Washington’s senior envoys to the United Nations took a victory lap in Senate testimony on Wednesday over the US-inspired cuts and efficiency drive at the multilateral agency, even as they slammed its inability to end the conflict in Ukraine, stem the Iran war started by the US and Israel or curb China’s growing clout.
Mike Waltz, US ambassador to the UN, touted the US$570 million in UN budget cuts, 3,000 fewer jobs and the US decision to pull out of several UN agencies, even as he defended US President Donald Trump’s threats against Nato allies and comments that “a whole civilisation will die” in Iran.
“So there is a mean tweet with a regime that’s genocidal, chants death to America,” Waltz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “You’re going to talk about some tough language, and the result of it was diplomacy. The result of it was the highest meeting in the history of the United States and the Iranian regime, with the return to the ceasefire.”
Waltz said the Trump administration has unabashedly approached the UN from the perspective of “America first” and what the institution is doing for US farmers, companies and values.
Washington would continue to support UN agencies such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the International Telecommunication Union, as well as other standard-setting bodies, while eschewing those it saw as a lost cause, such as the Human Rights Council.
“The UN has to stop doing stupid things,” said Jeff Bartos, US ambassador to the UN for Management and Reform, who was spearheading much of the US-led cost-cutting and efficiency drive. “We’re not getting our money’s worth there.”
Although Democrats on the committee expressed support for streamlining some of the UN’s cumulative waste and “bloat”, they used the opportunity to push back forcefully against the Trump administration’s version of diplomacy.
“Many Americans would agree with ‘America first’. But most people in America would not agree with America alone,” said Senator Tim Kaine, representing Virginia.
“Folks see the president trash-talking allies, talking about Canada as the 51st state, an invasion of Greenland connected to a Nato ally. They look at a president willy-nilly imposing tariffs on allies, including allies with which we are in trade surplus, like Australia.”
Democrats also acknowledged, however, that Waltz’s portfolio did not include Iran war planning, and he was attracting their frustration in part because he was the first administration official to appear before Congress since the war started.
The Trump administration, they added, has failed to consult with allies, clearly explain its objectives in attacking Iran or even appeared to anticipate the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its impact on global oil prices.
“We were not briefed on an imminent threat,” said Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. “We were not presented with information in either a classified setting or an open setting that justified the idea that there was an imminent threat.”
Waltz might have been involved in the war’s planning, however, if he had not been demoted from national security adviser after mistakenly inviting a journalist to a national security planning session on a commercial platform.
China also came under criticism for its long game at the UN, seeding the organisation with interns and junior officers over many years, allowing them to rise to power.
Analysts, however, said this is a practice many nations follow. And China, as the second-largest UN contributor, is entitled to significantly more staff positions than it currently has, given its financial support under the system’s “desirable ranges” geographic policy.
“China poses the greatest political threat to the United States over the long term. That threat is global, it is systematic, and it includes a sustained effort by the Communist Party to shape and in many cases dominate international organisations,” said Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas.
“China has taken over international organisations, made them unaccountable, and used them to advance Chinese interests against the United States and our allies. This pattern has been repeated over and over again across dozens of international organisations.”
But Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, the senior Democrat on the committee, called out the Trump administration for joining China, Russia and North Korea in February on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in refusing to condemn Moscow’s actions or demand a ceasefire.
“The United States is becoming increasingly isolated from our partners in multilateral forums,” she said. “Alliances multiply American power. But unfortunately, instead of working with Nato allies like France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the administration has been criticising them for refusing to join the US effort in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“As a result, we are now operating without shared burden, political cover or international legitimacy.”
Shaheen said she recently returned from a bipartisan trip to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. “What we heard consistently is that as the United States pulls back, China is stepping in more aggressively.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
