• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Donald Trump
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • US Election
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Is Nikki Haley Hoping to Climb the Ladder?

By Jeffrey Laurenti • Aug 07, 2017
Nikki Haley news, Nikki Haley latest news, Trump news, Trump latest news, Donald Trump news, US news, USA news, American news, USA news today, news today

Nikki Haley and Donald Trump © Michael Candelori

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley could be a mortal threat to the ambitions of the many white male Republicans hungering for the Oval Office.

The uncanny success of Nikki Haley in becoming the most public and quotable voice on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy team, combined with the telegenic UN ambassador’s apparent disinterest in the nuts and bolts of how the United Nations actually works, has piqued speculation among New York’s busy diplomats and idle diplomat-watchers alike: What is Haley’s game plan?

The former South Carolina governor is clearly a political animal wandering a landscape of diplomatic plants. And, just as Madeleine Albright easily outshined the contentedly colorless Warren Christopher, Haley is blessed with a near-invisible secretary of state in Rex Tillerson.

Unlike Albright, however, Nikki Haley isn’t gunning to be Tillerson’s successor when the time comes. Rather, she seems to be positioning herself to become Trump’s.

That, at least, is what Haley-watchers in New York are concluding. The very notion that a country’s permanent representative to the United Nations (the job’s official title) could use the post as a springboard to the presidency is deeply unsettling to European diplomats who all come out of career foreign policy bureaucracies. At best, one might dream of capping one’s career, and sweetening one’s pension, as foreign minister.

But president? In a country where politicians on the right are still campaigning against the United Nations? How is it possible?

BUSH SR.

America, history shows, is the land of infinite possibility, where a lowly UN ambassador can rise to become leader of the Free World. George H.W. Bush is proof. And Nikki Haley is a far hotter political asset than Bush ever was, with a more direct path from the United Nations to the Oval Office than Bush had.

Facing career extinction after losing a Senate bid in Texas, Bush asked President Richard Nixon for the UN post, arguing he could raise the president’s profile in the nation’s capital of finance, media and high society. Foreign policy expertise was not required. (When the nomination was announced, Bush’s Yale classmate, Ohio Congressman Lud Ashley, incredulously asked him, “What the fuck do you know about foreign policy?” — a question also asked, if perhaps more politely, regarding Governor Haley’s qualifications.)

Though Barbara Bush was likewise incredulous — “we hated the U.N. in Texas,” she pointedly objected — her husband threw himself into the job, making connections in both diplomatic and social circles in New York and coming surprisingly close, in the battle over Chinese representation at the UN, to keeping a seat for Chiang Kai-shek’s government in Taipei. He gained enviable foreign policy credentials from that service, which he would subsequently burnish as US mission chief in Beijing and as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He drew on his UN experience as president two decades later to assemble a strong Security Council coalition on Kuwait and establish himself as a remarkably successful foreign policy president.

Embed from Getty Images

Perhaps Haley does not want to wait two decades. She can take heart from the success of Dwight Eisenhower’s UN ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., in landing the Republican nomination for vice president in 1960 while still at the United Nations. True, the Nixon-Lodge ticket lost to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson by the narrowest of margins, but Lodge’s UN tenure had given the one-time ex-congressman the stature for a national nomination.

Unlike Bush and Lodge, Haley does not descend from New England’s Yankee Republican elite (now extinct). Rather, she is the gift from central casting for national Republican strategists terrified about the party’s long-term demographic trap that its angry, older, white male base has set for them. Young, photogenic, a woman, a minority (her parents emigrated from India), the pragmatic Haley improbably rose to the top in a state whose reactionary brand of Republicanism was fossilized in the person of Strom Thurmond.

Haley could be a mortal threat to the ambitions of the many white male Republicans hungering for the Oval Office. With her bully pulpit at the United Nations, she will be.

At the United Nations she uniquely commands the spotlight as the American engaged in debate daily on vexing international controversies. Her predecessor in the Ford administration, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, demonstrated that confrontation in front of UN cameras can generate considerable political capital. Moynihan had, for instance, paid scant attention to warning signs of an Arab resolution linking Zionism with racism in 1975, but he emerged as Israel’s eloquent rhetorical champion once it became unstoppable. His televised moment — declaring “the inmates have taken over the lunatic asylum” — endeared him to New York’s outraged Jewish community and catapulted him into the US Senate a year later.

US FOREIGN POLICY

Haley, too, seems to sense the opportunities that rhetorical confrontation can provide for ingratiating oneself with domestic constituencies. Though the UN ambassador does not deal with American-Cuban bilateral relations, she won prompt press attention for praising President Trump’s rollback of the Obama administration’s renewal of diplomatic ties. “The Cuban dictatorship is one of the most oppressive in the world. It denies its people the most basic freedoms,” Haley said. “That did not change under the previous administration’s policy.”

While Cuba concerns an influential community concentrated in South Florida, supporters of Israel’s policies are more numerous, resourced and influential — and the United Nations is the preeminent international stage for debate on those policies. Haley professes amazement that this ongoing Middle East conflict appears on the Security Council’s regular agenda, affirms Trump’s “ironclad support” for Israel, and has vowed to “never repeat the terrible mistake” of Obama’s Ambassador Samantha Power in not vetoing a resolution critical of Israeli settlements. “I know the settlements issue is going to be an area of contention,” she told a rabbi worried that settlement expansion is impeding a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians, “but they’ve got to work it out” themselves.

On Iran, so closely related to the politics around Israel, she is similarly critical of the Obama administration’s efforts. Even as senior UN officials say they are “deeply encouraged” by Iran’s implementation of its nuclear obligations and the European Union affirms “Iran’s nuclear program has been rolled back and placed under tight inspections,” Haley claims “violations” and demands the Security Council “show Iran that we will not tolerate their egregious flaunting of UN resolutions.” Perhaps what lies behind the council’s indifference to American alarm, she suggests, is that a shadowy “international elite had other priorities for Iran.”

On these concerns, Haley seems in lock-step with the views of the president; that they dovetail with the concerns of impassioned constituencies that donate generously in Republican primaries is a happy coincidence. There are other areas where Haley seems to have leeway to enunciate views that are a bit distinct from what is known of the president’s, but which fit more comfortably with the traditions of Washington’s conservative foreign-policy establishment.

While Trump has sought a new modus vivendi with Russia, Haley has not pulled punches about the Kremlin’s “aggressive” disposition. She said in her Security Council debut that “the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.” She insists on “an obvious truth” about Syria — “that Assad, Russia, and Iran have no interest in peace.”

And while, aside from Cuba, the Trump administration has utterly abandoned the promotion of human rights, Haley unwaveringly avers that the Security Council, at least, “cannot continue to be silent when we see widespread violations of human rights.” Indeed, she volunteers, “For me, human rights are at the heart of the mission of the United Nations.”

Haley’s embrace of human rights puts her squarely in the post-Ronald Reagan Republican mainstream. Yet she disdains the UN’s machinery to sustain them. “I mean,” she told the Council on Foreign Relations, “the Human Rights Council is so corrupt.” What corruption actually means in the Trump era is unclear: Hillary Clinton’s emails? The Trump family’s businesses? Governments’ maneuvering to avoid censure? But this much is quite clear: Attacks on this UN body are cost-free in contemporary Republican politics.

What Haley has not yet done is risk her growing political capital by fulfilling the other representational function of an effective ambassador: reporting frankly and fairly back home — to the Congress and American people as well as to the president and secretary of state — the views and arguments of her interlocutors from the rest of the world.

Testifying before Congress in June, she acknowledged no downside to slashing or eliminating US funding for UNICEF, the World Food Program, the UN Development Program or the UN fund for women, though US diplomats at the UN have expressed consternation at the loss of US influence such cuts would cause. She has not warned Congress that cutting funds for peacekeeping troops out in the field could reignite tamped-down conflicts.

America’s most effective UN ambassadors — such as Obama’s Samantha Power or the elder Bush’s Thomas Pickering — communicated realities in both directions between Washington and New York. They ended up forging winning coalitions for purposeful action at the United Nations on a wide range of issues.

Successful politicians making the most of a short stay at the UN may perhaps focus more on issues that resonate with domestic constituencies, media and donors. If that is Nikki Haley’s career choice, her service at the UN should prove a unique ladder to national leadership that few competitors in her party can match.

*[A version of this article also appears at PassBlue.com.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Michael Candelori / Shutterstock.com

Share Story
CategoriesAmerican News, North America, Opinion, Politics, US news, US politics news, World News TagsAmerican news, Donald Trump news, news today, Nikki Haley latest news, Nikki Haley news, Trump latest news, Trump news, US news, USA news, USA news today
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

Fair Observer Recommends

Alex Acosta and the Guidelines of the Elite Alex Acosta and the Guidelines of the Elite
By Peter Isackson • Nov 19, 2020
American Reckoning: A New Kind of Nation American Reckoning: A New Kind of Nation
By Wade Roush • Nov 02, 2020
After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion? After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion?
By Peter Isackson • Oct 29, 2020

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious Why the Nirbhaya Verdict Will Not Deter Rape in India
Next PostNext Qatar Confuses the West With Record Neymar Deal
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept