Not Playing at All —Trump’s New UN Jiu-jitsu

By

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz

UNITED NATIONS, October 31 (C-Fam) The Trump administration will not play games during the current meeting of the UN General Assembly. Rather than spend countless hours negotiating dozens of controversial resolutions with little to show for it, the Administration will not negotiate at all and will simply vote against any resolution that is not aligned with the President’s agenda.

Last week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told Breitbart that the U.S. was trying to return the UN to its basics. “We’ve got to cut out all the nonsense, all the climate and gender and woke agenda,” he said. He explained this was necessary to get the UN “focused back on creating peace deals.”

The Trump administration promised to vote against any resolution that promotes liberal priorities on climate, gender, and migration, and other issues counter to the President’s priorities. This approach will disrupt the usual way of doing business at the UN, where adopting resolutions unanimously, by “consensus”, is widely preferred. Trump and his team have no problem standing alone, as they have demonstrated this past year.

During a meeting of the UN General Assembly’s social policy committee, a U.S. diplomat stated that the United States would disengage from most UN negotiations on social policy issues, calling these “just paperwork.” He also promised that the U.S. would vote against any UN resolution that is not in line with President Trump’s priorities.

“We will not endorse any language that undermines the inherent and unalienable human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals in the United States,” he said, committing to prioritizing violations of human rights, religious freedom, and protection of the family.

In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have begun to act on that promise. The U.S. delegation has not engaged with most negotiations in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social policy.

The approach may seem passive, but in fact, it is quite aggressive —a diplomatic posture that is a sharp departure from the first Trump administration.

During the first Trump administration, the U.S. took some unpopular positions, such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and the UN Human Rights Council. But for the most part, there was a great fear of being criticized in the mainstream media or accused by Europeans of upsetting international cooperation. This time around, things are very different. No one seems concerned about rocking the boat.

During Trump’s first term, there was a near-total reliance on career service diplomats who were invested in preserving UN policies. Unsurprisingly, there was little change in UN policy at the end of Trump’s first term. The General Assembly adopted the same three-hundred-and-fifty-plus resolutions year after year, with no discernible difference from when Obama was in office. Many of those resolutions contained language about sexual and reproductive health, climate, gender, migration, and other issues that were squarely at odds with the Trump administration’s positions.

In this second term, Trump officials have a clearer understanding that U.S. career diplomats are not necessarily supportive of administration policies and have numerous ways to slow down, ignore, and even block administration instructions. The new aggressive diplomatic approach reduces the possibility of sabotage. It is consistent with the Trump administration’s disruptive negotiating tactics in other policy debates. Results may only be visible after several months.

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter