NEW YORK: Watched by the world, President Donald Trump returns to the United Nations on Tuesday to deliver a wide-ranging address on his second-term foreign policy achievements and lament that “globalist institutions have significantly decayed the world order,” according to the White House.
World leaders will be listening closely to his remarks at the UN General Assembly as Trump has already moved quickly to diminish US support for the world body in his first eight months in office. Even in his first term, he was no fan of the flavor of multilateralism that the United Nations espouses.
After his latest inauguration, he issued a first-day executive order withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. That was followed by his move to end US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, and ordering up a review of US membership in hundreds of intergovernmental organizations aimed at determining whether they align with the priorities of his “America First” agenda.
“There are great hopes for it, but it’s not being well run, to be honest,” Trump said of the UN last week.
The US president’s speech is typically among the most anticipated moments of the annual assembly. This one comes at one of the most volatile moments in the world body’s 80-year-old history. Global leaders are being tested by intractable wars in Gaza,Ukraine and Sudan, uncertainty about the economic and social impact of emerging artificial intelligence technology, and anxiety about Trump’s antipathy for the global body.
