UNITED NATIONS – President Donald Trump was making his triumphant return to the world stage last year, and he had a bone or two or three to pick.
His teleprompter was broken. His escalator stopped. UN leaders had not offered to help him stop wars.
"My teleprompter operator was banned from the room," Trump said on Sept. 18 of the incident that animated his address last year at the United Nations. "Probably they did that on purpose."
A year later and Trump is no less aggrieved. He has escalated a trade war with Canada, threatened to put "serious tariffs" on Europe and repeatedly complained about U.S. allies’ refusal to help him attack Iran.
"Why should we carry Canada? Why should we carry Mexico?" Trump said at a Sept. 16 event in Gastonia, North
Carolina. "We're carrying the European nations with a $200-billion deficit. All we have to do is say, 'You know what, we're not trading with you anymore. We don't need anything they have.'"
The alliance-ripping hasn’t sat well with NATO nations or hawkish members of Trump’s own party. Several GOP lawmakers told USA TODAY in the lead-up to his Sept. 22 speech at this year’s United Nations General Assembly that they’d like to see the president direct his ire at American adversaries like Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, the latter of whom Trump is rolling out the red carpet for at a state dinner this week in Washington.
"The tone needs to be that at the end of the day, we’re a family of democratic nations and Russia, Putin, Xi Jinping, China are malign actors that want to destroy the democratic world order, and he should acknowledge that up front," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, said.
He pointed to Canada’s recent effort to forge closer ties with the European Union as an alarming sign that NATO allies have lost faith in the United States.
"That could have huge consequences for us," said Tillis, who opted to retire from the Senate next year after clashing with Trump.
Republican congressman and former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul, a Trump-aligned lawmaker from Texas, said the president has valid points about burden-sharing among NATO nations, "but I don’t think hostile rhetoric is productive."
Especially not when NATO is being threatened by Putin, said McCaul, who was in the Oval Office last week when Trump signed a bill authorizing new sanctions on Russia.
The frequent attacks have left America’s allies convinced that the United States can only be worked with under the greatest of difficulty and with constant reservations, said former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who worked for multiple administrations.
"If Trump rants and raves about feckless Europeans or ungrateful so-called allies or bashes Canada, if he does any of that kind of stuff," Fried said, "I think it will simply confirm for allies that for now at least, they have to work around the Trump administration as much as with it."
Potential for clashes with Europe and Canada
Deteriorating relations between the United States and Canada – after trade talks collapsed and Trump announced that Lake Ontario would be renamed Lake America – and friction with European allies such as Spain and Italy over restrictions on the use of joint bases during the Iran war – have pushed some of America’s closest allies to look elsewhere for more dependable partners.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the formation of a European Security Council with non-EU countries such as Ukraine and the United Kingdom during a Sept. 16 speech. She also made the unprecedented move of offering associate membership to Canada.
The U.S. president ridiculed the proposal and threatened to "put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things" if he deems the EU’s invitation to be a hostile act.
"Trump is doing an awful lot to make it pretty darn difficult for those foreign counterparts to make concessions or to provide anything amounting to a considerable strategic level of support because he has not relented in bashing them, both with tariffs and with territorial claims," said Brett Bruen, who served as the director of global engagement in the Obama administration.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment into office, said on Sept. 15 at the Canada Investment Summit that Washington and Ottawa must remain close partners despite the unpredictability of the Trump administration.
But he also recalled an interaction with Trump, whom he’s not scheduled to meet with in New York, that he said exemplified the strained relations.
"He’s like, 'Yeah, it’s a key to the White House. You just bring it, they’ll let you in,'" Carney said during an interview. "And then he says, 'Maybe they’ll shoot you.'"
"That sort of sums up the relationship that we have," Carney added.
Selling the Iran war
At the time of last year’s speech, Trump was chasing a Nobel Peace Prize, and boasting of all the conflicts he’d ended. This year, the self-described "President of Peace" will arrive at the United Nations nearly seven months into a war he started with Iran that he has struggled to end.
The U.S. and Israel killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after launching a major attack against Tehran on Feb. 28, but the Iranian regime did not collapse.
Instead, Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil chokepoint, squeezing the global economy by driving up energy prices. The average price of a gallon of diesel in the U.S. was $6.51 on Sept. 21, a record high, according to the AAA motor club. Fuel prices have also reached records across Europe, contributing to rising public discontent abroad.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have escalated attacks against Saudi Arabia in recent days, prompting new concerns that the war could plunge the region into a broader conflict. Iran and its allies have sought to target Saudi oil exports in an effort to increase pressure on the global economy.
Iran’s government has demonstrated that it is willing to endure an astonishing amount of suffering to avoid ending the war on Washington’s terms.
"They’re not going to compromise because they firmly believe that any compromise in the face of U.S. pressure will only increase it," said Alan Eyre, a former U.S. diplomat and fellow at the Middle East Institute. "The people running Iran are far more hardline, more militaristic, more anti-U.S. and less risk-averse than the people we killed at the start of this war."
The Pentagon told Congress last week that the Iran war has cost the U.S. military $43.6 billion as of Sept. 3, which experts say is almost certainly an undercount. At least 18 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 800 wounded since the conflict began.
Trump has accused the Iranian government of holding out on a deal until after the midterm elections and threatened to resume large-scale military attacks on Iran in recent days.
In an interview with Fox News on Sept. 20, Trump said he was in "deciding mode," even as he expressed a willingness to meet with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
"My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up?" Trump said. "They better behave."
The Iranian leader is expected to address the gathering of world leaders in New York a day after Trump.
Pezeshkian will lead a delegation of Iranian officials that received permission from the United States to enter the country to attend UNGA under certain conditions, including restrictions on their movement and a ban on purchasing wholesale club memberships and luxury goods.
New push to end Russia’s war on Ukraine
With negotiations to end the Iran war at a standstill, Trump’s chief negotiators turned their attention to another intractable conflict: the one in Ukraine.
In the lead-up to the United Nations General Assembly, the Trump administration floated the prospect of a new deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war that special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner workshopped during trips to Moscow and Kyiv.
The White House said at the time of the Sept. 5 and Sept. 6 talks that substantive plans for next steps would be announced in the coming weeks.
Trump has since accused Ukraine of driving up the price of diesel with its attacks on Russian refineries and pushed both nations to halt strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure.
"I'm sure the Ukrainians would love to stop attacking diesel if, but only if, the Russians stop attacking their energy infrastructure and their rail lines and their ports," said Fried, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked in senior positions on the National Security Council under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Trump left a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year at UNGA declaring that Russia is a "paper tiger" and Ukraine can win back all its territory and restore its borders.
Trump said more recently that he was considering allowing Ukraine the ability to make a "less sophisticated version" of the Patriot interceptors that the United States is said to be running low on. Kyiv uses the air defense system to protect its skies.
McCaul, the GOP congressman, said he had not seen any evidence yet of the licensing agreements moving forward, adding that he did not know what was in the Trump administration’s current peace plan, although a ceasefire would be the obvious first step.
"I don't think there really is one right now, other than the occupied territories would be neutral," said McCaul, who was in Kyiv over the summer.
Zelenskyy is expected to use his address at the gathering to rally support for Ukraine’s continued defense of its territorial integrity. He said on Sept. 20 that he’d have a meeting with Trump.
Russia will be represented at UNGA by its foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who’s expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio while he’s in New York. Putin has not attended the gathering since 2015, the year after Russia annexed Crimea.
NATO leaders have accused Russia of becoming reckless with its recent attacks as the war goes on, citing recent assaults on civilian infrastructure and the discovery of a drone laden with explosives near a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in Germany.
Trump said last week that the U.S., which is considering a troop cut in Europe, could build a new military base in Poland. He also announced a deal on Sept. 18 to establish a "large military presence" on the Danish territory of Greenland and signed sanctions legislation that could lead to tariffs of up to 100% on the top importers of Russian oil and natural gas.
Venezuela on the docket
Among the most watched moments of Trump’s time at UNGA will be a meeting between the U.S. president and Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela.
The encounter on the sidelines of the gathering will be their first since the U.S. military operation at the start of the year that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s longtime leader. Maduro is in a Brooklyn jail complex fewer than 10 miles away from the United Nations awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges.
Trump is likely to hold up strikes on suspected drug boats, the raid on Maduro’s compound, a recent deal with Rodriguez’s administration to sell Venezuela’s oil, and the launch of the Latin-based "Shield of the Americas" alliance as evidence of the United States’ success in the Western Hemisphere.
The United States has stepped up its attacks against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean over the last month. A strike on Sept. 19 killed four people in a vessel that the U.S. military accused of smuggling drugs. U.S. Southern Command did not provide any evidence to back up the allegations of drug trafficking.
At least 231 people have now been killed in 69 strikes on boats since it began launching airstrikes in an effort the Trump administration has called "Operation Southern Spear."
In a call with reporters previewing Trump’s speech, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz said Trump would touch on Latin America, as well as the peace deals he’s made and his quest to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He’ll also have his first-ever meeting with the U.K.’s new leader, Andy Burnham, and Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, on Sept. 22.
"He'll include many of the issues, frankly, neglected by past administrations that he's not going to kick the can on," Waltz said of Trump’s speech. "He's not going to leave them for another day or another administration."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Europe-bashing, Russia and the Iran war: Will Trump unload at the UN?
