Nero at the United Nations

By Anatol Lieven

Dr. Anatol Lieven is the Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. A former professor at Georgetown and King’s College London, his latest book is Climate Change and the Nation State (Oxford University Press).

If there are still historians in 100 years time, and if some of them still know Latin, then they may see Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly as a key symbolic moment in the latest round of Translatio Imperii: the process whereby imperial rule and legitimacy passes from one state to another. In the present era, that means how global leadership, and the leading role in defining global norms, passes from the United States to China.

In terms of economic hegemony, the US under Trump has moved from being a source of global stability to a kind of protection racket aimed above all at extorting protection money from America’s allies. This follows on from the Biden administration’s attempt to weaponise the role of the dollar and US domination of the global financial system against Russia and countries trading with Russia - which means most of the world. This is naturally driving attempts by China - now the world’s largest trading power - to replace the US system with ones of its own.

From this point of view, the most important moment in the speech was when Trump denied the existence of climate change, calling it “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, and denouncing alternative energy as useless. With this, Trump set himself at odds with clear evidence backed by common sense observation, with the vast majority of the countries represented at the UN, and with reality itself.

By ruling out the development of alternative energy in the US, Trump did not just deliberately concede the leading role in a critical area of industrial and technological development to China; he gave China the right to portray itself as the leading global representative of a rational, scientifically-based view of the world and of human development - precisely the role that for a century and a half the US had justly claimed for itself.

Nor was this statement of Trump a reflection of personal eccentricity, giving the hope that Nero might in future be replaced by Vespasian, and the imperial government return to basic sanity and continue as before. His views reflect those of the vast majority of the US Republican Party. To find a Republican leadership with a sensible view of climate change you would have to go back to President George H.W. Bush, 37 years ago.

Not everything that Trump said in his speech was wrong or foolish. Even if some of the language he used was unpleasant, he was right to warn of the disastrous consequences of uncontrolled migration for Western societies. Amidst a host of inaccuracies and inventions, his portrayal of the proportion of prisoners in German jails was basically correct. UN help to migrants heading for the United States may be justifiable in humanitarian terms, but it is a stupid and reckless way for the UN to treat its biggest donor and the host of its headquarters.

And indeed, some of those from the “Global South” in the hall who did not applaud may privately have agreed with him. It is barely known in the West, but the most ferociously patrolled anti-migrant border in the world is that created by India to stop Bangladeshi migration. Nor were other countries in southeast Asia exactly generous in their response to the Rohingya fleeing massacre in Myanmar, for example. It must also be said that if the role of drawing attention to the dangers of migration has fallen to outsiders like Trump and Farage, it is because for decades the “sensible” insiders refused to address this issue or listen to what their own citizens were telling them.

But the nuggets of good sense in Trump’s speech were so drowned in a severely over-spiced sauce of Neronic self-flattery and obvious falsehoods that as far as the world community is concerned, their impact is likely to be minimal. Trump’s claim to have ended seven wars is nonsense. When he claimed - after Israel’s strike on Qatar that the US failed to prevent, that America’s relationship with Qatar is “closer than ever before”, that was an insult to the intelligence of his audience.

And concerning Israel’s role, Trump set America against not only the overwhelming majority of countries in the room but America’s own closest Western allies - though in this of course he is only a cruder version of the approach of every US administration, including Democratic ones. Trump’s criticism of UN ineffectiveness is not unjustified - but has been a succession of US administrations that have deliberately set out to cripple the UN’s capacity for independent action. And if Trump wants the UN to play a more important role, why for example did he not seek to involve the UN in the Ukraine peace process, and state the obvious need for UN peacekeepers as part of a peace settlement?

A remarkable proportion of Trump’s speech was spent attacking America’s Western allies, recalling Kissinger’s famous remark that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

But then again - and here too Trump is only an exaggerated version of a longstanding US syndrome - this speech was not really directed to the UN General Assembly at all, but to his own supporters in the US, who have eagerly lapped up every word.

Generally in history, the Translatio Imperii has been accompanied and driven by great military catastrophes. With luck, this time that will not be necessary. If the Chinese leadership is sensible, after listening to Trump’s speech they will sit back, have some tea, continue quietly with their existing policies and watch the United States destroy its own empire.