Putting on his big boy global pants
Trump is off to the UN in the morning, because it’s General Assembly time.
…when Mr. Trump attends the first United Nations session of his presidency this coming week, all eyes will be on him as counterparts from around the globe crane their necks and slide through the crowd to snatch a handshake — and, in the process, try to figure out this most unusual of American leaders.
“The world is still trying to take the measure of this president,” said Jon B. Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and author of the speed-dating analogy. “For a number of leaders, this is going to be their first chance to see him, to judge him, to try to get on his good side.”
In some places, there has been an instinct to dismiss Mr. Trump as a bombastic, Twitter-obsessed political and diplomatic neophyte. “But the fact is you can’t write off the American president,” Mr. Alterman said.
Hang on. That’s two different things. Obviously nobody can “write off” the US president, because he can do all kinds of damage. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to note that he is in fact a bombastic, Twitter-obsessed political and diplomatic neophyte – not to mention a liar, cheat, fraud, sexual assaulter and more. He’s been a synonym for Terrible Asshole in the US for decades, and the fact that we’re now forced to pay attention to him does not alter that fact.
One of Mr. Trump’s primary tasks will be to define how his America First approach — which has led him to pull out of international agreements on free trade and climate change — fits into the world-first mission of the United Nations.
It will?
I don’t think he has any intention of defining any such thing. He couldn’t possibly care less about the world-first mission of the United Nations. He’s a stupid vain little peacock of a man and America First is his idea of wisdom.
Previewing the week, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, said Mr. Trump would stress “sovereignty and accountability.” Sovereignty is a term that appeals to American conservatives skeptical about the United Nations. It is also a term, however, used by autocrats like Presidents Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to reject interference by outside powers as they crush opposition.
That’s not a “however,” it’s an “and.” The conservative idea of sovereignty that’s skeptical about the UN is the same thing as rejecting interference by outside powers while one crushes opposition.
Anyway, it will doubtless be a train wreck one way or another.
It’s not even a sincere use of “sovereignty”. A genuine commitment to it would respect other nation’s sovereignty, would put a very high bar on armed intervention in another state’s territory. (You know, that little thing we used to call “war”.) But Trump – among many others, alas in both parties in the U.S. – has no such respect for other countries. The role of the U.N. is to be a rubber-stamp for U.S. neocon adventures (or just “Fun With Bombs”, for someone without enough thinking to have that ideology); other countries are there to take it from the U.S.; no other country, alone or in combination, has any warrant to give the U.S. grief for anything it does.
But still there is the desperate need for pundits and hopeful diplomats to try to put the Orange Hatezilla into some process narrative like any other politician functioning within institutions and according to norms, whatever his policies. It’s not going to work; he’s not playing that.
I just don’t get that desperate need to put the hairtopped spamfaced blob into the standard process narrative. Hello? He. does. not. fit. In any way. You might as well take a fish and a bicycle and talk about how the fish will do in the Tour de France.
(Actually, come to think of it, I have come across this before. In a story I read years ago about all the people admiring the clothes of some emperor or other.)
It doesn’t. It can’t. Past presidents have always managed the inherent tension to one degree or another by tacitly acknowledging the fact and by in some instances giving a bit more credence to the UN than maybe they would have preferred and sometimes by doing the dance of the seven veils. Occasionally US Presidents have nakedly bent the UN to their will. None in my memory have bared such naked antipathy and condescension on the UN.
Well, he threatened to totally destroy North Korea if they don’t do what he wants. He’s now officially a global madman, and we should officially be regarded as a rogue state.