Trump’s New Pick for UN Ambassador Has Zero Foreign-Policy Credentials

Choosing Heather Nauert is a sign that his marginalization of the United Nations is nearly complete.

In naming Heather Nauert to be the next United States ambassador to the United Nations, the Trump White House has signaled that its demeaning and marginalizing of the organization is now almost complete. Nauert, as State Department spokeswoman since April 2017, has been a faithful steward of scripted Trump policies, and is expected to be no more than that at the UN.

Nauert, a former anchor on Fox and Friends, a favorite show of the president, has no foreign, diplomatic, or political credentials and maybe a shaky grasp of geopolitics. In June on the eve of a D-Day commemoration, when she was uncharacteristically unscripted, her remarks seemed to suggest that she was unsure about which side Germany was on in World War II.

She has shown none of Nikki Haley’s independent streak, which allowed Haley, a former popular governor of South Carolina, to occasionally question White House dogma.

Nauert’s nomination requires Senate confirmation, which is not yet assured. She is expected to face tough questioning, including from Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, who was one of the first to say that she is unqualified for the job.

Stephen Schlesinger, who writes and comments widely on the UN and the Americans assigned as envoys there, said that her appointment can only further damage American credibility in the UN and around the world.

“Nauert is a classic Trumpian appointment,” he said. “She has no foreign-policy experience but she handles herself well with the media and she looks attractive on television. The administration hands her statements to read and she faithfully reads them to the world. That about completes her preparation for America’s second most important foreign policy post.”

In a larger sense, beyond the downgrading of the assignment, Nauert’s appointment to the UN indicates a policy victory for Trump’s national-security adviser, John Bolton, a career-long adversary of international organizations and agreements, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who, in a speech in Brussels on December 4 to the German Marshall Foundation, derided internationalism and multilateral institutions in general.

Should Nauert be confirmed—or anyone else sent to the UN by Trump if she isn’t—the parameters of American participation will be very clearly marked.

In Brussels, Pompeo echoed the theme of absolute sovereignty that Trump laid out to the General Assembly in September. Crudely put, Trump not only rejected internationalism but also promised not to interfere in the policies and practices of other nations. That would please the nationalist governments of Hungary, India, and the Philippines, to name just a few.

“The old liberal world order failed us in some places, and sometimes it failed you and the rest of the world,” Pompeo said. “Multilateralism has too often become viewed as an end unto itself. The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are. The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done.”

“Was that ever really true?” he asked. He called the global system “poisoned fruit” that opened the US to exploitation. “President Trump is determined to reverse that,” he said.

https://www.thenation.com/article/heather-nauert-united-nations-ambassador-trump/