K.C. Singh | Trump Assaults UN, Targets All, Fuels Global Uncertainty

The high-level segment of the UN General Assembly, which began on September 23, usually has the President of Brazil as the first speaker, followed by the President of the United States. This time, the latter’s speech had generated enormous global interest, because since assuming office on January 20 he has been unleashing global uncertainties.

In New York, President Trump posed the question: “What is the purpose of the UN?”. He insultingly quipped: “Your countries are going to hell”. The contrast could not be greater with how his charismatic and successful Republican predecessor, President Ronald Reagan, who had ushered in the collapse of the Soviet Union, had approached the UNGA. In 1982, he said: “I speak today as both a citizen of the US and the world. I come with heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.” US foreign policy, Reagan added, stands for peace, “first, last and always”. He was speaking at the height of the Cold War, with Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan. His primary aim was to advance nuclear disarmament and arms control. He wanted the threat to global peace diminished, if not eliminated.

President Trump’s 56-minute address was meandering, critical of the dysfunctional UN escalator and teleprompter, besides fact-free laments and allegations that he voices regularly. He seemed to be addressing both his MAGA base and the global audience. Fact-checking experts have already annihilated many Trumpian claims. For instance, the Muslim mayor of London has neither ever suggested, or can even legally impose, Sharia in the British capital. Supremacist Christian prejudice oozed out of such allegations.

Some issues flagged by President Trump require analysis. First, his barb about the UN being ineffective in handling global crises or threats to peace and security. President Reagan, in his 1982 address, explained the genesis of the UN and the American logic in supporting its creation. In 1945, he recalled, all other major powers had suffered great human and material losses. The US alone stood dominant, besides being the sole power to possess nuclear weapons. Instead of seeking world dominance, Reagan argued, it instead “wrote a new chapter in the history of mankind”, by supporting the creation of the United Nations.

However, to enable consensus amongst the principal victors of the Second World War, the veto power was made available to five permanent members of the UN Security Council. As the Cold War unfolded, between the Western powers led by the US and the Communist bloc led by the USSR, the veto crippled the UN’s functioning. Until 2022, it has been used nearly 300 times. The main culprits are Russia (120 times) and the US (82 times). China began more aggressively using it as its military and economic power grew after the 2008 global financial crisis.

President Donald Trump had publicly claimed before the US presidential election that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours. After failing to do so, even despite a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, he did a flip during his UN address. After earlier saying that Ukraine was losing the war, he now proclaimed that with Western support, Ukraine could regain all its lost territory.

In the case of Gaza, he simplistically blamed Hamas, as it was refusing to release the Israeli hostages. He ignored the Israeli attack on a facility in Qatar, which housed the leader of the Hamas delegation negotiating a peace deal. Consequently, he skipped its strategic implications for the US alliance system in the Gulf. Doubting now the US ability or willingness to control Israel, Saudi Arabia signed a military pact with Pakistan, involving Pakistan extending a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia. It aims to deter an Israeli attack on Saudi Arabia.

Mr Trump continued to claim having ended seven international conflicts, including between India and Pakistan. As usual, he simultaneously laid claim to the Nobel Peace Prize. The global community has begun treating these claims with scepticism, if not contempt.

President Trump’s speech consisted of two parts. One, the written script, with which he began and then ended. In between came his extemporaneous tirade against climate change, spending a quarter of his time rejecting it as the “greatest con job”. His withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord had already alerted the world about his scepticism towards global warming. But his unscientific rant, detached from data, from the UN podium bodes ill for the world’s future.

Essentially, Mr Trump’s attack on multilateralism basically targets three elements of the current global order. First, his rejection of the existing system of global trade, overseen by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). His unilateral tariffs on imports are being used to negotiate trade deals that open global markets to US products and force manufacturing to shift to the American mainland. This disruption is far from settled.

Second, his attack on climate change and green energy. Using the wrong facts, Mr Trump tried criticising the use of wind power for generating power. In the process, he was pushing the US towards regressive energy sources involving coal and petroleum.

Finally, he debunked the role of the UN in maintaining global peace and security. The reality is that the US has an old love-hate relationship with the UN. Until the end of the Cold War in 1991, it saw the UN as stymied by the Soviet Union. After the Soviet breakup, the UN suddenly became vulnerable to US manipulation. That explains the UNSC, after 9/11, focusing on counter-terrorism.

The US even extracted UNSC approval, based on flawed intelligence, for attacking Iraq in 2003 to eliminate its non-existing weapons of mass destruction.

A majority of UN members have always wrestled with the veto conundrum. If the interests of the “Permanent Five” members get involved, then the UNSC becomes paralysed. The first attempt to counter this was made in 1950, when the UNGA passed a “Uniting for Peace” resolution which authorised the UNGA to take action if the Security Council was stalled by veto. Once again, in April 2022, the UNGA passed another resolution requiring the permanent members to justify their use of the veto. An emergency session of the UNGA must be called within 10 days to discuss it.

The difference between the language and thinking of Presidents Reagan and Trump encapsulates the global dilemma today. At a moment of global power shift, the old arbiter is gone. The vacuum brings uncertainties.