Editor’s note: Trump’s speech prompted alarm from many other observers, too.
President Donald Trump gave a speech to the United Nations on Tuesday that was really strange, both geopolitically and psychologically. He offered up what you might call a Trumpist vision of the world, but combined it with some really bizarre personal obsessions and boasts. This got us thinking, what if the self-obsessed craziness from Trump is itself the key message the world will receive about the United States? Many nations were closely monitoring what Trump said today, But what if they look at the fact that we elected this man president as a sign of just how unreliable an actor in the world the United States has become? I’ve got to think that many countries around the world are still hoping for something better from us. Should they just give up at this point? And if so, what does that mean? We’re trying to parse our way through all of this with international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, one of our favorite observers of global affairs. Nick, thanks for coming on in this great day.
Sargent: So in his speech, Trump tore into the United Nations on many levels, describing it as a failure and even saying to all those assembled, “your countries are going to hell.” He reiterated that the United States is basically withdrawing from the global battle to constrain climate change. And he essentially made it clear that the U.S.’s official position now is utter contempt for global institutions. Nick, what was your bottom line takeaway on what Trump did here?
And with the vision of the world of everybody more isolated and divided that the whole post-World War II vision of the UN as a way to solve joint problems together is something that the United States, which helped set up the UN and even got the headquarters in the US first in San Francisco, now in New York, to show how the U.S. played a central role to reject that worldview and those institutions that have helped make the world more peaceful and prosperous than it otherwise would’ve.
President Trump (voiceover): What is that all about? That’s not Europe. That’s not the Europe that I love and know. All in the name of pretending to stop the global warming hoax. The entire globalist concept of asking successful industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected completely and totally, and it must be immediate.
Grossman: At two different levels. One where the United States, which has not been the best on this stuff, especially under previous Trump administration when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, has not been the best on this already, is essentially out and that this makes a big problem for dealing with climate change because there is essentially a free rider problem, that unless everybody is all fighting it, or at least all major economies are all in on carbon reductions, it doesn’t work. If the United States increases carbon production, that could then dwarf the reductions that are done in other places. So already that’s going to make them less likely to try on their own and have less faith in the possibility of collective action that could then address the problem. It also, from a national interest perspective, is one showing that the U.S. is effectively abandoning the future. That China is announcing record amounts of solar and wind production. They are far ahead of the rest of the world. They’re exporting it to a lot of other people. And the United States is throwing away what in some cases were advantages in these new technologies. And so a lot of the world is looking to it as we’ll have to buy from China. And you know what? Who is going to be the responsible leader? I mean, a lot of them don’t want to work with China. There are all sorts of problems with Chinese authoritarianism. And yet, the Chinese are offering something that is at least stable and based in reality, which the United States is telling the world that we’re not interested in.
Grossman: Yes, and causing problems, additional ones with foreign relations. Recently, that Hyundai plant that the Trump administration raided and really infuriated South Korea. A lot of South Koreans were setting it up, this multi-billion dollar investment in Georgia, setting up the plant to then run and ICE raids them and arrests them. And they are quite angry about it. And one of the things that factory was working on was batteries.
Sargent: I want to flag what Trump said about his unilateral blowing up of boats in the Caribbean Sea. This is highly lawless. At least three boats have been sunk. This way, I’m not exactly sure what the total casualty rate is at this point, it’s around, rivaling around 20. It hasn’t been authorized by Congress. The administration isn’t pretending to offer a serious legal or substantive rationale for it. Listen to this.
Sargent: Nick, note that Trump frames this as a warning to all those assembled, as if they should be on notice, that if they smuggle drugs into the U.S., they will be murdered by the U.S. military. What was the point of saying this to this audience of world leaders, do you think?
But to the extent there was a message there to the rest of the world, it was of the United States lawlessness and that it would also be lawless in a way that doesn’t even really make strategic sense. So there were countries that were more forgiving, even if they were very critical of things like U.S. drone strikes against Al Qaeda, because they also opposed Al Qaeda and were also threatened by Al Qaeda. Whereas with the Caribbean, not only, as you mentioned, is it blatantly against U.S. domestic law and international law. I haven’t even seen an attempt by the administration to even link it to any actual law, which is something that is unprecedented. Again, with all those drone strikes, they would link back to, for example, an authorization for the use of military force passed by Congress.
So we’ve already got the lie that says that drugs are like a military weapon. We’ve already got on top of that, the lie that says that if there are drug deaths anywhere, that that constitutes the equivalent of a foreign army that is killing people, you know, with guns and bombs and the like. And we have all the law stuff that doesn’t make sense, but on top of that, is that the strategy on its own terms makes no sense. So I can’t even really figure out who it is that they are trying to get to do something else. Do they want cartels to use land routes more? Do they want Venezuela to do something? It’s not clear and they haven’t communicated.
Grossman: Precisely. And that that is a lot of international law that the United States set up that overall has served American interests, that the U.S. long had an army that aspired for professionalism and would do court marshaling and handle its own war criminals. And that has been something that Trump has thrown away not just now, but was in his first term that he pardoned convicted war criminals, ones that, you know, some pretty nasty crimes and things that are rare to convict. Eddie Gallagher, and there’s another one named Lawrence, who both got convicted for it, and [Trump] pardoned them. And so that was already sending signal both to the military and to the world that the United States plans on abandoning what amounts to hundreds of years, really centuries of developed through blood international law, things that people have heard of me. But if you don’t follow this, like the Geneva Conventions.
Reporter (voiceover): Would you back up NATO allies? You said that you felt that they should shoot down the air, the Russian aircraft. Would you back them up? Would the United States help them out in some way?
Sargent: Nick, here again, he brings it back to himself, hailing his supposedly great success in getting NATO countries to pay more and seems favorably disposed toward NATO in some ways, but then he said he might not back up our allies. What did you make of it?
So, where he’s trying to make it more about himself, but NATO defense spending increases is something that every U.S. president has tried to get. And it started in 2014 under Obama, not under Trump. And it’s not that Obama deserves credit for that. The thing that did it was Russia taking Crimea from Ukraine. So the Europeans got scared. And you know when else where there was a big defense spending increase starting in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Europeans got more scared. And so when Trump says that it depends, that undermines the core feature of NATO.
Sargent: Then after all that, Trump did this explosive tweet rant in which he claimed, “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.” What on earth, Nick? How do we square all these things?
This is something that everybody who understood this even a slightest bit said that it was going to be difficult and that the reasons for it are larger and structural that no, this is not something where Putin is your friend and therefore will do you a favor when of course, Putin is just playing him in the first place. But even so, international relations is not driven by leaders doing favors. Putin did not invade Ukraine because he disliked Joe Biden. That is not how this stuff works at all, but it is how a lot of it works in the weird fiction of the Fox News cinematic universe, where everything is the individual president’s doing and the idea of toughness is bluster as opposed to real strength in the world, which comes from things like credibly supporting allies with military weapons.
Grossman: Right, or claimed that Russia somehow would not have done it if he were president, which is one, obviously not true in that there’s been Russian aggression in both of his presidencies, as well as in addition to other things around the world. But that it’s just simply not how the world works.
Sargent: Yeah, it’s just so distressing. And then, of course, there’s the personal stuff, which we have to get into. In addition to all that, Trump boasted about his high poll numbers and told his audience he should win the Nobel Peace Prize. He again floated his silly lie about solving a bunch of global conflicts. But that aside, what’s the point of that, Nick? What’s the point of saying this stuff to this audience? Is it just to say America is done with all of you, fuck off? Is that the point?
And when you mentioned the lie about the seven wars, if we look into that, the wars that he’s claiming that he stopped, some of which are still fighting, like Congo and Rwanda, they’re still fighting there. Some of which say he was not involved, like India, Pakistan. And India and Pakistan would certainly find it news to them that their whole issue has been solved. But one that stands out to me was he claims to have made peace between Israel and Iran, which first off are not at peace. But if you notice, the claim there is the U.S. bombed Iran and then stopped without achieving its goals and all the underlying issues remain. But that mere act of bombing somebody and then stopping is an achievement in some way where that’s not something that is peace, let alone something that is deserving of a peace prize.
Grossman: So, I take it extremely seriously. It is just it is a speech. The speech by itself doesn’t mean all that much. But because the speech is connected to it is a distillation of a worldview and of dramatic changes in US foreign policy of no less than the U.S. switching sides in the world from where it has been. On the really broad high level sense of like democracy versus authoritarianism of where it has been since World War II, you know, for nearly 80 years and the U.S. has effectively flipped in its stances on there and everybody is adjusting to it. But as they tell themselves, maybe it’ll just blow over or maybe it’s just a negotiating tactic. And I got to say for all those pundits, if it really is some sort of savvy negotiating tactic that is increasing leverage, is there even a single example where that has yielded some sort of benefit for the United States?
Sargent: Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you just to wrap this up very briefly. Can the Democratic president repair this?
And a concrete example of this one’s that I think a lot of people outside of national security spaces maybe don’t pay attention to, but it’s things like purchases for high level military technology, things like think stealth fighters, it takes a long time. There’s a long leeway. You don’t make that, you don’t buy it this year and get it in a few months. You take these really long multi-year plans and already a number of the Europeans have shifted away from American military equipment. And that means less U.S. [geopolitical reach], we’re not as close with them anymore. It’ll mean less U.S. leverage. It’ll mean less help for other U.S. activity in the future. And that’s not something that’s about to be reversed because they know that they can’t rely on the U.S. promises long term, which really sucks, but I can’t blame them for it because that’s just the reality of it.
Grossman: It’s not great, but thanks for having me.
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