NEXT IN TRUMP'S CROSSHAIRS: UNITED NATIONS

The US president's push to recast the UN starts with the upcoming race to choose a new secretary-general. The influential post of General Assembly president is also in his view

- KP NAYAR

UNITED States President Donald Trump is taking aim at the United Nations. Reshaping it is his next big foreign policy project.

Trump aims first to try to bend the UN to his will, capture it, and remake the world body in his image. If he fails, he will try to discredit the UN and destroy it. But destroying the UN will be easier said than done. Notwithstanding its institutional rough edges like the veto power for a few in the 15-nation UN Security Council (UNSC) the world body in its present form is the most democratic global institution that humankind has known. The one-country-one-vote functional foundation of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), "the main policymaking organ" of the UN, means 2.02-sq-km Monaco has the same rights and privileges in the UNGA as the US, the sole superpower. India is credited with having contributed to the inscription of the one-member-one-vote principle as Article 18 of the UN Charter during negotiations in 1945 in San Francisco for its adoption.

How does the 47th US president plan to go about his designs for transforming the UN? His first shot in this plan is likely to be fired at the end of this year, soon after the General Assembly president and the UNSC send a joint letter to all UN members inviting nominations for the post of the next UN secretary-general. It is one of toughest diplomatic jobs in the world. By convention, incumbent secretary-general António Guterres's successor should be from Latin America and the Caribbean. Trump would like the post to go to a US national, someone with a mind like his. But any such attempt would be vetoed by Russia and China, probably by France as well. Then, Trump's next step would be to induct a non-American who is sympathetic to his worldview.