NEW YORK (AP) — Faced with growing tumult at
home and abroad, President Donald Trump heads into his three-day visit
to the United Nations this week hoping to lean on strained alliances
while fending off questions about whether he sought foreign help to damage a political rival.
Trump’s
latest U.N. trip comes after nearly three years of an “America First”
foreign policy that has unsettled allies and shredded multinational
pacts.
A centerpiece of this year’s U.N. schedule will be a Monday session on climate change that Trump plans to skip.
Instead,
he will address a meeting about the persecution of religious
minorities, particularly Christians, an issue that resonates with
Trump’s evangelical supporters.
The
president arrived in New York on Sunday against a backdrop of swirling
international tensions, including questions about his relationship with Ukraine
, the uncertain future of Brexit, the U.S. trade war with China,
stalled nuclear negotiations with North Korea and a weakening global
economy.
The most immediate challenge may be Iran.
Trump
will try to convince skeptical global capitals to help build a
coalition to confront Tehran after the United States blamed it for last
week’s strike at a Saudi Arabia oil field.
“Well,
I always like a coalition,” Trump said Friday, before going on to
complain that under the old Iran nuclear deal, “everyone else is making
money and we’re not.”
Trump’s fulfillment of
a campaign promise to exit the Iran nuclear deal has had wide ripple
effects, leading Tehran to bolster its nuclear capabilities and
dismaying European capitals who worked to establish the original
agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron,
in particular, has been trying to lead Trump back to a deal and has
suggested that the U.S. president meet with Iranian leader Hassan
Rouhani on the sidelines of the U.N. meetings.
Trump said Sunday that while “nothing is ever off the table completely” he had no intention of meeting with Rouhani.
Tensions
between Washington and Tehran spiked after a Saudi Arabia oil field was
partially destroyed in an attack that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
blamed on Iran and deemed “an act of war.”
Now Trump will try to enlist wary world leaders in a collective effort to contain Iran.
“He
needs to win over traditional allies to do what traditional allies do,
to band together against common threats,” said Jon Alterman of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The attacks last
weekend in Saudi Arabia are precisely the kind of thing that the U.N.
was intended to address, to create rules for international behavior and
opportunities for collective action.”
Ukraine
also looms large on Trump’s schedule. Even one week ago, a one-on-one
meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy would have been
seen largely as an afterthought.
But Trump’s
meeting on Wednesday with Zelenskiy will come just days after
revelations that the president urged his Ukrainian counterpart in a July
phone call to investigate the activities of the son of former Vice
President Joe Biden. Trump said he was concerned about corruption;
Democrats frame his actions as an effort to pressure Zelenskiy to dig up
damaging material on a potential 2020 rival.
That
pressure is the subject of a whistleblower’s complaint that the
administration has refused to turn over to members of Congress, setting
up a showdown with Democrats.
Trump is
defending himself against the intelligence official’s complaint,
asserting that it comes from a “partisan whistleblower,” though the
president also said he doesn’t know the whistleblower’s identity.
He
insisted Sunday his conversation with Zelenskiy was “absolutely
perfect.” But Democrats believe it shows that Trump is emboldened to
seek foreign help for his reelection effort.
There are plenty of other concerns in the mix during Trump’s U.N. visit, including the U.S. trade war with China.
But
China’s Xi Jinping is not expected to attend, nor are several other
prominent world leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Among the
nations whose leaders Trump plans to meet in New York: Iraq, Poland,
Egypt, Pakistan, South Korea and Japan. He will also meet with British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, clinging to power after failed attempts to
steer his nation out of the European Union.
Trump’s
annual address to the General Assembly is scheduled for Tuesday. Two
years ago, he used the moment to deride North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as
“Little Rocket Man” and threaten to destroy North Korea.
A year ago, he drew laughter when he used his speech to recite his administration’s accomplishments.
His
theme this year, according to aides, will be to reassert America’s
determination to uphold its sovereignty and independence, especially on
issues of national security.
But others may push a different path.
“There’s
an attempt to push back against the unilateralism, against the
isolationism, against the populism that has affected not only the United
States but other countries as well,” said Jeffrey Feltman of the
Brookings Institution. “I don’t know how effective this will be, but
it’s an example of how some of our traditional allies are organizing
themselves in response to the feeling that the United States, the U.K.,
that other sort of major engines in the U.N. system no longer are
pressing the accelerator.”
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