Trump piles Pressure on N Korea and Iran at Inaugural UN Address but fails to deliver a coherent Message

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Trump’s first speech to the UN was like a typical campaign speech we saw at his rallies across the US in the run-up to his election. It was full of rhetoric about the greatness of America, while sending threats to “rogue states” around the world.

After some self praise for the buoyant state of the American economy, Trump honed in on North Korea. If possible, the language was even more aggressive than we have previously heard.

“forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

One interesting addition to the North Korea part of the speech was his expressed gratitude for China and Russia for backing the sanctions.

“the United Nations Security Council recently held two unanimous 15-0 votes adopting hard-hitting resolutions against North Korea, and I want to thank China and Russia for joining the vote to impose sanctions”

I think Trump has finally woken up to the fact that any agreement or deal with Kim Jong Un will need to have at least some input from the Chinese, if not their outright approval. This is a point I have made since the spat erupted, back in July.

It is also interesting to note that this was the only direct reference to Russia in the speech. There was a veiled threat to Russia when he spoke of the

“threats to sovereignty from the Ukraine to the South China Sea.”

However in general it seemed evident to me that  the US-Russian relationship  isn’t a topic Trump wants to broach right now.

Trump transitioned from North to Iran without any differentiation between the regimes. It was a bit of  a throwback to George W Bush and his “axis of evil”.  His criticism of the Iranian regime was quite predictable and nothing that hasn’t really been said before

“It has turned a wealthy country, with a rich history and culture, into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.”

His quotes on the Iranian deal would be quite worrying to all those who have invested time and effort into it;

“The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

Fortunately, Trump has already had opportunities to cancel the "deal" as the agreement must be renewed every quarter, most recently on July 18th. The bombastic language was probably at least partly influenced by his meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the day before. I still think Iran may benefit from Trump’s inability to focus and tackle an issue on a consistent basis, as I laid out here previously.

The last part that was noteworthy was Trump’s discourse on refugees and where they should be located. He explicitly thanked Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey though he made it clear he believes refugees should stay in their ‘home region’ until they can return to their country

“For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10 in their home region.”

Ultimately, we learnt little from Trump’s speech. The jingoistic sentiment would have appealed to his base back in the US while his “enemies” would certainly have gotten the message that he at least talks a tough game.

For the rest of us, we learnt more from what He didn’t say. No reference to the Paris agreement , the Palestinian question or his plans for the trade imbalance with China. Trump failed to lay out his grand vision for his administration’s foreign policy. It was little more than nationalist, sabre rattling that leaves me with little confidence that Trump’s views on America’s role in world affairs has evolved since his first campaign speeches back in the AUtumn of 2015.