke a fresh rise in anti-american feeling. The tragedy is that it could be detrimental to much of the work that has been done over the past decade to strengthen soft power in the United States, potentially creating a more conducive environment for secret information sharing and cooperation. explicit with US officials.
When he took office in 2009, Obama was facing a situation in which anti-American sentiment was at its highest level since at least the Vietnam War. The key element in this regard was the international unpopularity of previous Bush administration policies, including the war in Iraq. While Obama made much progress in his global public diplomacy efforts, the magnitude of the challenge he faced meant that he still had a long way to go for his successor.
It is in this context that the UN's speech on Trump, and his first 18 months of foreign policy, are judged by many at the international level, with much of the world's population still worried about what his presidency means.
- Andrew Hammond is a partner at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the authors in this section are theirs and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arab News.
