Tensions high for Trump’s U.N. visit
World leaders anxious about what he’ll say
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump heads to the United Nations this week to meet with world leaders, and many of them are anxious — not just about global national security challenges, but about Trump himself.
While the stillnew president hopes to use his first appearance before the U.N. General Assembly to rally other countries against North Korea’s nuclear threats, some world leaders are still reeling from their last interactions with the somewhat testy Trump at global sum-
mits earlier this year.
Administration officials said Trump will arrive in New York with multiple missions, including trying to convince other countries to help the U.S. pressure North Korea into giving up nuclear weapons. He plans to criticize the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran and address the economic meltdown in Venezuela and the ongoing civil war in Syria.
Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the U.N., put those plans simply: The president “slaps the right people, he hugs the right people, and he comes out with the U.S. being very strong in the end.”
Trump will also pursue what his aides call “U.N. reform,” another way of calling on members to pay for United Nations projects.
U.N. members, meanwhile, will be be watching the president’s tone, some foreign policy analysts say, given his aggressive performances at this year’s NATO meeting, Group of Seven and Group of 20 summits.
There, Trump “came off as boorish and money-grubbing and often unresponsive to the concerns of partner nations,” said Stewart Patrick, senior fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations.
“At the U.N,” Patrick said, “Trump can win by surpassing expectations about what he is going to say.”
Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert with with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump “performed poorly” at previous international meetings, and diplomats are concerned about a rerun.
“The swirl of minor leaders and frazzled diplomats around U.N. headquarters can be quite disconcerting, even for relatively calm leaders,” Gowan said. “Trump may become irritable.”
But Trump’s aides say the president was pleased with his earlier summit meetings. Trump is proud of commitments by NATO members to spend more on their national defense, they offer as one example. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump has developed good relations with world leaders “so they can focus on big problems like North Korea.”
Yet Trump’s behavior at the U.N. will be highly scrutinized, especially given how he has also criticized the body over the past year.
Trump’s trip to New York City opens Monday when he and more than 120 world leaders attend a meeting on U.N. reform. The president’s major speech to the general assembly comes Tuesday morning.
On Monday, Trump will meet separately with French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among their topics: Iran and the nuclear agreement reached by President Barack Obama and U.S. allies in 2015.
The Trump administration has recertified the Iran agreement, but Trump himself continues to claim that Tehran is violating “the spirit” of the agreement in which the Iranians give up the means to make nuclear weapons in exchange for reduction of sanctions by the U.S. and its allies.