Donald Trump's great ideological gibberish
At the UN platform, the 45th President of the United States delivered an incoherent speech but guided by an ideology: revenge nationalism, explains our columnist Frédéric Koller
We must recognize in Donald Trump a sense of provocation: Tuesday, at the New York headquarters of the United Nations, the main forum for multilateralism, he launched into an uninhibited praise of chauvinism. However, if respect for sovereignty, an idea hammered out throughout his speech, is a founding principle of the international organization born in the ashes of the Second World War, the mission of the UN is nonetheless precisely to overcome national selfishness to impose peace solutions through dialogue. The US president has advocated the exact opposite, calling on the heads of state present for the "great renaissance of patriotism."
For Donald Trump, the "rediscovered pride of the peoples" is the engine of history, these peoples whose differences must be respected, whatever their culture and the political system that governs them. The United States, he promises, will therefore not seek to export their democratic model or their values. Is this the end of American imperialism? Quite the contrary: the “sovereign and strong nations” must eliminate the “small rogue states”, continued at the same time the American president. Three countries are doomed for regime change: North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. It almost amounts to declaring war.
An ideologue who doesn't look like it
What should we understand? Is Trump's United States Isolationist Or Interventionist? Difficult to navigate in the multiple inconsistencies of a speech that has caused the consternation of Democrats and the approval of strong powers. The problem is not so much the contradictions facing all the great powers, but the articulation of the priorities of the American president. Where Barack Obama expounded a doctrine of engagement enshrined in multilateralism in sophisticated terms, Donald Trump proclaims a false disengagement expressed in gibberish that is reminiscent of the flights of Kim Jong-un.
"Let's dispel a doubt: no, Donald Trump is not an isolationist"
This speech does not allow it less to dispel a doubt which persists in Europe: no, Donald Trump is not an isolationist. His benchmark is Harry S. Truman, a president who has deployed force around the world like none of his predecessors. At the time, it was to stem the spread of communism. Conversely, it would be wrong to follow Donald Trump when he says that it is "the results, not the ideology" that matter. The 45th President of the United States is in his own way an ideologue, that of vengeful nationalism supposed to restore his country to its lost place in the world, a place largely imaginary.
Iranian deal in jeopardy
The action of the businessman is also guided by another objective, which is less ideology than psychological: systematically deconstruct the heritage of his predecessor that he never considered. like a real American. This posture applies as much to the foreign policy of the United States as to its internal affairs.
If we are to fear a coming conflict in which Washington would engage, it is more in Tehran than in Pyongyang that we must turn our gaze. Donald Trump could well in the end sign a "deal" with Kim Jong-un, a man who looks like him. Instead, he will do anything to break the nuclear deal with Iran, one of Barack Obama's and the international community's greatest successes in curbing atom proliferation.
