To many of those commenting on Donald Trump’s maiden address to the United Nations, especially if otherwise disturbed by the president’s character, his emphasis on state sovereignty was a welcome dose of diplomatic normalcy. For example, David Ignatius of the Washington Post found this theme reassuringly “conventional,” joking that Trump’s base might start to worry that he had been “kidnapped by the black-helicopter crowd.”

It was hard to miss Trump’s emphasis: He used the word “sovereignty” more than 20 times in the course of his speech. America’s international success, he argued, “depends on a coalition of strong and independent nations that embrace their sovereignty, to promote security, prosperity, and peace for themselves and for the world.” It was the duty, he said, of states to “respect the rights of every other sovereign nation.”