RUTHFULLY YOURS

Most new administrations do not really completely overturn their predecessors’ policies to enact often-promised ideologically driven change.

The 18-year span of Harry Truman to Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy was mostly a continuum from center-left to center-right, back to center-left. Kennedy was probably as hawkish and as much of a tax cutter as was Eisenhower.

The seven years of Jerry Ford to Jimmy Carter were a similar transition — or even the twelve years of George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton. The deck chairs changed, but the ship sailed in mostly the same manner to mostly the same direction.

Even the supposed great divide of 1981 did not mean that Jimmy Carter had been as left-wing as Ronald Reagan was right-wing. Carter’s fight against inflation and renewed defense build-up was continued in part by Reagan. George W. Bush was not as markedly right-wing as Barack Obama was clearly left-wing. In sum, there have rarely been back-to-back complete reversals in presidential agendas.

From Hard Progressive to Hard Conservative Ideology
Whatever Donald J. Trump’s political past and vociferous present, his first year of governance is most certainly as hard conservative as Barack Obama’s eight years were hard progressive. We are watching a rare experiment in political governance play out, as we go, in back-to-back fashion, from one pole to its opposite.

From January 2009 to January 2016 (especially when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress until January 2011), Barack Obama implemented the most progressive agenda since Franklin Roosevelt, to whom his supporters logically compared their new president.

Obama was a genuine man of the Left, determined to move his party with him and “fundamentally transform” the country. His own skepticism about America’s past, its current values, and its future trajectories resonated on the world stage. Third-way Clintonism all but disappeared. The Democratic party was reborn in Obama’s leftist image. Even candidate Hillary Clinton all but renounced her husband’s now caricatured centrism.

Among Obama’s signature foreign policies were “lead from behind” in Libya; quietude during the Iranian anti-theocratic protests; strategic patience with North Korea; the multifaceted and often clandestine efforts to swing the Iran deal; the Russian “reset”; realignment away from Israel, Egypt, and the Gulf monarchies; and rapprochement with Cuba, Venezuela, and the South American Communist and socialist states.

All reflected his own larger visions of European Union and American progressivism as models for transnational world governance. A global council of Davos-like elites would best adjudicate climate-change crises, the excesses of capitalism, dangerous nationalism, the parochial and outdated restrictions on migration and immigration, and the lingering but still pernicious legacies of Western imperialism and colonialism.

“Crises” such as the spreading ISIS caliphate, a nuclear North Korea with intercontinental missiles, an expanding Iranian-Shite-Hezbollah–Middle East crescent, a new greater East Asia prosperity sphere led by China that builds bases in the Spratly Islands, and a failed reset with Russia would more or less work themselves out on their own, given that all these dangers ultimately had their geneses in Western pathologies. Be better Western leaders, Obama intoned, and the Other would react accordingly and thus positively.

Anti-government protests continue across Iran after six days, and the ruling mullahs and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are threatening a crackdown that could get ugly. The world should support this fight for freedom, which is exposing the illusions about Iran that dominated the Obama Administration.

Start with the claim that signing a nuclear deal with the Tehran regime would moderate its behavior. Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s chief foreign-policy salesman, said in June 2015 that “a world in which there is a deal with Iran is much more likely to produce an evolution in Iranian behavior, than a world in which there is no deal.”

Mr. Obama said the pact “could strengthen the hands of more moderate leaders in Iran.” And Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Colin Kahl said in 2015 that the Iranians “are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns, most of it will go to butter.” Toward that end, the nuclear pact lifted international sanctions and unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets.

Yet instead of using the money to improve the lives of Iranians, Tehran has used its windfall to back clients making trouble throughout the region. The mullahs have spent billions propping up Syria’s Bashar Assad with troops, weapons and energy shipments. Iran funds Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah terrorists in Syria and Lebanon, and Houthi fighters in Yemen.

The protesters in the streets of Tehran, Qom, Shiraz and other cities are explicitly rejecting this adventurism, shouting slogans like “Leave Syria, think of us!” They want a better economy and more opportunities for their children, not campaigns to build a Shiite empire across the Middle East.

Another busted illusion is that there is a difference in policy between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the supposedly moderate President Hasan Rouhani. Mr. Rouhani talks about listening to the protesters, but that will last only until the Ayatollah gives other orders. The Rouhani government has responded to the nuclear deal by arresting democracy advocates and taking American hostages like Xiyue Wang, a Princeton PhD student, and father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi. The protesters are making no distinction between Mr. Rouhani and the mullahs.

Here’s something more miraculous than Congress spending less money—the United Nations doing it. Yet that’s what happened at the end of 2017 as the 193-nation General Assembly agreed to a 5% spending cut in its new biennial budget after American prodding.

The General Assembly agreed by consensus to shrink the U.N. budget by $286 million, to $5.4 billion, down 5% from the prior budget. The U.N. will save about $50 million by trimming hiring and overhead costs, and another $18 million from cutting the U.N. Department of Management, better known as human resources. The peacekeeping operations budget, which was negotiated separately earlier in 2017, was reduced by $593 million to $7.3 billion, a 7.5% cut.

The General Assembly also agreed to spending reforms, including restrictions on construction projects and an audit of the U.N.’s $60 billion staff pension fund. Starting in 2020, the U.N. will move to annual budgeting, which Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called “one of the most significant shifts in the programme planning and budgeting process of the Organization since the 1970s,” which says a lot about the U.N.’s accounting systems.

These reductions are hardly draconian. They don’t include cuts to the U.N.’s elevator operators, who cost about $300,000 per year, or trim the budget of the International Court of Justice’s judges and spouses, who travel first class. Committee for Programme and Coordination members, a strategic planning group for bureaucrats, holds a five-week meeting every year in New York City, rather than meet in a cheaper location or via teleconference.

Secretary-General António Guterres has supported the reforms. But none of this would have happened without pressure from the United States. President Trump called out the U.N.’s bloated bureaucracy and “mismanagement” in September, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has pressed the case. The U.S. has leverage at the U.N. because it provides 22% of its budget, but credit the Trump Administration for finally using it.

President Trump and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley made a lot of news last week with their condemnations of the United Nations over a U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) resolution criticizing President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there.

President Trump threatened to withhold billions of dollars in U.S. aid from states that voted for the resolution and said after the vote, “Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.” Ambassador Haley warned that the U.S. would be “taking names” of states that voted for this resolution.

Although these comments didn’t represent anything new — U.S. officials have lamented the U.N.’s anti-Israel and anti-U.S. bias for decades — they were still very significant, since they involve the United States’ holding the United Nations accountable again after a 25-year hiatus.

As a CIA U.N. analyst from 1986 to 1994, I remember well the intense focus by the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations to punish U.N. members who voted for anti-U.S. and anti-Israel resolutions. Nations were given scores on their support of the United States in the U.N., which were used to determine U.S. aid.

For example, in 1990, after Yemen voted against a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq in response to its invasion of Kuwait, Secretary of State James Baker told Yemen’s U.N. ambassador, “That was the most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast.” Several days later, a $70 million U.S. aid program to Yemen was halted.

There also was a push during this period to curtail the use of the U.N. for espionage against the United States by hostile powers, especially the Soviet Union. In addition, U.S. diplomats fought to lower the U.S. contribution to the U.N. and to address the organization’s epic corruption and inefficiency.

In 1991, then–assistant secretary of state John Bolton scored a huge win against anti-Semitism and animus toward Israel in the U.N. with his successful campaign to persuade the U.N. General Assembly to rescind its odious 1975 resolution that equated Zionism with racism.

While I was providing intelligence support to Bolton for his campaign to rescind the U.N. Zionism/racism resolution, I learned that his main challenge was not twisting the arms of foreign leaders; it was fighting with State Department careerists who did not want to upset Arab countries and seemed to have their own biases against the Jewish state. This problem continues today, and it is why President Trump must fill vacant State Department positions ASAP with people who will defend his policies.

This twelve-year campaign against U.N. bias and mismanagement by two Republican administrations ended with the Clinton administration, which took a “see no evil” approach to the U.N. and adopted a policy called “assertive multilateralism,” which tried to end civil wars with U.N. peacekeeping and used U.S. soldiers as peacekeepers. I explained in my 2002 book Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s how this policy led to a string of major peacekeeping failures in the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, and Somalia.

The vote in the United Nations General Assembly concerning Jerusalem on Thursday wasn’t really about Jerusalem — or even so much about Israel.https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2017/12/24/united-nation-continues-moral-cesspool/

It was about the self-presumed moral superiority of countries sitting in the U.N. General Assembly, defying the reality of 3,000 years of Jerusalem as the spiritual capital of the Jewish people and the seat of government of three Jewish Commonwealths, but never the seat of government for any other country or people. It was also about defying the reality that only under Jewish sovereignty is Jerusalem an open, tolerant city for people of all faiths, or no faith. They know that. But they thought it was a free shot at Israel, Jews and the president of the United States.

It is true that the latest U.N. vote will have little practical impact; United Nations General Assembly resolutions don’t come with financial or other penalties. Israel remains in Jerusalem and the Palestinians are no closer to — and, in fact, are much further from — finding themselves a legitimate place in the family of actual countries.

So, on the one hand, votes were just a cheap “up yours” from a lot of countries that expect still to work with Israel in NATO (the Europeans), invest in Israel’s high tech (Europeans, Asians and others), take advantage of Israel’s shared energy, water, agricultural prowess (Africans), and have Israel as an ally in the fight against Iran (Sunni Arab states) as if the vote hadn’t happened.

On the other hand, the United States had drawn a line in the sand. A presumed free kick at President Trump was a “gimme” for a lot of governments that simply detest the president (Europeans), and expect still to receive the benefits of American foreign aid and/or security assistance that keep them in power (Asians, Africans South Americans — let’s face it, just about everyone). And countries who know perfectly well that it is under American rules that international trade and freedom of the seas and skies are protected. Not one outside perhaps North Korea would trade our security blanket for Russian or Chinese rules.

This constitutes moral mud; whether it was free remains to be seen.

As an assistant secretary of state in the George H.W. Bush administration, I worked vigorously to repeal a hateful United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. Foreign diplomats frequently told me the effort was unnecessary. My Soviet counterpart, for example, said Resolution 3379 was only a piece of paper gathering dust on a shelf. Why stir up old controversies years after its 1975 adoption?

We ignored the foreign objections and persisted because that abominable resolution cast a stain of illegitimacy and anti-Semitism on the U.N. It paid off. On Dec. 16, 1991, the General Assembly rescinded the offensive language.

Now, a quarter-century later, the U.N. has come close to repeating Resolution 3379’s original sin. Last week the U.N. showed its true colors with a 128-9 vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

This seemingly lopsided outcome obscured a significant victory and major opportunity for the president. Thirty-five countries abstained, and 21 didn’t vote at all. Days earlier the Security Council had endorsed similar language, 14-1, defeated only by the U.S. veto. The margin narrowed significantly once Mr. Trump threatened to penalize countries that voted against the U.S. This demonstrated once again that America is heard much more clearly at the U.N. when it puts its money where its mouth is. (In related news, Guatemala announced Sunday it will move its embassy to Jerusalem, a good example for others.)

While imposing financial repercussions on individual governments is entirely legitimate, the White House should also reconsider how Washington funds the U.N. more broadly. Should the U.S. forthrightly withdraw from some U.N. bodies (as we have from UNESCO and as Israel announced its intention to do on Friday)? Should others be partially or totally defunded? What should the government do with surplus money if it does withhold funds?

For decades, the United Nations has spit in the face of the United States. The demonization of the Jewish state – modern antisemitism – has been one of many UN policy priorities totally antithetical to American values and interests.

The General Assembly vote on December 21 condemning President Donald Trump’s implementation of American law recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel ought to be the last time America takes it lying down.

Let’s be clear about how we got here. Thursday’s meeting was the seventeenth time the UN General Assembly has convened the so-called “tenth” emergency special session on Israel since 1997. That’s because the “tenth” session is effectively permanent. At the end of the meeting, the President of the General Assembly stressed that the session was merely “adjourned.”

What such UN-eze means for real people is this: There has never been an emergency special session of the General Assembly on anything but Israel-bashing in twenty years. 500,000-plus dead and seven million displaced in Syria over seven years – and not one emergency special session. Neither a million dead in Rwanda, nor two million dead over two decades in Sudan, ever prompted a single emergency special session.

The issue Thursday was not about Jerusalem. It was about Jew-hatred. The resolution is the General Assembly’s twenty-first resolution in 2017 slamming Israel for violating “rights” and “law.” There was one resolution on North Korea. One on Iran. And one on the United States – criticizing U.S. Cuba policy. Altogether, there were nine resolutions critical of human rights records in specific states in the rest of the world combined.

The game is Jerusalem and 1967 borders. But the endgame is the 1948 borders and the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

The issue today was also not simply about President Trump. The State Department produces an annual report computing “coincidence of voting” in the General Assembly – or how often other countries vote the same way as the United States. In 2016, counting all the final draft resolutions of the full plenary of the General Assembly – that were adopted by a vote and on which the U.S. voted yes or no – “coincidence of voting” with the United States was a mere 37 percent.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut American aid to countries that back a United Nations resolution faulting the recent U.S. decision to declare Jerusalem Israel’s capital.

“We’re watching those votes,” Mr. Trump said at the start of a meeting of his cabinet on Wednesday. “Let them vote against us—we’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley on Monday vetoing a resolution calling on the U.S. to rescind its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The question will be addressed anew in the General Assembly on Thursday. Photo: Eskinder Debebe/Associated Press

The U.N. General Assembly will meet Thursday in an emergency session to vote on a measure the U.S. blocked earlier this week at the Security Council, which called on the Trump administration to rescind its decision to move the embassy and recognize Jerusalem as the capital. The measure had the support of all other members of the Security Council, including U.S. allies France and the U.K.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Tuesday evening that the U.S. “will be taking names” at Thursday’s General Assembly vote.

Trump’s Big Gamble on Moving U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem

President Trump’s plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is a calculated gamble, running the risk of stirring up protests and violence. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains why Mr. Trump thinks now is the time to act, when past administrations made similar promises but decided not to. Photo: AP

“We don’t expect those we’ve helped to target us,” Ms. Haley said on Twitter.

In Thursday’s vote, the U.N. resolution, sponsored by Egypt, is expected to pass with a wide majority of the body’s 196 nations voting in favor, according to diplomats say.

Ms. HaleyU.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley sent an email to ambassadors of U.N. member states on Tuesday saying she would report to Mr. Trump about any countries voting in favor of the resolution.

“We will take note of each and every vote on this issue,” Ms. Haley said in the letter to diplomats. “As you consider your vote, I want you to know that the president and the U.S. take this vote personally,” Ms. Haley told said in the letter to diplomats.

Some diplomats said they were stunned to receive her email, with one saying: “Stop digging your own hole. You will not change any votes.” CONTINUE AT SITE