United States President Donald Trump is taking aim at the United Nations. Reshaping it is his next big foreign policy project.
Trump aims first to try to bend the UN to his will, capture it, and remake the world body in his image. If he fails, he will try to discredit the UN and destroy it. But destroying the UN will be easier said than done. Notwithstanding its institutional rough edges—like the veto power for a few in the 15-nation UN Security Council (UNSC)—the world body in its present form is the most democratic global institution that humankind has known. The one-country-one-vote functional foundation of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), “the main policy-making organ” of the UN, means 2.02-sq-km Monaco has the same rights and privileges in the UNGA as the US, the sole superpower. India is credited with having contributed to the inscription of the one-member-one-vote principle as Article 18 of the UN Charter during negotiations in 1945 in San Francisco for its adoption.
How does the 47th US president plan to go about his designs for transforming the UN? His first shot in this plan is likely to be fired at the end of this year, soon after the General Assembly president and the UNSC send a joint letter to all UN members inviting nominations for the post of the next UN secretary-general. It is one of toughest diplomatic jobs in the world. By convention, incumbent secretary-general António Guterres’s successor should be from Latin America and the Caribbean. Trump would like the post to go to a US national, someone with a mind like his. But any such attempt would be vetoed by Russia and China, probably by France as well. Then, Trump’s next step would be to induct a non-American who is sympathetic to his worldview.
Tracking Trump’s words and actions on the global stage so far in his second presidential term, it is increasingly clear that he views the UN favourably now. That is the inverse of his attitude towards the UN when he was president from 2017 to 2021. Within days of moving into the White House this year, Trump turned his back on the UN’s Human Rights Council, its Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and its Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Then he showed up at the UNGA on the opening day of its annual General Debate on September 23. He arrived at the UN headquarters with a scowl: seven years ago, when Trump addressed the General Debate, the delegates laughed at him. He was ridiculed for his fantasies, his fictitious statements that did not bear fact-checking. Trump did not know what to expect during his latest address.
To the US president’s great surprise, there were no sniggers, no derision. The entire UNGA listened to him silently, in attention. Trump was given 15 minutes, but he spoke for about an hour. Nobody stopped him. The General Assembly president, who did not hide her true feelings for Trump in her previous job as Germany’s foreign minister, did not use her gavel to cut short the US president.
For Trump, this was more comforting than having to address the US Congress, where the chamber is almost equally divided between his Republican supporters and hostile Democrats who don’t listen in silence to the president’s State of the Union address. Trump clearly liked being at the UNGA this year. By all accounts, the contrast between how his speech was received at the UN two months ago and his humiliation at the same venue in 2018 was a turning point. Make America Great Again (MAGA) sources say its fallout on how Trump now sees the UN will unfold in the coming months.
On the 80th anniversary of the UN Charter last month, Dorothy Shea, US deputy permanent representative to the UN, dropped a bombshell that in all probability dashed Latin America and the Caribbean’s hopes of electing one of their own as the next secretary-general. “We believe the process for selection of such an important position should be purely merit-based with as wide a pool of candidates as possible… With this in mind, the US invites candidates from all regional groupings,” Shea said.
It is plausible that Trump discussed the selection of a new secretary-general during his many conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That may account for Russian permanent representative Vassily Nebenzia’s statement the same day: “Latin Americans have all the moral reason to claim this term, but it does not prevent candidates from other regions to step in if they want to. My criterion is merit.” A Russia-US tango on Guterres’s successor will be a formidable combination in the UNSC, which has enormous power to decide the succession. It is unlikely that America’s second-most important diplomat at its UN mission would have made a policy statement of this kind without explicit approval from the White House.
In a situation where Trump cannot get his candidate chosen as the next secretary-general—whose term will begin January 1, 2027—he has already discussed with his aides a Plan B, according to MAGA sources. This will be to get an American of Trumpist persuasion as the General Assembly president before he leaves the White House. In the last 80 years, no American has been elected to preside over the General Assembly for a whole one-year term. Big countries like Brazil, Canada, Australia, and India’s Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit have all had their turns at this job which comes with immense authority. Expansion of the UNSC, for instance, has inched forward to its present crossroads mainly because of General Assembly presidents sympathetic to reform.
If the Trump administration hoped to leverage its financial contributions to bend the UN to its will, China has put paid to such plans. UN’s Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq revealed last month that China has paid its UN budget dues in full. Beijing is now the second-biggest financial contributor to the world body. The US is the biggest defaulter and owes the UN $1.5 billion out of the $1.87 billion that is owed by the entire world. Many battles will be fought in the remainder of Trump’s term in office for control of this community of 193 nations.
K P Nayar | Strategic analyst
(Views are personal)