Trump at the UN

The United Nations General Assembly is not usually associated with laughter. It is a place for world leaders to deliver sombre speeches as stone-faced diplomats look on silently. Trust US President Donald Trump to break the mould. During a rambling speech that resembled a campaign rally more than an address to the international community, Trump elicited howls of laughter when he claimed that his administration had already achieved more than any other in the history of the US. There were more chuckles – these from the German delegation – when he predicted that Germany would soon be dependent on Russian oil and gas. As amusing a figure as the American president may be or seem, though, it would be a grave mistake to treat him as a figure of fun rather than a threat to the world. After saying that the US will not tell any other country how to live or work or worship – which in itself should have been laughed off as absurd by the rest of the world – Trump then proceeded to do exactly that. His main targets were Iran and Venezuela.

Trump laid into the Venezuelan socialist system of government and at a later press conference all but threatened to back a coup against the government. He blasted the Iranian government for supposedly plundering the resources of its own people and spreading war throughout the region, two crimes of which the US is most guilty in the Middle East. Clearly Trump is trying to pave the way for punitive action against Iran, and perhaps even invasion. On the same day that Trump spoke to the UN General Assembly session, his bellicose National Security Adviser John Bolton gave an even more bellicose speech in which he made the case for regime change in Iran.

If there is any bright spot to Trump’s aggression it is that he is so tainted a messenger that the rest of the world is readier to defy the US than it was previously. Before Trump’s speech, the European Union and Iran announced that they would maintain economic ties in defiance of the US and a special fund would be set up to compensate businesses that continue trading with Iran to evade US sanctions that are being imposed after the Trump administration withdrew from the multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran. The EU should now invite other countries that will be reluctant to do business with Iran to join the fund. Indeed, a concerted response is required from the international community to counter Trump’s threats to the global world order. The US has been rapidly withdrawing from its international commitments, from abandoning the Paris climate change treaty to attacking the International Criminal Court and refusing to pay its dues to Unicef because the latter looks after Palestinian refugees. At the UN General Assembly, the American president attacked the very concept of globalism as a threat to sovereignty. As Trump’s actions make clear, however, the US will continue to trample on the sovereignty of others while invoking its own sovereignty to evade responsibility for its actions.