Trumpism At UN: America First In Action – OpEd

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As a natural corollary of its authoritarian domestic agenda, vividly demonstrated in the virulent attacks on the US media in order to tame it, the Trump administration has wasted little time in launching a concerted attack on the UN, a pillar of the world order, through its envoy, Nikki Haley, who threatened McCarthyite-like to “take down names” of countries that refuse to toe the US’s line on international affairs.

“For those (countries) that don’t have our back, we’re taking names, we will make points to respond to that accordingly,” Haley warned in her first appearance as the new US ambassador to UN.

This was the language of a school principal with a long stick to discipline the class, hardly befitting a world organization. Displaying the raw American arrogance, Haley’s monologue was reminiscent of the speeches by Hitler’s envoy at the League of Nations, which was destined to oblivion by a crass attitude that stemmed from the pre-war ultra-nationalism (of Germany, Japan, and Italy) that had no use for an extra-national body.

Indeed, the threat to UN posed by the Trumpistas cannot be discounted, just as their threat to world peace is represented by the nuclear scientists moving the doomsday clock one notch closer to nuclear midnight since Trump assumed office a week ago.

Will the world community cower before the march of Trumpistas and thus allow a new dark age of global authoritarianism? These are challenging and uncertain times for the whole world and much depends on the spirit of resistance and democratic prowess of people around the world, otherwise within a short time real and serious damage to the pillars of post-WWII order will ensue.

Chances are, of course, that Haley’s grandstanding will soon evaporate by the reality of institutions and global practices, not to mention customary international law, which cannot be eradicated overnight and carry a great deal of weight. The Trumpista masters of chaos, who want to reinstitute torture as a normal state practice, as well as CIA prisons, and so on, have many roadblocks ahead of them, which form as real barriers to their global agenda of American unipolarism, albeit through tactical concessions to Russia, again reminding one of Hitler’s temporary peace with Stalin in 1938.

The big question is if Mr. Putin is about to make his predecessor’s mistake of appeasing an adversary that relies on the seducement of a charmed diplomacy, hiding its iron fist in velvet glove. Only time will answer this important question.

What is clear, however, is the utility of Trumpistas’ charmed diplomacy for causing rifts in Russia’s and China’s system of alliance that includes Iran.

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, Ph.D. is an Iranian-American political scientist and author specializing in Iran’s foreign and nuclear affairs, and author of several books.

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