As US President Donald J Trump stood behind the pulpit to deliver his address to global leaders and representatives at the United Nations General Assembly, he started off in the most unexpected of ways. It was surprising, even as surprises from the White House have become the new normal.
“I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter because the teleprompter is not working,” he said half-jokingly and half-mockingly, promising to speak from the heart instead. “I can only say that whoever’s operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.”
In a speech that ran up to almost an hour—three times the duration originally allotted him—Trump meandered from his focused attack on illegal immigrants and climate change advocates to his claim of ending seven “unendable” wars and bad infrastructure in the UN building. However, the core message was an unmistakable rewiring of America’s engagement with the world, and a reinvention of a rather difficult history with immigrants in a land otherwise epitomised as the “land of immigrants”.
Peace in the time of Trump
The golden era in America, in the words of President Trump, is synonymous with his two terms. The four years during which his predecessor, President Joe Biden, promised to “restore America’s soul” exemplified a yawning gap in Trump’s project to “Make America Great Again”.
“One year ago, our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close,” he said. What he meant by the “hottest country” is left to anyone’s imagination.
Unlike previous presidential transitions at the White House, Trump’s presidency marks a sharp break from his predecessors. He called Biden the “worst president in American history.” Not surprisingly, this speech was also a self-eulogy in superlatives. He claimed to have ended seven wars in his second term, immediately putting fact-checkers to work. In fact, the two wars on which he has invested the most political capital, the ones in Ukraine and Gaza, are still beyond any grasp of peace. That the UN has become increasingly irrelevant, at least in questions of war and peace, is a proposition that predates Trump. However, the speech was a frontal assault by a US President, unlike anything seen before. It will be studied in posterity as a case of the complex history of American presidents and the UN.
“It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them,” he said.
From pushing NATO countries to increase defence spending to imposing tariffs that have shaken traditional allies as well as the most consequential of strategic partners, the Trump model of American foreign policy is unlike any in the recent past. According to many, it is harming the United States itself and blinding the lights on the city upon the hill. The argument runs diametrically opposite to what President Trump claims is a golden era for the country.
Also read: Trump’s selling a new Gaza peace plan to the Islamic world. That has no takers on the ground
The double-tailed monster
At the UNGA, President Trump conjured up a double-tailed monster of illegal immigrants and climate change advocates.
“I hate to see [Europe] being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake and they cannot let that happen any longer,” he said.
Trump accused the UN of not only failing to solve problems, but also adding new ones and leading a “globalist migration agenda”. Undoubtedly, handling migration, both documented and undocumented, is an indelible part of human history and will continue to animate how countries handle the questions of demography, mobility, and economics. However, the US’ domestic fissures in dealing with immigration are now spilling over onto the global platform, as Trump pushes the American model as the answer to globalisation’s complex interplay of identity, politics, security, and economics.
“Proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people they have never seen before with different customs, religions, with different everything,” he said. “Both the immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”
The question of energy mix—cutting down on carbon footprints and ramping up affordable, technologically viable renewables—is now an unmistakable feature of any country’s path to growth and development. But Trump’s frontal tirade against renewables itself as “a joke” and “the greatest con job ever”, as well as his walking out of the Paris Climate Agreement twice, has injected new disorderly dynamics into this complex transition.
“Europe, on the other hand, has a long way to go with many countries being on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda,” he said.
Amid the rant, he took quite a long detour, lamenting the infrastructure of the UN building. He claimed that he would have done a much better job at a much cheaper price, giving the building “marble floors” and “mahogany walls” if he, in his avatar as a real estate developer, had won the bid years ago.
Even by Trump’s standards, the speech threw up many surprises in both content and style, keeping world leaders on their toes.
If there is one thing Trump has proven in the past eight months, it is that the world needs to take note of what he says—it might translate into action in 24 hours or less, irrespective of the consequences. His speeches are no longer mere campaign banter. They are the words of the leader of a country that still has comparatively the strongest material capabilities, economic or otherwise, to shape and reshape all aspects of global governance.
Global leaders and policymakers are constantly fastening their seat belts for a turbulence that has become the norm in world politics, and more particularly, in engaging the US. America’s material capabilities vis-à-vis its ability to shape global and regional outcomes are still relatively unchallenged, but the compass that guides Washington’s power has become increasingly uncertain.
Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant at the Chintan Research Foundation, New Delhi.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)