Unfair criticism has often been levelled at the UN. None has been so gratuitously nasty than President Trump’s 23 September 2025 General Assembly address.

Media coverage highlighted Trump’s more outrageous comments, but did not provide deep and comprehensive analysis of the policy implications of his speech.

The issues raised need to be mooted in Australian public debate. Trump has deepened the US trend away from multilateralism, as he elevated his domestic political agenda onto the international stage. He had famously declared, “I am your justice. … I am your retribution.” The 23rd of September marks a new stage in the patronising extension of Trump’s domestic politics into international organisations. For some 57 minutes, he gave just about everybody in the hall an ad hominem thrashing. His speech completely disregarded the realities and progress of the UN in the state system. Dismissing the UN’s agenda and institutional competence, he inferred that during his time in office, the UN had gone missing in action. It was his “honour” to stop “seven unendable wars”. This had “…never happened before”. Trump was scornful, “It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the UN doing them.”

Trump has joined a long line of critics who have unfairly judged the UN. Such criticism fails to apply appropriate standards of informed comparison. The UN is not a world government. It is an imperfect institution in an imperfect world. It is easily criticised, but not so easily replaced. Its role has been seriously undervalued and its critics have yet to offer a credible institutional alternative mediating the anarchy that informs the interaction of sovereign states. The UN was never given final authority to bring sovereign states to heel, but its organisation and principles responded to the frustrating paralysis of the League of Nations, as the great powers plunged the world into general war. The UN General Assembly witnessed the sovereign equality of states. The Security Council built on the prestige of the allied great powers who had defeated fascism. “Collective security”, predicated in all states guaranteeing each other’s sovereign integrity, accepted supplementary alliance co-operation, but sought to outperform alliance security guarantees. Great power responsibility was still awkwardly, but necessarily, retained in the veto power of the Security Council’s permanent members.

The UN adapted to the realities of the post-war period. It has had to make do with the structural deficit, imposed by wartime allies. Compromise got the UN across the line, but not necessarily out of the woods. It could not have been conceived without great power, particularly, US power. The Soviets would never have signed without the assurance of the veto. When China accounted for 22% of humanity, the China Question was disappeared. The US effectively assigned the two UN China seats to Taiwan at the expense of UN integrity. The UN’s structural problems were compounded in the US-UK split over the 1956 Suez Crisis and decolonisation. Bypassing the Security Council veto, the General Assembly passed the “Uniting for Peace Resolution”, creating the UN Emergency Force that successfully separated the warring parties. Ideology weighed the UN down. The US-created China Question burdened the UN until the early 1970’s normalisation and the PRC’s seating at the UN over US objections. This was a step forward towards collective security, based on inclusivity. While US policy had sought to influence Third World development against waning post-war imperialism, many new states in the Third World either chose non-alignment, or geopolitically sided with China and the Soviet Union. Subsequently, the US internationalised “globalisation” as inevitable, but it was only after many years of running interference that it opened the WTO’s door to China. In the end, “globalisation” did not work out for the US as planned. Along with COVID, it is now a Chinese conspiracy.

Trump bluntly surmised: “[The UN is] not even close to living up to [its] potential.” Moments later, he offered a small ray of hope, “…the potential for peace for this institution is so great”, and the US is “behind the UN 100%.” Ignoring the devastating effects of his early September executive order regarding the realigning of US foreign aid, he proudly testified how he had personally saved millions of lives. He moved on, whinging that the UN had turned down his offer to renovate the UN’s New York precinct. He would have graced the UN with mahogany walls and marble floors. Was it a joke when he said, “There are the two things that I got from the UN, a bad escalator, a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much.”?

That day demonstrated that Trump’s diplomacy is not diplomatic. “Diplomacy” implies tactful dialogue and negotiation that focuses on the interests of more than one party. Trump dictates. He self-indulgently invites the flattery of not only obsequious underlings, but also of anxious state leaders. One moment, he pats people on the back. The next, they are dismissed. He wastes no time and has no filters. Lula da Silva was in the audience when Trump informed the General Assembly that he made up his mind about the president of Brazil in 39 seconds and advised that without the US, Brazil will “fail just as others have failed”.

Referring to an ever-growing list of “bad people”, Trump added, “When I don’t like them, I don’t like them.” He deplored global warming as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. Trump behaved as if he were at a rally, heaping invective on former president Biden for allowing millions “of people pouring in from all over the world, from prisons, from mental institutions, drug dealers….” He “loves” Europe but mourns “the death of Western Europe”, rebuking “woke” European politicians who made “bad predictions” about immigration and climate change. With the possible exception of Germans, the Europeans are all “going to hell”.

The UN is indispensable; it is not a property that is bought and sold. When the UN needs a helping hand to adapt to sweeping global change, Trump groused, “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should – too often, it’s actually creating new problems….” Without UN support he had, himself, to stop the wars between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Congo and Rwanda, and Pakistan and India. He may have exaggerated. Prime Minister Modi observed that India had independently achieved a ceasefire without Trump’s help. An actual review of the complete UN record would also have been useful, but Trump had already made up his mind. His administration has suspended most of the US financial contribution to the UN.

Trump did not delve into the underlying causes of war. The UN has gone through a genuine learning curve in organising “peacekeeping”, “peacemaking”, development and human rights. Trump ignored the UN’s conduct of more than 70 peacekeeping operations, let alone the impressive treaty creation of international law and an ever-widening, unprecedented diplomatic multilateralism addressing world problems of health, cultural understanding, socioeconomic development and human rights. How much more could have been accomplished had the UN installed Trump’s marble floors?

When dreaming of peace and justice, there is often a “rub” that disrupts the smooth course of action. Will uninhibited, personalised retribution advance justice in the rules-based world order? In 2015, Trump, to Neil Young’s thrilling Rockin’ in the Free World, descended on his golden elevator to declare his run for the presidency. On 23 September 2025, he lowered, himself, as Euripides’ deus ex machina on to the world stage. He upped the ante, “putting himself out there” to achieve justice on the basis of a “great awakening”, but his international leadership includes disingenuous empathy. Unbound ego contradicts justice. Self-absorbed impatience compromises state co-operation on the basis of genuine friendship, equality and mutual respect. Trump’s narcissism cancels diplomacy and slanders genuine UN progress towards an effective institutional solution to the ongoing systemic problem of state anarchy in today’s increasingly complex world.

The Chinese have an appropriate saying, “yin ye fei shi” (stop eating for fear of choking). Prime Minister Albanese wants a trade deal and supports the “two-state solution”, but he declines to make a “running commentary” on Trump as a foreign leader. Up to a point, this quite properly accords with convention, but Trump’s world and the UN’s world are on a collision course. Trump would subordinate UN operations and values to his own personalised leadership. He would direct the UN where it does not want to go. The 23rd September speech has serious implications for Australia’s “independence”, which formally rests on “three pillars” including multilateralism. Sullen silence may be bruited as political consent that weakens international organisation and law. It will be hard to maintain meaningful independence without actively defending the UN against “Trumpism”.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.