Will Trump ignore or commandeer the UN?: Column

One way to figure out the direction President Trump’s foreign policy is likely to go in the coming years is to look at how he handles the American relationship with the United Nations. Trump’s engagement with that institution — which now encompasses all the nations of the globe — will presumably reflect his overall playbook on international matters.

Historically Republican presidents have been skeptical, if not hostile, to the U.N. because they feel it  treads too much on U.S. sovereignty and is too subject to the demands of third-world nations. Ronald Reagan, for example, withheld U.S. dues to the U.N. for its maltreatment of Israel. The last Republican president, George W. Bush, did not even appoint a U.S. envoy to the U.N. until nine months into his first term in office — a reflection of his indifference to the world body.

But Trump's U.N. ambassador, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, was sworn in Wednesday after the Senate confirmed her 96-4. Trump had selected her weeks before taking office. This might have been a sign that he himself views the U.N. as a useful adjunct to his conduct of Washington’s overseas affairs. Or maybe not. Just after Christmas, he tweeted: “The UN has such a great potential, but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!” 

Trump has sometimes had a rocky relationship with the organization. In 2003, casting himself as one of New York’s foremost real estate construction moguls, he tried to get the contract to refurbish the creaking superstructure which contains the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretariat. He claimed he could do the project at one-third the estimated cost and in quicker fashion. But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned him down, not willing to accept his promises at face value.

Trump did not take this rebuff quietly. Instead he wrote in his 2004 book, Think Like A Billionaire:  “It does not take a genius to recognize the enormous difference in these proposals — several years and $1.5 billion, or $1.1 billion more than I would spend for a job that would not be as good as mine. Who is in charge at the United Nations? Could they be as incompetent in world affairs as they are at simple numbers?”

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Still Trump publicly praised the U.N. in that same 2004 book, calling it “one of the world’s most valuable institutions.”  As a native New Yorker, he has lived comfortably with the the institution all his life, and, indeed, placed one of his major apartment buildings, the Trump World Tower, directly across the street from U.N. headquarters. Just recently, he intervened to postpone an Egyptian resolution in the Security Council denouncing Israel’s expansion of settlements into Palestinian territory. While his attempt failed, it showed that he is ready to play the diplomatic game at the highest levels in the organization. He vowed in the future: “Things will be different after Jan. 20th.”

Nothing is truly clear yet. Trump has two possible courses he will follow at the institution. First, he could do as his party’s predecessors have done and treat the U.N. with outright antagonism or neglect, following his own “America First” credo. This would mean he would insist on getting his own way and, if he did not, he might withhold funds from U.N. agencies or to refuse to pay U.S. dues, wield the veto more freely in the Security Council, or simply issue tweets denouncing U.N. actions.

But there is a more intriguing path that may also appeal to Trump. Given the president-elect’s considerable ego, he may view the U.N. as a place where he can expand his powers across the earth. In other words, he may look upon the U.N. as an opportunity, using his command skills, to seek to dominate the organization as the world’s leader, the global steward of the other 192 states in the assembly. 

The key to telling us which choice he makes will be Haley's role. Her votes, her decisions, and her statements will be directly dictated by the White House as she has had no previous foreign policy experience.  But don't doubt that Trump will ultimately be maneuvering to manipulate the organization so that he can control its future one way or the other.

Stephen Schlesinger is a fellow at the Century Foundation and author of Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations.

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