{"id":2723,"date":"2017-09-21T06:13:58","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T10:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/?p=2723"},"modified":"2017-09-26T16:41:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T20:41:03","slug":"trumps-first-un-general-assembly-general-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/2017\/09\/21\/trumps-first-un-general-assembly-general-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s first UN General Assembly General Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hugh Dugan<\/a> (Visiting Scholar at Seton Hall University\u2019s School of Diplomacy and former senior advisor to eleven US ambassadors to the United Nations)<\/p>\n

This week, many\u00a0globalists feared the arrival of Hurricane Donald unleashing its wrath on the United Nations at its annual opening session.\u00a0\u00a0In the end,\u00a0it was downgraded to a tropical storm affecting only North Korea and Iran.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tone and body language, which was all that his critics were prepared to dissect, were one with the script he revised up to the last minute.\u00a0 Much to their surprise, in fact he did not call to drain the UN swamp. \u00a0And he opted against twitterizing the place as the \u201cDeep UN\u201d. Few came up with much to dislike, other than a few words meant to draw headlines.<\/p>\n

While echoing previous US Administrations\u2019 prescription for UN reform, what else\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0Trump say?\u00a0 He did not threaten withholding US payments to the UN in exchange for more efficiency and effectiveness in the UN\u2019s work program or other carrot-stick rhetoric.\u00a0 That US tactic, used every fifteen years or so, was otherwise due for a reprise.<\/p>\n

Yes, Trump did call for a more equitable burden sharing, but it in no way rose to his shrill purse-tightening warnings hurled at NATO early this year.\u00a0 He could easily have done so mindful of his political base at home and echoing Senator Lindsay Graham\u2019s call to withhold all US payments to the UN in the wake of last December\u2019s Security Council condemnation of Israel. \u00a0No, Trump opted to respect the gathering as one of international statesmen, not of politicians exploiting the UN platform.<\/p>\n

His familiarity with the UN as a New Yorker was that of a real estate developer<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0publicly spurned when his business offer twenty years ago to renovate the entire complex was rebuffed in favor of a highly political, inefficient, and expensive bidding process. \u00a0Coupling that with last December\u2019s Security Council condemnation of Israel, the UN did not hold his fascination.<\/p>\n

However, he actually said very little about the UN in his first months, leaving his critics with nothing but his tone and body language to infer a disdain for the UN and by extension most things international. \u00a0Starving them of their imagined fears, Trump invested the talented political capital of Nikki Haley to serve as his Ambassador there, and a few months later courted the Security Council to lunch and discussion in the Oval office \u2013 something his predecessor had not done over eight years. \u00a0Trump said to them that while he was a numbers guy and wanted value for America\u2019s UN dues, positive results from Turtle Bay would build that value and probably higher US regard and support in the future.<\/p>\n

Two Security Council votes later, to sanction North Korea, have made a visible impact on Donald Trump\u2019s regard for the utility of the United Nations Organization. \u00a0For a businessman, value is a driving agent and will eclipse earlier feelings or inattentions.<\/p>\n

In his speech Trump deftly reminded that a country that puts its people first is a shared phenomenon worldwide, except for oppressive regimes such as Iran and North Korea.\u00a0 He underscored that a healthy nation state responsible in the first interest to the rights and needs of its people is all the better an international citizen.<\/p>\n

It is only but a step to connect this view to the UN doctrine of Responsibility to Protect.\u00a0 Under the R2P, the UN has authorized actions targeting regime change in certain places.\u00a0 Was Trump\u2019s speech but a prelude for a future call to the UN for invoking R2P in the Iranian or North Korean theatres?<\/p>\n

While his Russian, Chinese and German counterparts stayed at home sitting in the shadow as North Korea continues to burst forth, Trump attended the UN General Assembly\u2019s opening debate with his A team.\u00a0 Unlike any previous President, he arrived a day early to host a major event to support UN reform initiatives which the Secretary-General is elaborating at member states\u2019 instruction. This extra contribution to publicize the UN was innovative and represented an investment by businessman Trump in an international resource for supersizing American foreign policy priorities. Unlike previous projects, he did not raze this structure to build a heavily branded statement of skyline bravado.\u00a0 He found more inside\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>of potential than\u00a0did Dorothy upon entering Oz.<\/p>\n

While representative of the American mindset which traditionally has given mixed messages about its regard for multilateral decision mechanisms such as the United Nations, Trump opted for making the UN great (carefully omitting the word \u201cagain\u201d).\u00a0 In thanks for two Security Council condemnations of North Korea, he extended his hand \u2013 this week for a handshake. Tomorrow possibly for another P-5 high five?<\/p>\n

Photo: by the New York Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hugh Dugan (Visiting Scholar at Seton Hall University\u2019s School of Diplomacy and former senior advisor to eleven US ambassadors to the United Nations) This…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingTrump\u2019s first UN General Assembly General Speech<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2428,"featured_media":2725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[279,296,294,285,24],"class_list":["post-2723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogposts","tag-shu_un_studies","tag-unshu","tag-profhughdugan","tag-shudiplomacy","tag-un","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2428"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2728,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions\/2728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/unstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}