Yahoo News 'Scourge of our planet': an annotated guide to Donald Trump's UN speech
default
The United States will forever be a great friend to the world, and especially to its allies. But we can no longer be taken advantage of, or enter into a one-sided deal where the United States gets nothing in return.
Donald Trump’s maiden UN address is disjointed, and apparently written by committee, bearing the fingerprints of both the isolationist advisers such as Stephen Miller and realists such as HR McMaster. It is both conventional and Breitbartian.
The celebrity billionaire cannot resist a reference to “a one-sided deal” while airing a familiar grievance that America is carrying others’ burden. He has made a similar complaint about Nato and claimed this yielded results.
He goes on to translate his approach to business in New York to a vision for the world: self-interest rather than altruism, competition rather than cooperation, Hobbes rather than Rousseau. The emphasis is on “Nations” rather than “United”. Despite the departure of hardline nationalist Steve Bannon from the White House, the “America first” vision in Trump’s dystopian inaugural address is intact.
The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.
Trump echoes a previous Republican president, George W Bush, who infamously described an “axis of evil”: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. In this passage, Trump has more in common with the hawkish Bush, and rather less with Barack Obama – or his own election campaign rhetoric, in which he bemoaned the war in Iraq and implied the US would withdraw from the world.
The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.
Trump has previously warned of raining “fire and fury” on North Korea but to no effect, as it continues to test missiles. Here he makes the threat in a different form with the kind of blunt language past presidents have avoided.
He has found it effective to brand his political opponents: “Little Marco” Rubio. “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Crooked Hillary” Clinton. “Rocket Man” is a 1972 song by Elton John whose back catalogue features prominently at Trump’s rallies, much to the artist’s dismay. The president trailed “rocket man” to describe North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in a weekend tweet and now delivers it to the world’s highest diplomatic body.
Josh Earnest, the former White House press secretary, told the MSNBC channel: “To be blunt, I think it is foolish to try to goad or provoke or mock someone who in President Trump’s own words is on a suicide mission.”
The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into. Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States, and I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it, believe me.
In many ways a more significant passage than that on North Korea. Trump singles out Iran as enemy number one in the Middle East and repeats his previous criticism of the nuclear deal, which his administration has so far recertified, but could soon walk away from. This would win applause from Israel but dismay European allies. It would also risk sending some conflicting signals: asking North Korea to work with the UN on the one hand, but undermining a UN-backed deal with Iran on the other.
We will stop radical Islamic terrorism, because we cannot allow it to tear up our nation, and indeed, to tear up the entire world. We must deny the terrorists safe haven, transit, funding and any form of support for their vile and sinister ideology. We must drive them out of our nations.
Trump breaks from Obama by using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”, throwing some more red meat to his base. He does not utter the words “climate change”.
In Syria and Iraq, we have made big gains toward lasting defeat of Isis. In fact, our country has achieved more against Isis in the last eight months than it has in many, many years combined.
This is notoriously hard to measure. Last month Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat Isis, asserted that one third of all the land reclaimed from Isis since 2014 has been done since Trump became president. McGurk said that Isis has lost 27,000 square miles since it was at its zenith, with 8,000 taken back during the Trump administration by forces mainly composed of Iraqi, Kurdish and other local fighters.
For decades, the United States has dealt with migration challenges here in the western hemisphere. We have learned that, over the long term, uncontrolled migration is deeply unfair to both the sending and the receiving countries.
Channelling Bannon and Miller, Trump takes a swipe at immigration, a constant theme for him, for example in his proposed border wall and back and forth over Daca. It was reported on Monday that administration officials had rejected a study by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees brought in $63bn more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.
We also thank the secretary general for recognizing that the United Nations must reform if it is to be an effective partner in confronting threats to sovereignty, security and prosperity. Too often the focus of this organization has not been on results, but on bureaucracy and process.
Trump, the anti-establishment insurgent, beats his drum demanding UN reform, just as he has said he will “drain the swamp” of Washington and called for a shakeup of Nato. He is likely to strike a chord in some quarters, given the UN’s reputation for red tape protocol and mixed effectiveness on the ground.
The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.
Trump earned applause by bashing Latin American socialism, pushing back against Obama’s attempts to normalise relations with Cuba, while reiterating the administration’s tough response to the current malaise in Venezuela. He suggests “further action” in Venezuela but offers few details – there is no mention of his previous suggestion that military options are possible.
