Trump and the UN -The slow death of international order?

Reports are beginning to circulate on the BBC, in the New York Times and on the web that later this week or next week Donald Trump may release his latest missile against the established order, taking aim at the UN. The Executive Order will identify in the UN the huge cost borne by the UN and appears to argue that the USA will not only seek a significant reduction of its financial commitments to the UN, but will withdraw funding and support for those UN agencies which do not meet certain criteria, a clear example being

organizations that give full membership to the Palestinian Authority or Palestine Liberation Organization, or support programs that fund abortion or any activity that circumvents sanctions against Iran or North Korea. The draft order also calls for terminating funding for any organization that “is controlled or substantially influenced by any state that sponsors terrorism” or is blamed for the persecution of marginalized groups or any other systematic violation of human rights.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...l-organization

Peacekeeping operations are at threat, but apart from the Palestinians (do they have any rights?), many others could be in the frame, indeed, ironically Israel too given that the systematic violation of human rights is a daily occurrence in the Occupied Territories, though the Israelis and their supporters will obviously deny that Israel has ever violated human rights anywhere.

The gravity of this policy cannot be under-estimated, as it is more than an issue about funding. It calls into question the validity of the international order that has existed since the foundation of the UN in San Francisco in 1946, and Trump's policy will be welcomed by thugs and dictators everywhere who resent the imposition of international law and any restraint on their right to murder, destroy and steal whatever they want wherever they want. It is true that ever since the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648 established ground rules in international diplomacy -and the concept of legally binding secure borders between nations- wars and disputes have seen these international organizations rise and fall, from the Concert of Europe that followed the Napoleonic wars that dominated the 19th century before its decline before the First World War, the League of Nations that attempted to hold the world together between 1919-1939, and the UN.

Trump doesn't care, he is about to throw under the bus the fate of millions of people who rely on the UN -and the USA- to protect their rights, to challenge unscrupulous rulers who threaten their homes and their lives, just as it threatens more than a century of co-operation in medicine, science and technology.

It marks, perhaps for the first time since 1776, a repudiation by the USA of the very concept of the rights of man, and if these Executive Orders are issued and become effective, I fear even more than I did last week for the security of the world in which I live.

It's deja vu all over again. The Clinton administration finally caught up the unpaid dues from the last republican tantrum. Was that Reagan or Nixon? I lost track. The republican plan is always the same. To undo everything & turn back the clock.

The UN , we can't even raise our kids properly, any building made of sand wil.....

The slow death of international order?

Right now.
We can't even raise our kids properly,

I see a building made of sand.
No nation ....is all that and a bag of potato- chips.
Not right now.

After the failure of the League of Nations, a second attempt by the Allies . Sure Windrow Wilson tried to embody a grand vision of talking and negotiation rather than War and deprivation, the effort was noble. For sure it's necessary because of Nukes and Bio and Cyber and and and.
But , the UN is a Human instrument and subject to the whims of individual nations. Which most fall on the shy side of crappiness. I don't think the institution is wonderful. I think it has serious short fall's,(ie: UN's handling of Rwanda genocide, Saudi's human right's obfuscation vs cash to UN, Western social justice values forced onto weaker nations). The UN is a basket case because almost all Nation's are basket cases.
Still I am surprised by Trump's naivete in thinking it doesn't serve the interests of the US. Maybe the bill is to high for services rendered?

The news that the US is to reduce its contribution to the UN's budget for Palestinian refugees is not unexpected, given its recent childish behaviour in the UN in reaction to the decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But while this is a policy made in Likud-land, one wonders if the US and for that matter, Israel, has really thought it through.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was created to deal with the Palestinian refugee crisis in 1948 and since then has serviced Palestinian refugees in camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, but as a result has been permanently opposed by Israel as a source of an anti-Israel militants, which is hardly surprising given their circumstances, though militants in Israel deny there are any Palestinian refugees. While some camps have been shut down -the large Palestinian camp near Jericho that existed from 1948-1967, and the Tal al-Zataar camp in Lebanon was a casualty of the civil war in 1976- others have remained.

The immediate problem is that reducing the funding for Palestinian refugees places a burden on countries like Jordan which rely on that external funding which it would find difficult to meet if it is withdrawn, not least as Jordan is also trying to cope with refugees from the conflict in Syria. Both Israel and the USA know this, but so too do their allies in Saudi Arabia who have never hidden their desire to see off the last of the Hashemites who once presided over Mecca, and absorb Jordan into a greater Saudi Kingdom as part of their longer term campaign to 're-unite' all of the Arab lands into their version of the Caliphate (this also includes Jerusalem but don't tell Netanyahu).

But it is hard to see how the implosion of Jordan would help Israel or any other state in the region by increasing conflict and issues around refugees, and one doubts even the mad Crown Prince Abdullah wants to take responsibility for Jordan right now, though he might be crazy enough to believe it is possible. Whether it would also lead to a revival of violent actions by Palestinians against Israel is also at least a possibility, if Palestinian militants take the view they are running out of options with neither the US nor Israel serious about the peace process.

But it begs the question along with the Jerusalem issue and the claim the US is using this to force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. For the peace process which Netanyahu has worked so hard to destroy was supposed to advance from Oslo to debate precisely two issues, Jerusalem and the status of Refugees, two issues Netanyahu has never wanted to negotiate on. So what in fact is the rationale behind this?

1) If the two-state solution is dead, is there to be a 'one-state' solution in which all the Palestinians currently in Gaza and the West Bank become absorbed into Israel, but without citizenship, voting rights, indeed, with no rights at all other than to 'govern themselves' in internally structured enclaves, the so-called 'Bantustan' solution?

2) If the intention is to end the Palestinian refugee situation by using the UN to shut down all the camps and, in effect, declare there are no refugees, what will be the reaction in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon? The US and Israel may gamble that Palestinians have no friends, and that Lebanon and Syria would like to see the back of the refugees anyway, but in Jordan there are hard-core nationalists too, one of whom once told me he wanted to see Palestinians return to their homes in what is now the West Bank and Israel 'They have a home, it is Palestine, not Jordan' he said. The mere idea that say, a million Palestinians would be marched to the Allenby Bridge and told to 'go home' would also be a crisis for Israel, which has often said of the Palestinians 'there are plenty of other Arab countries they can live in' ignoring the fact that these days most Arabs countries don't want them.

Underlying it all is a pathological loathing of the United Nations and its agencies, a position that the US administration is taking as it abandons its commitment to democracy and human rights, and as propaganda against foreign aid leads many citizens in the US and the UK to simply ignore all the good work the UN does to save a small amount of money they will only squander at home. The reason why the UN was created has been forgotten or dismissed by those who have no interest in history, and are allied in these times with those states that either manipulate the UN for their own interests or who, as with Turkey, Russia and the US see the UN as an unnecessary and expensive obstacle to the fulfillment of their 'national interest' even when that is defined by one man.

The US may or may not wreck the international system as it is currently made up, I am not sure if anyone can stop it. But the question is, do we need the UN and its agencies and what would we do without them? The UN has not been able to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, but there is no sign that Israel and the Palestinians can either, without a framework for a just settlement. The dilemma was always with the parties, to downgrade the UN as part of a short-term measure seems to me to be dangerous. Because Palestinians also have rights, but in a world where the US appears to be leading the battle to destroy them.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...inian-refugees

I think 2017 was when we all found out the Truth about a President Trump, and 2018 will be the year when the World, Nation, and Republicans will find out the Consequences of a President Trump.
Trump's impression of the UN and Energy Dept were clear when he named Nikki Haley and Rick Perry to lead them, two Republicans who badmouthed him before the election. Tom Cotton and David Perdue as first didn't hear Trump mention shithole countries, now they're sure he never said it. I think that's what you're going to see from now til November, They're going to obstruct themselves and blame it on the Democrats.

Today's announcement by the President that the USA will recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights may look like a measure designed to support Netanyahu's attempt to be re-elected Prime Minister, and it may reflect, as if we were not aware of it, the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, but it contains within it the most direct attack on the United Nations and International Law since 1948. As the primary source of Internatinoal Law, the Charter of the UN makes the acquistion of territory by force illegal, indeed, the UN was created out of the ashes of the League of Nations that was destroyed by the war that the British Empire entered precisely because Germany had illegally invaded Poland.

A realist might say that making something illegal doesn't stop determined people breaking the law, and the illegal actions of States that have violated the law on force have sometimes been reversed through international action, sometimes not, often subjected to lengthy negotiations and multiple Security Council resolutions. Obvious examples are Israel's illegal acquisition of territory in 1948 assigned to the Palestinians in 1947 -a crime that is generally accepted was abrogated by the Peace Treaty between Israel and the PLO in 1993, whereas the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights in 1967 remain illegal, the assumption being that if the US recognizes Israel's right to acquire the Golan Heights through military force, the West Bank will follow sooner rather than later, though this begs the question -what rights will Palestinians have?

But the profound challenge is further afield, for on the one hand this decision, in effect, is the US informing the world that it considers the Charter of the UN and, indeed, the UN as an irrelevance to its interests, but on the other hand is a fabulous, fabulous victory for dictatorships and any state which now can follow Israel's example, invade and occupy any territory it wants, and the US can't say it is wrong. They are dancing for joy in Moscow and Beijing; the US recognition of North Korea as an independent state cannot be far behind, while the other partners in crime who can't stop laughing are the butchers of the 9/11 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who, as I write this continue to rain bombs and bullets on a Yemen it has been seeking to control as a satrap state since 1962 and now can physically invade, and annexe with the full approval of the US, presumably throwing some 'lovely dollars' in the path of the US President as a thank-you gift.

Russia's annexation of the Ukraine? Not a problem now- take a bit more! China's annexation of TIbet and the Spatly Islans? Well, on balance, we don't care, let 'em have 'em. Turkey's annexation of Northern Cyprus? Let them stay -take a few more hundred miles in Syria? Why not? Because, what are you going to do about it?

If this decision is approved, and if the logical consequence is that the US walks out of the UN and its agencies, from the WTO through the WHO, it would be fair to describe the US as a 'Rogue State', but this President has prided himself on smashing to pieces the existing order, and as long as he gets financial benefits from Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia, assuming he doesnt do any of these things for them for free, that is all that matters. The US is now an insult to diplomacy, and a threat to international law and freedom, but the Republican Party never believed in democracy or freedom anyway and we may need to consider re-defining it as a terrorist organization.

As for the long term consequences, this makes some limited war with Israel all but inevitable, whether it is sponsored by Syria or Iran r both; for Saudi Arabia it sets in motion their long cherished aim to unite all of the Ottoman Empire's Arab lands under the Wahabi heresy. If Yemen is gradually being sucked into the Kingdom, their eyes turn north to Jordan, which they first sought to conquer in 1921, but with Jerusalem as the ultimate prize, the demolition of Israel a passing bonus, and I presume something they don't discuss over kebabs with Jared Kushner, the Israeli's and their 'brothers' in the Gulf.

The USA is now busy destroying everything that was created since 1945 to at least try and maintain a sense of international order, it is rapidly becoming an untrustworthy country, led by a man whose only natural instinct is to lie, to cheat, to rob and to destroy. And, just as has disinterred the corpose of Senator John McCain so he can piss on it in public, so this draft-dodging coward is taking aim at all those Americans who died in the Second World War, and pissing on them, just as he will piss on them day after day after day because he resents them and what they did for the world, that he cannot claim credit for. This is not some 'kill and capture' that has any strategic value, it is destruction for the sake of it.

Maestro, Music! Let us dance the dance of death, and waltz with dictators from now until the end of time. America's God and King decrees it, and he must be obeyed.

Step by step, the US is dismantling, or trying to dismantle the UN. Following the posts above, the latest step was announced at a meeting of the terrorist NRA by the President himself rather than Stephen Mlller or John Bolton whom I assume are the architects of this woeful policy-

Donald Trump has announced that the US will withdraw its support for a United Nations treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade.
Addressing the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Indianapolis, the president said he would revoke America’s status as a signatory of the arms trade treaty regulating conventional weapons including small arms, battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships.
“My administration will never ratify the UN arms trade treaty,” Trump said. “We’re taking our signature back. The United Nations will soon receive a formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty.”
Trump added: “Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your second amendment freedom. I’m officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided treaty.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ty-gun-control

The last sentence contains the dilemma in a nutshell -the whole point of the UN, as with most other attempts to construct a diplomatic structure to international affairs to prevent war and promote peace since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648- is to surrender a degree of soverereignty in exchange for practical peace and co-operation. It is what enables the Charter of the UN to provide the world with the primary source of international law, but the President is now arguing no other country than the US can determined what the law must be, let alone be a law that states abide by. It would be more logical for the US to declare it is leaving the UN and that it will only apply to international affairs its interests, rather than any law, and act on those interests when and wherever it chooses to.

Just as the the aim was to repeal 'Obama care' and replace it with nothing, to withdraw US support for the Paris Climate Change accords and replace them with nothing, to withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Agreememt and replace it with nothing -other than theats- and to dismiss the legal rights of Congress to scrutinize the management of the Presidency, so we are slowly moving into a new international anarchy, while the President negates the right of Congress to form a branch of goverment in the US itself. The 'might is right' pivot of war and peace that through the imperial ambitions of Japan and Germany pluged the world into a destructive war is now the official policy of the USA. 'Bring it on' the slogan.

A reckless gambler who owned his own casinos, all of which went bankrupt, now seeks to own the casino of international conflict. At some point, a crisis may erupt that requires the US to call on its allies for help and assistance -I hope it doesn't happen, but is there any reason why America's allies now, should assist a President who so constantly insults and abuses the people he may one day need?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

The last sentence contains the dilemma in a nutshell -the whole point of the UN, as with most other attempts to construct a diplomatic structure to international affairs to prevent war and promote peace since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648- is to surrender a degree of soverereignty in exchange for practical peace and co-operation. It is what enables the Charter of the UN to provide the world with the primary source of international law, but the President is now arguing no other country than the US can determined what the law must be, let alone be a law that states abide by. It would be more logical for the US to declare it is leaving the UN and that it will only apply to international affairs its interests, rather than any law, and act on those interests when and wherever it chooses to.

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The absurdity of all this is that the power of the US relative to other countries is bound to decline, as it has already been declining for some time. If there was ever a time when other countries needed the US and the US needed nobody else it was after WWII when the current international arrangements were set up, and it is less true now than at any time since then.

Ironically, one of the key factors that has supported growth of the US economy, which ultimately underpins its power, has been immigration, which Trump is hellbent on cutting. These people are in such a reality-free bubble that they can't join the dots on anything.

So now it is the turn of the WHO, although so far the US is to withdraw funding for 60 days while it 'investigates' the UN agency, or spends 60 days trying to find reasons to withdraw from it altogether , the President having linked the WTO with the WHO on Tuesday afternoon (14 April 2020) -but note he claimed after his pressure the WTO is becoming more friendly to the US but he still reserves the right to walk away from it

The claims he made against the WHO on one level are verifiable rubbish -he queried the 'transparency' of China's relationship with the WHO but said on the 24th January "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency". His claims that the WHO did not state the new Coronovirus was communnicable human to human is false, just as it is wrong to claim that the WHO did not respond appropriately to the outbreak -the WHO made clear the position in early January at the same time that the President was informed, by David Navarro and others, that this new virus had the potential to kill substantial numbers of Americans -the WHO urged countries to test, which South Korea did, but the US did not take action in terms of doemstic policy until March, just as in that six week period the President insisted the virus was under control, it was just a form of 'flu or a 'hoax', claims that were supported by Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh

Well, whatever the truth, the politics is what matters here:
a) the US has not maintained its funding agreements with the WHO, and is thus in arrears so one wonders if withdrawing funding the WHO often does not get will affect the day-to-day operations of the organization. It amounts to a temper tantrum by the US.

b) if the US is concerned at China's influence in the WHO (not proven), maybe the question is, why did the US, on paper a major financial contributor and also a member state whose scientists and medical personnel also work for the WHO, not use that financial and intellectual contribution to challenge China within the WHO and make itself the most influential country? The President appears to be complaining that China has achieved something with the WHO that the US could have done years ago had it paid its dues regularly and linked its expertise in science and medicine more closely with the top layers of that bureacracy.

c) the anxiety must be that this is a 'warning shot' by the US that it no longer sees the UN and its agencies as important, but if the US were to withdraw from the WHO on the basis it is 'not fit for purpose', what does the US propose to replace it with, as there has been international co-operation on public health matters for the best part of the last 200 years? -just as, if the WTO were scrapped, would there be an alternative, or just anarchy, given that the WTO, like the WHO creates rules that member states agree to abide by? Maybe there is no plan, just as scrapping 'Obamacare' was a priority, but came with no alternative. In which case, why not scrap American government in addition to every other irksome institution the President sees as an obstacle to his power?

Lastly d), the sad irony is that is that there are citizens in the US whose access to health care is as poor as some of the poorest member states of the WHO in sub-Saharan Africa. Withdrawing funding from the WHO is mean, spiteful, and comes from a country that itself does not guaranteee health care for every citizen 'from cradle to grave' -does withdawing from the world's premier health organization mean US citizens will therefore benefit? I doubt it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

b) if the US is concerned at China's influence in the WHO (not proven), maybe the question is, why did the US, on paper a major financial contributor and also a member state whose scientists and medical personnel also work for the WHO, not use that financial and intellectual contribution to challenge China within the WHO and make itself the most influential country? The President appears to be complaining that China has achieved something with the WHO that the US could have done years ago had it paid its dues regularly and linked its expertise in science and medicine more closely with the top layers of that bureacracy.

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It also gives China a chance for a propaganda coup by stepping up their own contributions to help fill the gap. It's clear they are trying to atone for their earlier cover-up by presenting themselves as the country prepared to help others, in contrast to the US.

I'm not a fan of China, and I think we do need to counter their attempts to expand their influence, but it needs to be done in a smart way, rather than poorly-considered knee-jerk responses. Abandoning international responsibilities is hardly the smart way to counter China's influence.

I think you are right about China, and I wonder if the Americans know that by their actions they are strengthening China's global status. Just as, I assume, the President was told that increasing sanctions on Iran would weaken the reformists who have more urgent domestic priorities than nuclear developments, while strengthening the Guardian Council and the legacy of Khomeini for whom nuclear developments must accelerate whatever the cost. It seems this President can only deal with either/or propositions as the complexity of real international relations confuses him.

If we assume that their long term ambition is to dissolve the UN, then the question that is asked which they might pose is -what difference would it make? That in turn begs the question why States have created international diplomatic structures since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 with the attempt to bind those relations through the agency of international law. One can read the history of international relations as a sequence of peace and armed conflict, adding Pinker's argument that since 1648 there have been progressively fewer wars and lower casualty rates from armed conflict, the assumption being that taken as a whole, diplomacy works by giving states in conflict the means to prevent that conflict deteriorating into destructive military war.

Sukumvit Boy some time ago wondered if the hostility the US was expressing with regard to China's ambition could become a 'Thucydides Trap' through which, without originally intending to do so, a conflict of interests spirals out of control, where one incident creates the conditions for war. I was, and remain sceptical because I am not sure this idea can be justified if a conventional war is the consequence, because such wars cost so much and have uncertain outcomes for both sides, and thus makes the Generals wary. Unless they think there can be a short decisive first strike to put themselves in an unassailable position- even though this was the now famous mistake the Germans made when they attacked France in 1914.

If the UN goes, I assume Bolton and his boss believe, you have a world of states where only their power matters -they might say this is what we have in reality, though one might argue against that the UN helps define power as 'interests' rather than raw power, where interests may be economic or cultural as well as political. The problem is that when powerful nuclear states like Israel, Russia and China use force to acquire territory, in violation of the UN Charter/International Law, neither the UN as a body, nor the USA as a single state, can do anything about it, or, as in the case of the US and Israel, may even endorse it, thus demeaning the status of international law and the UN. To which one adds the USA's withdawal of funding for UNRWA and the USA's formal withdrawal from UNESCO.

So I don't see the US going to war with China because of some obscure islands in the China Seas which, in an Asian context increase their physical presence in the Pacific Region and may be seen as a threat by Japan; just as Russia is free to annexe the Crimea and portions of the Ukraine because nobody, other than local people and the government of Ukraine is going to react militarily to stop them and reverse the incursions.

On the other hand I think that the 45th President of the USA wants to use battlefield nuclear weapons, just to prove it can be done, and enhance what he thinks will be his reputation as the greatest President of all time, in which case it is more likely to be a small state that cannot retaliate in kind, such as Iran. But the real danger in this 'might is right' world without the countervailing influence of International Law and the UN, is that once one nuclear power deploys tactical weapons on the battlefield, others will do so.
What used to be called MAD was based on the assumption that Presidents would exist who were not themselves MAD enough to use their nuclear arsenal. Pause for an intake of breath, as what we have in 2020 was unthinkable in 1950.

So I see this WHO spat as an alternative to a military confrontation wiith China, but as China already invests more in Africa than the US -the US has troops in West Africa killing people even as China has engineers buiding roads and bridges- I think that while in propaganda terms people are suspicious of China, we may have to accept that they are now in a more powerful position to entrench their global status just as the US becomes isolated behind its Wall, the UK even more isolated as it leaves the EU, while the EU is having its own integrity challenged by internal divisions and now economic uncertainty with a possible slump draining resources and hope for the next - ten years? I also think that havng developed a robust domestic economy, and with the Communist Party still in total control of the country -indeed 'cleansing' the 'Wild West' without opposition- China can cope with losing a proportion of its markets and supply chains in Europe and North America. It may be the only means the 'West' can undermine China's power, even if it means undermining the performance of domestic economies in Europe.
Unless this crisis, as with Chernobyl in the USSR, is a portent of decline. I think China is in a stronger position economically than the USSR was in the 1980s, but who knows what will happen in the next six months never mind the next six years?

At least with the UN and its agencies, international relations give the world structure rather than chaos, they offer unifying policies raher than anarchic self-interest, and can act to prevent war rather than encourage it. For all its many flaws, we are better off with the WHO and the UN than we are withou them.