NEW YORK CITY — The annual United Nations General Assembly high-level week is underway. The bane of city residents and a great boon for city hotels, this week sees tens of thousands of foreign leaders, diplomats, journalists, and others flood into Manhattan. The traffic is terrible, the Diplomatic Security Service and U.S. Secret Service security details are stretched near breaking point, and the FBI and CIA quietly attempt to recruit new spies and debrief old ones.

Still, while Middle East conflicts, the war in Ukraine, U.S.-China tensions, and dozens of other global concerns are at the top of the formal agendas, one topic looms large below the surface of nearly every conversation: what former President Donald Trump‘s return to the Oval Office might mean for each country and for the world.