Global Governance 23 (2017), 143–149

GLOBAL FORUM

Global Governance, the United Nations, and

the Challenge of Trumping Trump

Bruce W. Jentleson

reassurance. Or that given that I served as a foreign policy adviser to the

I WISH, DEAR COLLEAGUES, THAT I COULD PROVIDE “IT WON’T BE SO BAD”

Hillary Clinton campaign and in previous Democratic administrations, that

it’s my sour grapes. The end may not be nigh, but I can’t but be pessimistic
about President Donald Trump and global governance and the United
Nations in particular.
There are three bases for this view.
First is the overall “America First” approach to foreign policy. When
this term was coined in the 1930s, it was by isolationist groups seeking to
keep the United States out of the war in Europe. Trump’s version is not iso-
lationism in the sense of just coming home and pulling up the drawbridges.
It is an assertive nationalism that imposes the costs and burdens on others:
the 45 percent surcharge on Chinese imports, the wall against and paid for
by Mexico, the you-owe-us to traditional allies, the you-deal-with-them ban
on refugees and Muslims entering the United States. Some of the specifics
may vary now in office; he is after all a dealmaker. But the thrust is likely
to continue to be this belief that the world owes America more than Amer-
ica owes the world, and that the United States will use its power at times
and places and in manners of its own choosing.
Second are policy positions that most bear on the United Nations. The
UN doesn’t solve problems, Trump said during the transition, it mostly
wastes time and money. “It is just a club for people to get together,” he
tweeted, “talk and have a good time. So sad!”1 Trump’s original national
security adviser had earlier associated himself via a Twitter retweet with the
claim that Agenda 21, the UN’s climate change and sustainable develop-
ment program, was secretly intended to create a one world religion that
would prohibit Christianity.2 And son Donald Trump Jr.’s off-color colored
candy rationalization for his father’s position on banning Syrian refugees:
“If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would
you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”3 UN ambassador
Nikki Haley did not come to office carrying such rhetorical-ideological
baggage, but showed she could fall into line with the threat in her very first

143
144 Global Governance, the United Nations, and the Challenge of Trumping Trump

remarks once in office that the United States would be “taking names” of
those who didn’t support US positions.4 While on some issues she has at
least partially differed from the White House position, this is generally
seen as diversionary given that she is both lacking in foreign policy expe-
rience and politically not as close to President Trump as were UN ambas-
sadors Madeleine Albright to President Bill Clinton or Susan Rice and
Samantha Power to President Barack Obama. The Republican-controlled
Congress reinforces UN-bashing dispositions. The conservative think tank
Heritage Foundation published a paper during the transition re-upping
long-standing anti-UN measures such as withholding dues and withdrawing
from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
and the Human Rights Council. A number of Republican Senators (some
Democrats as well) threatened funding cuts and other measures retaliating
against UN Security Council Resolution 2334, condemning and reaffirming
the illegality of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, approved
23 December 2016 by 14−0 with the Obama administration abstaining.
Nor is it just general attitudinal dispositions toward the UN. On key
issues on which the UN is centrally involved, Trump’s positions have been
rejectionist. His response to Security Council Resolution 2334 was that “as
to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.”5 His US ambassador to
Israel, David Friedman, has been an ardent opponent of a two-state solution
and the basic land-for-peace terms established in Security Council Resolu-
tions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), indeed a financial supporter of some of the
more egregious settlement outposts. On climate change, Trump situated him-
self firmly in the denialist camp threatening to withdraw from the Paris
agreement. He rescinded Obama’s clean power and pro-renewable measures
and chose a bevy of climate change deniers and opponents for top-level
appointments: former Exxon chief executive officer (CEO) Rex Tillerson as
secretary of state, Environmental Protection Agency critic Scott Pruitt as
EPA administrator, former Texas governor Rick Perry as secretary of energy,
and antienvironmentalist Ryan Zinke as secretary of the interior. On the Iran
nuclear nonproliferation agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), here too there’s been some backtracking at least from the threat to
withdraw on day one. Defense secretary James Mattis on the one hand has
taken a pragmatic position of breaking the deal being worse than working
with its flaws, and on the other is known as a hawk on Iran. On the Respon-
sibility to Protect (R2P), an issue that I have written on and also worked on
while in the State Department (2009−2011), neither the normative nor strate-
gic bases have much fit in the Trump worldview.6
The third cause for concern is Trump’s impetuous decision style. Major
US foreign policy failures (e.g., Bay of Pigs, 1961; Iraq War, 2003) have
resulted from executive branch decisionmaking processes that have been
insufficiently deliberative, driven more by groupthink than analytic assess-
 Bruce W. Jentleson 145

ment of a range of policy options, and infused with presidents’ political cal-
culations and ideological inclinations. On top of that is Trump’s disposi-
tional aversion to the kind of collective or collaborative decisionmaking
and policy development that are required at the UN and in other multilat-
eral settings. His business experience has been as a CEO in a company that
is not accountable to an independent board of directors. The Trump Orga-
nization is the Trump Organization: his company, his family’s company, no
one above him and them. The notion that as president of the United States
he can’t just do what he wants to do, that the United States can’t just do
what it wants to do, is an alien one. His self-heralded deal-making has been
much more about imposing the terms of the deal on weaker others than on
persuading partners about shared interests. Now as holder of the most pow-
erful office in the most powerful country, no wonder he sees even less of a
need to persuade rather than just impose.
I’ve been hearing the arguments about how despite all this, the presi-
dency will have a tempering effect on Mr. Trump. The American version of
the “Deep State” will have ways to keep at least some policies on a rela-
tively even keel. Checks and balances will kick in, even with a Republican-
controlled Congress, as some politicians see their own interests in being
less than rubber stamps. Some chunk of Trump voters will realize that
they’ve been duped, and anti-Trump progressives will find their mojo. The
man values being successful (it’s the essence of his self-concept) and as he
sees some of his policies and attitudes dragging him down, he’ll do what
he’s long done so well, which is reinvent himself, not to the point of a
global cosmopolitanist but as enough of a pragmatist to find some common
ground with others, perhaps even with the United Nations. He even did at
one point include “it has potential” in an otherwise anti-UN tweet. He had
a courtesy phone call during the transition with new Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres. Maybe his affinity for so many things New York will
carry from midtown to that building along the East River.
It’d be great if some of this turns out true.
But if not, or even in the meantime, those of us who believe the world
needs a more effective UN have our own agenda to address. For the problems
plaguing the UN are more than just what the US has and has not done: the
Haiti cholera scandal, sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in Central African
Republic, Russia on Syria, Human Rights Council hypocrisy, the Paris cli-
mate change agreement that while robust relative to past efforts still falls well
short of what is needed, the World Food Programme for which member states
are providing barely half the support despite widespread drought and massive
refugee flows, murderous leaders’ self-protecting manipulation of sover-
eignty strict constructionism to caricaturize and constrain the appropriate
applicability of R2P. . . . The list goes on of problems on which US policy
neither has been the principal cause nor could ever be the sole solution.
146 Global Governance, the United Nations, and the Challenge of Trumping Trump

In recent years, there have been issues on which the UN has been
stymied by US opposition (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol). But there also have
been ones on which some limited progress has been made despite US oppo-
sition, and on which the limiting factors have been only in part US opposi-
tion (e.g., the International Criminal Court). And there have been issues on
which the United States has not been supportive, but quite substantial
progress has been made (e.g., the landmine treaty). Some recent research
shows certain advantages for multilateral treaty making when the United
States is not involved.7
So how can we trump the Trump challenge and achieve at least some
significant progress on making the UN more effective?
One potentially helpful element is that Trump’s antagonism can be an
incentive and opportunity for other major and emerging powers to take the
lead in being pro-UN. This will take real diplomatic acumen from Secretary-
General Guterres to play on the US forfeiture without overly exacerbating
his Washington problem while making clear to Russia, China, Europe, and
any others who would lay claim to the pro-UN mantle that it’s about results
not just rhetoric. No country, to be sure, is or ever will be purely multilater-
alist. Russia nods toward the UN when useful for criticizing and constrain-
ing the United States, but goes its own way when it does things such as
annex Crimea and invade Ukraine, and concocts rationales for wantonly
opposing Security Council action on Syria. China has blocked any official
UN meetings with the Dalai Lama, refuses to recognize the 2016 World
Court ruling applying the law of the sea treaty to disputes in the South China
Sea, and has been a strict constructionist on state sovereignty in ways that
have impeded peacekeeping and R2P. So this can’t just be more convenient
positioning of claiming to be more multilateral than the United States; it has
to be commitment to genuinely strengthening the institution.
Climate change is a good example. The Paris agreement finally estab-
lished some acceptance of the principle of “common but differentiated
responsibilities” that has been crucial to the Montreal Protocol on Ozone
Depletion, arguably the most effective environmental multilateral agree-
ment, by which developed countries accept their greater responsibility for
bearing costs (the “differentiated” part) and developing countries also
accept a share of the costs given the need for collective action (the “com-
mon” part). No doubt the emissions reduction goals will be much harder to
reach with the Trump administration reneging on US commitments. And
this risks setting a convenient precedent for others to do the same. But
there also are positive incentives; for example, for China. After years of
resisting what China viewed as the international imposition of obligations
not in its own national interest (including leading efforts at the 2009
Copenhagen conference to limit agreement), it joined with the United
States as a leader of the Paris agreement. The difference is that its own
 Bruce W. Jentleson 147

national interest calculation has shifted as the public health costs from its
massive air pollution and other aspects of a carbon-intensive economy
have increased drastically. China is now the leading investor in renew-
ables, injecting more investment to solar and wind than the United States
and European Union combined. China’s current Five Year Plan
(2016−2020) calls for another $360 billion in investment in renewables,
increasing wind and solar capacity over the next fifteen years by as much
as now exists globally. It also sets lower targets for coal consumption. Tak-
ing on more global leadership on climate change would fit with other of
China’s forays into economic multilateralism as with the Asian Infrastruc-
ture Investment Bank, some greater renminbi currency convertibility, and
President Xi Jinping’s speech at the January 2017 Davos World Economic
Forum marking the first such appearance by a Chinese president.
More generally, there is much the UN needs to do for itself as internal
reform.

1. Peacekeeping reform: that doesn’t require a major US role and

is not necessarily something that even a Trump administration
would oppose.

2. Global pandemic prevention capacity: as the Ebola and Zika

outbreaks showed, the World Health Organization desperately
needs strengthening.

3. Sustainable Development Goals: concern is already mounting

about momentum being lost since their initial proclamation.

4. Internal bureaucratic reform: there is plenty to be done.

5. Reinvigorating Dag Hammarskjöld’s vision of an international

civil service: of course, there always will be political plums and
country quotas, but this has gone way too far; much more needs
to be done to cultivate a new generation of experts, globally rep-
resentative while also merit based with skills across the full
range of the UN’s broad portfolio.

Speaking of Hammarskjöld, who more than any other holder of the

office showed what a strong and determined Secretary-General can con-
tribute to global peace and security, Guterres needs to be similarly empow-
ered. Of course, the Secretary-General has to be sensitive to the interests of
member states. But he also must be independent and assertive as warranted
by the demands of international peace and security, what Hammarskjöld
called the Secretary-General’s “exclusively international obligation under
148 Global Governance, the United Nations, and the Challenge of Trumping Trump

the Charter and without subservience to a particular national or ideological

attitude.”8 Article 99 of the UN Charter confers on the Secretary-General
authority to take the initiative “to bring to the attention of the Security
Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of
international peace and security.” Article 100 mandates member nations “to
respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the
Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the dis-
charge of their responsibilities.” This may sound all so quaint, legalistic, and
politically unrealistic. But the trade-off of some encroachment on national
prerogatives for a UN that is more effective at what only the UN can do and
what even the major powers need the UN to do can be a net positive even
for the major powers: actually, given the global scope of their interests espe-
cially for the major powers. So too for smaller and less powerful countries
who have less capacity of their own and less other recourse globally.9
In my 2011 John Holmes Memorial Lecture to the Academic Council
of the United Nations System (ACUNS), and in an ensuing article in this
journal, I offered an astronomical metaphor of the transition that the inter-
national system is undergoing as from the Cold War−era “Ptolemaic” world
to the twenty-first-century “Copernican” world.10 Just as Ptolemy had the
Earth at the center with all other planets revolving around it, so too the
dominant view in the Cold War and the initial post−Cold War period was of
the United States at the center diplomatically, militarily, economically, and
ideologically. Whether for the better as in the view of some, or for the
worse as in the view of others, this was a roughly accurate depiction of
power dynamics in that era. But the emerging twenty-first-century system
is more like Copernicus’s world: the Earth/United States in its own orbit
not at the center; other countries/planets in their own orbits based on their
own national interests, identities, and domestic politics; and the UN and
other elements of global governance as the “Sun” needed to keep countries/
planets from crashing into each other. We’ve seen all too many examples
for all too long of what happens without a UN and other aspects of global
governance strong enough to provide a Sun-like stabilizing effect. A Trump
administration makes all of this all the more difficult. It also makes trump-
ing the Trump challenge all the more necessary.

Bruce W. Jentleson is professor of public policy and political science at the Sanford
Notes
School of Public Policy, Duke University. He is a global fellow of the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonresident senior fellow of the Chicago
Council on Global Affairs, co-director of the Bridging the Gap Project, and the
2015−2016 Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations
at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. He has served in a number of US
foreign policy positions, most recently as senior adviser to the US State Department
policy planning director (2009−2011). He has written numerous books and articles
 Bruce W. Jentleson 149

including Transformational Statesmanship: Difficult, Possible, Necessary (forth-

coming).
1. Paulina Firozi, “Trump: UN Just a Club for People to Get Together, Talk,”
The Hill, 26 December 2016, http://thehill.com/policy/international/311846-trump
-calls-un-a-club-for-people-to-get-together-talk-and-have-a-good.
2. Andrew Kacszynzki, “On Twitter, Michael Flynn Interacted with Alt-Right,”
CNN, 18 November 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/kfile-flynn-tweets.
3. Christine Hauser, “Donald Trump Jr. Compares Syrian Refugees to Skittles
that ‘Would Kill You,’” New York Times, 26 September 2016, www.nytimes.com
/2016/09/21/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-faces-backlash-after-comparing-syrian
-refugees-to-skittles-that-can-kill.html.
4. Somini Sengupta, “Nikki Haley Puts UN on Notice: US Is Taking Names,”
New York Times, 27 January 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/world/americas
/nikki-haley-united-nations.html?_r=0.
5. Donald J. Trump, Twitter, 23 December 2016, https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump
/status/812390964740427776?lang=en.
6. See, for example, Bruce W. Jentleson, “The United States and R2P: Chal-
lenges of Policy Prioritization, Bureaucratic Institutionalization, Strategy, and Inter-
national Collaboration,” in Alex Bellamy and Tim Dunne, eds., The Oxford Hand-
book on the Responsibility to Protect (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). I
also worked on these issues while in government, most recently in 2009–2011 as
senior adviser to the State Department Policy Planning director.
7. Karolina M. Milewicz and Duncan Snidal, “Cooperation by Treaty: The
Role of Multilateral Powers,” International Organization 70 (2016): 823–844.
8. Roger Lipsey, Hammarskjöld: A Life (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2013), p. 505.
9. Bruce W. Jentleson, “Dear Mr. Guterres: Please Be a Hammarskjöldian
Secretary General,” PassBlue, 19 October 2016, www.passblue.com/2016/10/19
/dear-mr-guterres-please-be-a-hammarskjoldian-secretary-general, drawn from a
chapter in my forthcoming book Transformational Statesmanship: Difficult, Possi-
ble, Necessary (New York: Norton).
10. Bruce W. Jentleson, “Global Governance in a Copernican World,” Global
Governance 18, no. 2 (2012): 133–148.
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