President Donald Trump is set to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, though critics are condemning the president for undermining the very intergovernmental organization the United States helped create.
“The Trump administration’s approach to the UN has been destructive and at times vindictive,” said Richard Gowan, who leads the International Crisis Group think tank as its director, speaking with the Wall Street Journal in a report published Saturday. “The administration seems immune to concerns about reputational damage.”
Under the second Trump administration, the United States slashed its funding to the UN, clawing back around $1 billion in previously-approved funding for the intergovernmental body, and has been without an UN ambassador for eight months until Friday when the Senate confirmed Mike Waltz for the position.
Trump has also regularly criticized the UN in a manner critics say have undermined the organization’s legitimacy and standing on the world stage.
“When do you see the United Nations solving problems?” Trump said back in late 2016. “They don’t. They cause problems. So, if it lives up to the potential, it’s a great thing. And if it doesn’t, it’s a waste of time and money.”
The Trump administration’s animosity toward the group, said Robert Anthony Wood, a former career ambassador who works for the UN, was not only undermining the organization’s legitimacy, but was counter to Trump’s stated goal of putting “America first.”
“The U.N. is a useful foreign policy tool,” Wood said, speaking with the Wall Street Journal. “What could be more ‘America First’ than advancing U.S. interests using a major foreign policy tool we actually first created?”
