The US is dooming the UN

The White House needs to understand that the United Nations isn’t America’s enemy, but potentially its best friend, if not its last best hope, says the writer. — AFP

SAY you are president of the United States and you’ve been clear that you put America First and that you disdain “globalists” and all their organs of international multilateralism, chief among them the United Nations. How do you go about discrediting those institutions?

One option is to withdraw the US formally. For example, Donald Trump began his second term by announcing that he’ll pull the country out of parts of the UN system, including its Human Rights Council, the World Health Organisation and the Paris Agreement on climate change. That just about hobbles these conventions, since fighting, say, pandemics or global warming without American participation seems futile.