Trump to address United Nations as voice of a shifting world order

Eight years ago, when a freshman President Donald Trump rose to the green marble dais of the United Nations General Assembly hall for the first time, he was received in the cathedral of postwar multilateralism with dismissal and suspicion – even mockery.

Few seemed to take seriously an American president who appeared unsure of himself and who offered outlandish claims that might have worked with his political base, but from the U.N. assembly invited derisive laughter.

Yet Tuesday morning, when Mr. Trump takes the same stage in the first year of his second term, things are likely to be very different. He will stand at the golden stage more as the conqueror of the gasping liberal democratic internationalism – the U.N. at its apex – that he seemingly has no use for and has worked to vanquish.

Instead of the outlier in the temple of global governance, he will speak this time to the assembly of the U.N.’s 193 member states as the voice of an emerging world order of America First foreign policy and big-power competition.

To Mr. Trump’s apparent liking, it’s an order that has fading use for either international cooperation or well-intentioned but expensive global development.

“This time, Trump comes to the U.N. as it faces a post-multilateral world that he has had a very important role in delivering. So, I think his audience will perhaps reluctantly pay closer attention to what he says than some of them did in 2017,” says Michael Doyle, a professor of international relations at Columbia University in New York.

“This time,” he adds, “the things he said then that were sort of freelance and outlandish and that suggested a U.S. president with almost no appreciation for the value of multilateral cooperation, are things he can do and indeed has done.”

Gone from the U.S. approach to the U.N. and to multilateralism more broadly, Dr. Doyle says, is the longtime tenet of U.S. foreign policy that the United States derives a good deal of its power from cooperation with international partners.

“Trump has no appreciation for the idea that things can be done with the assistance of allies that can’t be done on your own,” he says.

20 minutes face to face with a tiger in the Sundarbans

 

Written by: Shakib Uddin Ahmed

I joined the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), an international organization, a year ago. My workplace is in Khulna. WCS Bangladesh provides technical assistance to the field staff of the Bangladesh Forest Department so that they can properly contribute to wildlife monitoring and conservation.

I often have to go to the Sundarbans for this work. On April 11, I set off from Mongla to the Sharankhola Range. As always, I was accompanied by my boatman Alamgir Bhai.

When I set off in the morning and reached Harintana through the Shyala River, it was afternoon. The daylight had diminished in the forest. Our boat was moving along a 250-foot wide canal. At that time, I noticed an animal moving in the bushes. I looked around and saw that the animal was none other than a tiger.

By then, our boat had moved forward a little. I whispered to the boatman, ‘Brother, I saw a tiger. Take the boat back.’

Every time I go to the forest, I get on the boat and ask Alamgir Bhai, ‘Brother, this time we have to show you a tiger!’ He laughs when he hears me. He tells me stories about seeing a tiger. But we don’t see any more tigers. For some reason, he wasn’t told about it when we came from Mongla. And this time...!

As I pulled the boat back, I saw not one, but two tigers. One was sticking its head out of the bush, and the other was standing a little further away under a golpata tree. One of them was staring at me with a curious look. Perhaps he was observing our movements closely.

I forgot to take a picture of them while watching them. Later, it occurred to me that this time the camera was not taken out of the bag. I quickly took out the camera and attached the lens, and a minute passed. Then I started taking pictures one after the other. In the meantime, their position changed. It was as if they had skillfully hidden themselves in the natural enclosure of the Golpata, Sundori, and Gewa trees. Why do they call them 'secret hunters' anymore! I could not capture them together on camera. I tried to take a picture of one, but the other one got out of sight. As the afternoon wore on, the light also decreased. I had to take pictures and videos of them in low light.

Twenty minutes passed like this. Looking at the tigers' movements, it seemed that they were waiting to cross the canal. We had come and made a mess of it. We were blocking their path by entering their lair! Alamgir started the boat as soon as he told his brother.

By then, evening had fallen. Sitting in the boat, I was trembling with excitement. Did this incredible moment really happen in my life? Thinking about it, I took my camera and looked at the pictures and videos I had taken a while ago. After seeing the pictures, it no longer seemed like an illusion.

At night, I joined the smart team at the Sharankhola range. They were also happy to see the pictures. Many have been working in the Sundarbans for more than a decade. But they have not met a tiger. Some may have seen them suddenly but did not get the chance to take pictures. That too is a source of regret. I felt lucky to hear everyone's regrets about not seeing a tiger.