After Nikki Haley, what’s next for UN?

New ambassador won’t have as much freedom

Theories are banging around the Beltway faster than commuter traffic about why Nikki Haley chose to resign as the ambassador to the United Nations and why she did it now, one month before the midterm elections.

There’s the term limits theory that Haley referred to in her formal letter of resignation; there’s the “I need to earn more money theory,” particularly after years of public service; and then there’s this: In the post-Kavanaugh hearings era, it’s not wise to be too closely identified with a president who mocks victims of sexual assault, particularly if you have presidential aspirations, although that problem is going to conflict with Haley’s commitment to campaign for Trump’s re-election.

One thing is clear. Unless the president plans to choose Ivanka Trump (and the government’s nepotism policy and smart politics are likely to prevent that), whoever gets that job will not have Haley’s freedom to speak out or her impact on policy or the president.

America has had strong ambassadors to the U.N. before — Jeanne Kirkpatrick, John Negroponte, Tom Pickering and John Bolton come to mind. But they functioned within a system that had a greater structure and constraints than marked Haley’s first year.

In a way Haley was the lone ranger — a charismatic woman with high public approval ratings and a close relationship with Trump. She spoke out on issues from Iran to Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seemingly without regard to encroaching on the nearly invisible Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and a practically dysfunctional National Security Council.

That party is over.

Haley’s star started to dim with the appointments of Mike Pompeo and Bolton. Trump now has two foreignpolicy heavyweights — a smart secretary of State who has a very good relationship with the president and a national security adviser who has held Haley’s job in New York and is wellversed in the art of bureaucratic war- fare. There’s scant room for an independent and outspoken ambassador crossing swords with these strong personalities.

Before Haley was a diplomat, she was (and still is) a calculating and ambitious politician. As a rising star in the Republican Party, the ambassador was all too happy to check four of Trump’s political boxes: pleasing Israel, Christian evangelicals, conservative Republicans and the American Jewish community, especially those with deep pockets for GOP causes and candidates. And what’s remarkable is that she did all of this with a warm and engaging persona, a quick mastery of the issues and even a capacity to challenge the president on issues such as Russia without suffering fatal consequences. All of this is a testament to her formidable political skills and, even as she carried out Trump’s policies, an independent streak.

But Haley’s successor will not have to operate under the glare of the diplomatic spotlight. The three big foreign policy issues on the president’s plate for the next two years — defanging Iran, denuclearizing North Korea, and derailing China’s expansionist policies — are politically charged, so the policy and the diplomacy will be controlled by the White House and the State Department. Ditto if the White House is successful in relaunching Middle East peace negotiations. But sanctions policy on both North Korea and Iran will be driven by the Treasury Department, and trade negotiations and tariff policies will be fought out between the White House and the Commerce and Treasury Departments.

Haley’s successor will have a seat at the table, but it might as well be empty because whoever is chosen and no matter how well-spoken and qualified, the new ambassador to the U.N. — unlike Haley — is more than likely to speak softly and carry a small stick.

Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is a former State Department adviser and a Middle East negotiator. Richard Sokolsky, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was a member of the secretary of State’s Office of Policy Planning from 2005-15.