US President Donald Trump this week arrived at UN headquarters in New York City looking to rally the world against Iran and show that his policies on North Korea are lowering the risk of nuclear war.
By Wednesday, he made clear that he did not care whether he persuaded anyone.
“It doesn’t matter what world leaders think on Iran,” he said after absorbing criticism from the US’ allies up close. “Iran’s going to come back to me and make a deal.”
The comment was emblematic of Trump’s entire approach at a meeting that many world leaders use to help narrow divides, not widen them.
After doubling down on his “America First” approach, with its insistence on national sovereignty and rejection of globalism, he was to leave New York this week with allies and adversaries as frustrated as ever with the US over issues from trade to climate change to Iran’s nuclear program.
For a meeting of diplomats, there was little diplomacy to be seen on either side.
The pushback on Trump and his approach to foreign policy started during his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, when a murmur of laughter greeted the president’s claim that his administration had accomplished more than almost any in US history.
A day later at a UN Security Council meeting that he hosted, Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has longstanding anti-American sentiments, insulted the US to Trump’s face, saying that the US has no interest in upholding democracy.
More surprising was the chiding from allies.
British Prime Minister Theresa May said delivering for citizens at home “does not have to be at the expense of global cooperation.”
French President Emmanuel Macron disputed Trump’s claim that ties with France were “99 percent good,” saying that “the disagreements are known and they are more than 1 percent,” citing a divergence over issues including climate change and Iran.
“It’s never been like this before,” said Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Egypt and Israel under former US president George W. Bush who is now a professor at Princeton. “US policy always has engendered opposition from allies — Germany and France during the 2003 invasion of Iraq — but what’s new is the derision.”
With US-China trade tensions only getting worse, Trump suggested that his much-touted friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was coming to an end and accused Beijing of interfering in the upcoming US midterm elections.
Almost as glaring was the minidrama that unfurled at a luncheon for leaders on Tuesday, when cameras caught Trump ignoring Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s attempt to say hello. Trump then curtly shook his hand, but would not get up from his seat as he did for other leaders.
Trump on Wednesday evening at a freewheeling news conference said that he rejected Trudeau’s request for a one-on-one meeting, adding: “Canada has treated us very badly.”
Trudeau later said that he never sought a meeting.
“Lashing out at the Canadians in highly personal terms was diplomatic carnage,” said Richard Gowan, a senior fellow at the UN University Center for Policy Research.
Gowan called Trump’s news conference of more than an hour “a steaming hot mess.”
Trump and his team believe that they can afford to be dismissive. Iran’s economy has been pinched by US sanctions that he vows will only get tougher.
Trump said that his outreach to North Korea helped stave off a nuclear war that looked imminent when he came to office.
If Canada would not back down on dairy tariffs, Trump said he would tax cars imported from the country.
“The world loathes what Trump says, but they pay deep attention to the new credible threats of economic and military coercion,” said Charles Lipson, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago. “Trump sees the old international order as fundamentally unsustainable.”
As the week went on, domestic politics proved to be increasingly distracting, with stories about his embattled US Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh crowding Trump’s foreign policy agenda out of the headlines.
That led to some awkward moments, such as at the opening of Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, when he accused Democrats of “bringing people out of the woods” to smear Kavanaugh, who was yesterday to confront allegations of sexual assault at a US Senate hearing.
“They can do that to anybody, they can to it to anybody,” Trump said as he sat next to Abe. “Other than perhaps Prime Minister Abe, because he’s so pure.”
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