The former Governor of South Carolina is really doing a great job for US diplomacy
Nikki Haley: Trump’s velvet hammer at the UN
In the months since President Trump sent Nikki Haley to the United Nations, she has taken on that scandal-plagued jamboree of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and tyrant devotion and proven a fearless champion of US interests and Western values. As Trump’s velvet hammer, she has shown intrepid leadership, placing her in the diplomatic firmament along with such ambassadorial powerhouses as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and John Bolton.
So far, Haley has wisely adhered to Teddy Roosevelt’s famous adage: Speak softly and carry a big stick. She conducts difficult diplomacy in an unforgiving environment with a fierce but graceful efficiency that commands the attention of friends and foes — and complements the president’s bull-in-a-china-shop style.
Tasked with re-establishing US leadership and moral authority globally without conflicting with Trump’s “America First” priorities, she has struck that delicate balance remarkably well.
Posted in New York, Haley has been insulated from the daily drama that has engulfed many of her DC-based colleagues, allowing her important freedom of movement. Given its vipers’ pit of competing interests, the UN is of limited utility. But Haley is ensuring that we use it to advance our interests rather than be used by it to undermine them.
Perhaps her greatest achievement to date came last week when she engineered unanimous passage of a US-drafted resolution imposing the strictest sanctions on North Korea since its first nuclear test in 2006. This was no small feat, given the longstanding intransigence of China and Russia. But Haley brought significant pressure to bear, particularly on Beijing, and her persistence paid off.
Even prominent Trump critics like Obama-era ambassador-to-Russia Michael McFaul gave the president and Haley full-throated credit for their success. Security Council-approved sanctions are no panacea — determined regimes can and do evade them — but they signal the seriousness with which the global powers regard the threat. Even as the crisis escalates, Haley has laid an important foundation given the forum in which she must work.
On Russia, she has hammered its efforts to meddle in the 2016 campaign, occasionally getting ahead of the president.
On Iran, she has blasted its “destructive and destabilizing” activities, from its ballistic-missile tests, to its support of terror, specifically calling out its backing of Hezbollah, to its weapons transfers and adventurism in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. She has also ripped the United Nations for refusing “to even take minimal steps to respond to [Iran’s] violations” of sanctions the world body itself imposed.
On Syria, she delivered a passionate case against the Bashar al-Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons and Moscow’s continuing support of its brutal client prior to the US retaliatory airstrike.
On Venezuela, she condemned the human rights abuses of Nicolas Maduro’s regime, called for Caracas to leave the UN Human Rights Council and blasted Maduro’s “sham” election as a “step toward dictatorship,” stating flatly that the United States will not accept an “illegitimate government.”
She has also slammed destructive national-security leaks and offered unwavering support for our allies, most notably Israel, which had been routinely isolated during the Obama years. While in Jerusalem in June, she torched Turtle Bay for its relentless pounding of the Jewish state.
“If there is anything I have no patience for,” she said, “it is bullies, and the UN was being such a bully to Israel, because they could.” When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked her for “changing the discourse,” she replied, “That’s all I’ve done: tell the truth.”
If Secretary of State Rex Tillerson exits, she would be a natural in the job — and perhaps at some point, the top job. If Democrats are thinking about running Sens. Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris on a future presidential ticket, they may want to think twice if it means having to face Nikki Haley.
After all, once you’ve gone toe-to-toe with the world’s worst bad guys, what’s a few coastal leftists?
Monica Crowley is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.
