Three years ago, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley promised she’d be taking names of which member states voted on the resolution to condemn President Trump for moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. As a token of goodwill, Haley invited the representatives of nine nations that voted against the resolution, the 35 nations that voted to abstain, and the 21 absent from the vote to a “Friends of the U.S.” reception, a largely unusual event for U.N. ambassadors to embark on at the risk of alienating already hostile nations.
But Haley did not go to Manhattan to play at the U.N. And if her Republican National Convention speech on Monday night proves anything, it’s that the post-Trump foreign policy agenda of the GOP is in good hands. And more importantly, bold ones.
Harkening back to another Republican U.N. ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick of 1984, Haley quoted the Reagan appointee’s assertion that “Democrats always blame America first.” It’s not quite the “America First” Trump employs. Instead, it’s a more resonant one, less contingent on mercantilistic trade deals and foreign policy divestment from our democratic allies and interest abroad, but rather an affirmative defensive stance against the national self-loathing gripping the nation. And, most importantly, Haley doesn’t just talk the talk of the evils of international organizations such as the U.N. As with her crucial Israel crusade, she’s proven it.
“The U.N. is not for the faint of heart,” Haley said in her keynote speech during the first night of the RNC. “It’s a place where dictators, murderers, and thieves denounce America and then put their hands out and demand that we pay their bills.”
Haley continued:
Haley is one of the most unabashed, high-profile capitalists in the contemporary Republican Party, one who has not been bought by the ballistic binary claiming that upholding free markets means cowering to legitimate national security interests from Chinese espionage and human rights violations, or that icing out American adversaries means blowing up the same multilateral trade deals specifically designed to get our allies on board with broader foreign policy realignments. For Haley to emerge as not just one of the convention’s most forceful foreign policy authorities, but also Trump’s hand-picked foreign policy successor alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is a promising sign for 2024.
