UN ‘club’ Trump derided forges fresh alliance on vital issues

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump, who derided the United Nations as a “club for people to get together, talk and have a good time” after his election, is surprising veterans of the global body by leaning on it to help carry out his foreign policy agenda.
From pushing the Security Council to tighten sanctions on North Korea to forging a partnership with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres over cutting troubled peacekeeping programs, the Trump administration and UN officials have found overlapping areas of agreement that many analysts didn’t expect.
“The Korean crisis has focused US attention on the value of the Security Council,” said Richard Gowan, a UN expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of a new report on Trump and the UN. “The irony is that the Trump administration now really needs a functional UN to help it deal with the biggest threat on its agenda.”
The annual UN General Assembly, which is drawing almost 200 world leaders to New York this week, will put that relationship to the test. European leaders will press Trump, who addresses the global body for the first time on Tuesday, to recommit to a 2015 Iran nuclear deal that he’s threatened to walk away from. And another North Korean missile launch or nuclear blast could quickly force Trump to choose between more diplomacy or a devastating military conflict.
Trump will call on world leaders to step up efforts to curtail North Korea’s nuclear program, said Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to the president.
“North Korea is not a distinctly American problem, it is the world’s challenge,” Conway said Monday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program. “The president will call upon our allies and others to come together to push back against a nuclear capable North Korea.”
While the State Department is taking the fewest number of diplomats to the gathering in more than a decade, Trump is bringing a coterie of top aides and spending four full days in New York, about double the time former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush typically spent at General Assembly meetings. That’s in large part because because US officials see an opportunity to make progress in so many key areas.
Trump Sets Aside UN Distrust to Seek Allies on North Korea, Iran
“It’s a new day at the UN,” Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the UN, said Friday in Washington. “It’s not just about talking, it’s about action.”
The cooperative relationship can be attributed to the relationship forged between two seasoned politicians: Haley, a former South Carolina governor, and Guterres, a former Portuguese PM who, like Trump, took office in January.
While many UN officials watched with horror as the Trump administration vowed to slash spending on foreign aid, including the UN, by about one-third, Guterres and Haley found a way to target troubled peacekeeping efforts.
Those programmes, in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, had long been criticised for not protecting civilians and, in some cases, sexually exploiting the very populations they were meant to defend.
For Guterres, it’s a partnership forged in practicality: The US is the UN’s top contributor, providing 28.5 percent of the $7.3 billion peacekeeping budget and 22 percent of the core budget of $2.7 billion. Targeting cuts in US contributions to efforts the UN admits are ineffective is a win for both sides.
The secretary-general has shown his political acumen, hosting Trump’s daughter Ivanka for lunch and, in private meetings with ambassadors, outlining plans to revamp UN agencies that provide humanitarian aid to avoid duplication and proposing changes to strengthen his office.
“All major reforms in the UN have been the result of the largest financier working with the secretary-general to convince other members of the need for reform,” said Brett Schaefer, senior research fellow at Heritage Foundation.
“It’s imperative that Guterres works hand-in-glove with the US ambassador,” said Peter Yeo, a vice president at the nonprofit UN Foundation. “Otherwise it’s difficult to achieve anything at the UN.”
Haley bragged Friday that 120 nations have signed on to the “very, very important, massive reform package led by” Guterres. Trump was expected to host those signatories at an event on Monday in New York, part of a full, four-day agenda for the president that will touch on top global issues including: North Korea, Iran, climate change, Qatar, Myanmar’s Refugees and Venezuela.
Haley and National Security Adviser HR McMaster say two recent rounds of tougher sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime for it’s nuclear and ballistic-missile tests need more time to take effect, and they emphasized that Trump has plenty of military options at his disposal. Trump will meet the leaders of South Korea and Japan on Thursday in a show of unity on the issue.
Trump has fumed at the 2015 agreement reached by Obama with Iran and five other world powers aimed at curtailing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme. The US president has to “certify” Iran’s compliance with the accord every 90 days to Congress and has signaled he won’t do so when the next deadline arrives in mid-October. But European allies as well as Russia and China still support the accord.
Leaders are sure to take up the issue of Myanmar’s displaced and persecuted Rohingya minority.