{"id":183958,"date":"2018-10-02T05:56:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T09:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=183958"},"modified":"2018-10-02T05:56:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T09:56:02","slug":"trump-dominated-un-us-nationalism-odds-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/10\/02\/trump-dominated-un-us-nationalism-odds-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump dominated UN, but US nationalism at odds with world"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
“We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.” (File Photo<\/a>: Donald J. Trump\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMEROON, Cameroon \u2014 U.S. President Donald Trump dominated this year’s gathering of global leaders that ended Monday, but his rejection of \u201cthe ideology of globalism\u201d left America almost singlehandedly holding a nationalist banner against urgent calls from an overwhelming number countries for the\u00a0world\u00a0to work together.<\/p>\n

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened the week-long meeting last Tuesday declaring that global co-operation is the\u00a0world’s best hope and warning that \u201cmultilateralism is under fire precisely when we need it most.\u201d And General Assembly President Maria Espinosa Garces wrapped up the meeting, during which all 193 U.N. member nations spoke, saying that one of its major achievements was strong global backing for the U.N. and multilateralism.<\/p>\n

The high turnout of leaders \u2014 121 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs \u2014 \u201cis because the\u00a0world\u00a0cares about the United Nations and the\u00a0world\u00a0cares about multilateralism, and the need to strengthen the multilateral agenda,\u201d Espinosa Garces said in a news conference. And the General Assembly is the body \u201cfor international coexistence.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Trump’s speech, not long after Guterres’, poured scorn on multilateralism and touted his \u201cAmerica First\u201d policy, saying his administration has achieved more \u201cthan almost any administration in the history of our country,\u201d which sparked chuckles and outright laughter from some leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy,\u201d the U.S. president said. \u201cAmerica is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the very few countries to speak out for nationalism was Hungary, which has erected razor wire fences to keep people out. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called migration the greatest challenge in history, saying \u201cmigratory waves\u201d are creating huge security risks, destabilizing countries, and bringing terrorism to a region where it did not exist before.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international community must respect sovereignty of the countries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But speaker after speaker over the week stressed the importance of global co-operation, starting with French President Emmanuel Macron, a progressive, multilateralist, who told the General Assembly: \u201cNationalism always leads to defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada’s U.N. Ambassador Marc-Andre Blanchard told Monday’s final session that \u201cthe magnitude of the contemporary challenges the\u00a0world\u00a0is confronting\u201d \u2014 including climate change, terrorism, economic inequality, irregular migration and protracted crises \u2014 \u201crequire the\u00a0world\u00a0to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.N. is the only place where we all come together to tackle these challenges,\u201d he said, but the U.N. and other institutions established after\u00a0World\u00a0War II must work together to make them \u201cmore efficient, fairer and more inclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump faced pushback on other U.S. policies he trumpeted, including his historic meeting in June with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his \u201cpush for peace.\u201d At the same time, he insisted that tough sanctions would remain until the Korean peninsula is denuclearized.<\/p>\n

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov countered that the U.S. should consider matching Kim’s positive steps \u2014 including halting nuclear and missile tests and actions to dismantle related facilities \u2014 with an easing of sanctions.<\/p>\n

Trump also faced pushback on Iran, which he called a \u201cbrutal regime\u201d and a \u201ccorrupt dictatorship\u201d whose leaders \u201csow chaos, death and destruction.\u201d He denounced the \u201chorrible\u201d 2015 nuclear deal with Iran which the Obama administration signed along with Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, saying that’s why the U.S. withdrew and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran.<\/p>\n

But in a rebuke to Trump, foreign ministers from the five countries that still support the deal agreed at one of some 400 meetings on the sidelines of the General Assembly to establish a financial facility in the European Union to facilitate payments for Iranian imports and exports including oil \u2014 a key move sought by Tehran to counter U.S. sanctions.<\/p>\n

Another major issue at the global gathering was climate change \u2014 an issue not mentioned in Trump’s speech. It was raised not only by small islands that see an existential threat, but also by large countries with vulnerable coasts facing more deadly hurricanes and cyclones.<\/p>\n

Dominica’s Foreign Minister Francine Baron, whose Caribbean island nation was decimated by Hurricane Maria’s 180 mile-per-hour winds last September, said her prime minister’s call to all countries days later at the U.N. \u201cto come together to save our planet\u201d hasn’t been heeded.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong and around us are many who still deny the reality of climate change,\u201d she said, adding that there is still no plan to implement the 2015 Paris agreement to combat global warming, and \u201cwe have not mobilized the resources to capitalize the $100 billion per year, which was agreed upon, to assist the most vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The General Assembly meeting also put a spotlight on global conflicts and hotspots, large and small, from the seven-year-old conflict in Syria and the three-year-old war in Yemen that has sparked the\u00a0world’s worst humanitarian crisis to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Indian-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir and the Armenia-Azerbaijan clash over Nagorno-Karabakh.<\/p>\n

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro accused the U.S. of attacking his country through sanctions and other means in the meeting’s longest speech \u2014 48 minutes. The shortest was Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite at 5 minutes, according to Assembly president Espinosa Garces.<\/p>\n

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem declared that a victory over \u201cterrorism\u201d is almost at hand and demanded that \u201coccupation\u201d forces from the U.S., France and Turkey leave the country immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAMEROON, Cameroon \u2014 U.S. President Donald Trump dominated this year’s gathering of global leaders that ended Monday, but his rejection …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":182808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-edith-m-lederer","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}