President Trump, in declaring that sovereignty should be the guiding principle of affairs between nations, sketched out a radically different vision of the world order than his forebears, who founded the United Nations after World War II to deal collectively with problems they believed would transcend borders.
Mr. Trump offered the General Assembly a strikingly selective definition of sovereignty, threatening to act aggressively against countries like North Korea, Iran and Venezuela, whose policies he opposes, yet saying almost nothing about Russia, which seized territory from its neighbor Ukraine, and meddled in the American presidential election.
But more important than how he defined sovereignty was Mr. Trump’s adoption of the word itself — language more familiar to small countries, guarding themselves against the incursions of larger neighbors or defying the judgments of a global elite, than to a superpower that fashioned a web of global institutions to enshrine its national interests.
“I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first,” Mr. Trump declared to a smattering of applause from an audience that included gimlet-eyed diplomats from some of the countries he criticized.
Mr. Trump rooted his philosophy in President Harry S. Truman, the Marshall Plan and the restoration of Europe. But the vision he articulated was smaller and more self-interested. America, he said, would no longer enter into “one-sided” alliances or agreements. It would no longer shoulder an unfair financial burden in bodies like the United Nations.
“As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interest above all else,” the president declared.
It was a defiant speech, peppered with threats and denunciations. Some critics predicted that the very countries Mr. Trump condemned would someday fling his words back at him.
But it was more remarkable for how Mr. Trump departed from decades of bipartisan foreign-policy consensus. Even if they fell short, American presidents have generally staked out a global role for the United States in confronting the world’s problems.
Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, pledged America’s commitment to global institutions the first time he appeared before the United Nations in September 2009. In his speech, he used the word sovereign only once and cited it as an explanation for why “this body has often become a forum for sowing discord instead of forging common ground.”
Mr. Trump, by contrast, used the words sovereign or sovereignty 21 times. “Our success,” he said, “depends on a coalition of strong, independent nations that embrace their sovereignty, to promote security, prosperity, and peace for themselves and for the world.”
Strong, sovereign nations, he said, keep their citizens safe and enable them to prosper economically. Strong, sovereign nations, he said, can join together to fight common threats and constitute the irreducible building blocks of world institutions like the United Nations.
Mr. Trump is hardly the first leader to invoke sovereignty as a credo. Its roots go back to Roman times. It has been elaborated in agreements like the Peace of Westphalia, which gave rise to the principle of non-interference in a country’s internal affairs. And it has been litigated through 20th-century upheavals like the Communist revolution in China.
Yet some foreign-policy experts said Mr. Trump’s definition was problematic because he applied it inconsistently.
Sourced from the New York Times and re-edited for The Naga Republic
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