{"id":34502,"date":"2017-09-29T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T01:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=34502"},"modified":"2017-10-03T14:37:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T03:37:58","slug":"trumps-un-hypocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-un-hypocrisy\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s UN hypocrisy"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34505 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Trump-specch-UNGA-2-e1506643075186.jpg\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>US President Donald Trump\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2017\/09\/19\/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">first address<\/a> to the United Nations General Assembly will be remembered, above all, for its bizarre language, and its descriptions of North Korea as \u2018depraved\u2019, Iran as \u2018murderous\u2019, and Cuba and Venezuela as \u2018corrupt\u2019. And, beyond calling out miscreant member states by name, Trump also offered a fervent defence of his \u2018America First\u2019 agenda.<\/p>\n<p>But while Trump\u2019s particular choice of words was new to the UN, his arguments were not. He pointed out, with some justification, that other countries also put their own national interests first. And he reprised a longstanding complaint within US foreign-policymaking circles: that it is somehow excessive and unfair to expect American taxpayers to pay for 22% of the UN\u2019s total budget.<\/p>\n<p>After calling on the General Assembly to do its part to implement and then enforce sanctions against North Korea, Trump said, \u2018Let\u2019s see how they do\u2019. But referring to the UN as \u2018they\u2019 implies that it is something apart from the US. Trump\u2019s tone was that of a dissatisfied tenant, blaming the landlord for his home\u2019s poor state of repair. But the UN is only as good as those who inhabit it, not least the US itself.<\/p>\n<p>In his speech, Trump listed America\u2019s many contributions to the world, and suggested that it keeps the UN around as a sort of favor to other countries in need of an international forum. He assumed no US responsibility for the UN\u2019s fortunes, failures, or even its achievements. But, in addition to contributing more than any other country to the UN budget, the US also plays an outsize role within the institution. The US can thus claim credit for many of the UN\u2019s successes; but it is also responsible for many of its failures.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth remembering that no UN secretary-general assumes office without US support. And, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US has veto power over any UNSC action, including sanctions, deployments of peacekeepers, and official condemnations of other member states. Even if the UN\u2019s large institutional bureaucracy can be unwieldy at times, its effectiveness ultimately depends on its most influential members.<\/p>\n<p>Consider the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s, when the Security Council decided to send in UN peacekeepers, rather than deploying a more robust multilateral presence, as would have been allowed under Chapter 7 of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/charter-united-nations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UN Charter<\/a>. The United Kingdom and France, which contributed the bulk of the peacekeeping force, insisted on a peacekeeping mandate, because they did not want to put their troops in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p>The US, for its part, refused to contribute any troops at all, and thus had no right to call for a stronger mandate that would have allowed UN forces to step in to end the violence. Although many Americans had witnessed the carnage from their living rooms and wanted the UN to do more to stop it, neither they nor their leaders\u2014first George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton\u2014had any interest in sending American troops to be a part of a Bosnian peacekeeping force. The result, as we now know, was that the killing continued, sometimes in the presence of UN peacekeepers whose countries had not given them a strong enough mandate to intervene.<\/p>\n<p>By the time the US-led Dayton Accords had put an end to the war, in December 1995, the UN\u2019s peacekeeping capacity had been so thoroughly discredited that NATO war-fighting troops were sent in to take over from the UN Protection Force. In other words, when the situation required war fighters, peacekeepers were dispatched; and when the situation called for peacekeepers, war fighters were sent. None of this apparent dysfunction had anything to do with the UN. It was a direct result of UN member states\u2019 decision-making.<\/p>\n<p>Even Trump\u2019s dystopian and dyspeptic speech conceded that the UN makes valuable contributions to world peace, through peacekeeping missions and other forms of assistance. More often than not, this work is done in far-flung countries, where direct US involvement would be unpalatable to many American politicians\u2019 constituents.<\/p>\n<p>The UN is far from perfect. But, rather than bash it, American leaders, starting with Trump, should understand that its actions and decisions are often an extension of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump\u2019s first address to the United Nations General Assembly will be remembered, above all, for its bizarre language, and its descriptions of North Korea as \u2018depraved\u2019, Iran as \u2018murderous\u2019, and Cuba and &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":34505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,150,92,31],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trump\u2019s UN hypocrisy | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-un-hypocrisy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s UN hypocrisy | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"US President Donald Trump\u2019s first address to the United Nations General Assembly will be remembered, above all, for its bizarre language, and its descriptions of North Korea as \u2018depraved\u2019, Iran as \u2018murderous\u2019, and Cuba and ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-un-hypocrisy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-09-29T01:00:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-10-03T03:37:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Trump-specch-UNGA-2-e1506643075186.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Christopher R. 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