Trump at the UN: The End of an Era
US President Donald Trump's address to the UN General Assembly certifies the end of an era in which the United States led a multilateral governance system, with the UN as its main exponent, which was born precisely to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to the outbreaks of fascism at the time. With an arrogant tone and armed with an arsenal of false data, Trump has shown absolute contempt for the United Nations and also for Europe, and has fueled conspiracy theories surrounding immigration.
The American president believes that we must end the current world, the result of globalization and free trade, build walls at borders, and return to using fossil fuels because, in his opinion, climate change does not exist and environmentalism equals poverty. In geopolitical terms, this scheme simply means a return to the law of the jungle, that is, the law of the jungle, where the United States unilaterally decides how global trade should be conducted, which countries deserve aid and which don't, where wars can and can't take place, always according to its personal criteria (and interests). Trump doesn't want any international organization (or any other state) to interfere with his will, and that's why he acts this way.
The most outrageous thing is that he dressed up this speech with surreal arguments, such as saying that he single-handedly stopped seven wars without anyone's help and that his immigration policy has helped save thousands of lives. The expressions on the faces of the heads of state and government listening to him were a picture of a poem. He even allowed himself the luxury of recalling that the United Nations rejected his proposal to renovate the building when he was the builder, demonstrating that he is primarily driven by resentment and bitterness and that he makes no distinction between the institution, the presidency of the United States, and the individual. This confusion is very disturbing because it is typical of dictators and autocrats like those he so admires.
Faced with this, the rest of the international community, led by Europe, must act in a coordinated manner if it does not want what happened with the tariff war to end up happening again, in which Washington has ended up imposing its will left, right, and center. In the case of Gaza, it is true that Netanyahu will continue his policy of occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territories as long as it is supported by the United States, but it is also true that Israel's progressive isolation and its status as a pariah state also comes at a price. One need only look at Netanyahu's indignant reaction to see this.
The United Nations is an imperfect and ineffective invention due to the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council, but it can still play a role as the conscience of humanity. And, above all, without the UN, the world would be a much worse place. That is why we must keep the flag of multilateralism raised in the face of Trump and his allies.