The United States' Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Mrs. Nikki Haley has resigned and would reportedly leave her post in January 2019, in a move that stunned allied diplomats and other senior officials.
Mrs. Haley and Donald Trump announced her departure in the Oval Office. The timing came as a
surprise to her colleagues at the state department and at the UN
security council.
The Secretary of State, Mr. Mike Pompeo
and the National Security Adviser, Mr. John Bolton are reported to have
been taken unawares. But the president claimed he had been informed well
in advance.
Mr. Trump said “She told me probably six months ago. She said: ‘You
know, at the end of the year, at the end of a two-year period, I want to
take some time off, I want to take a break."
Though
it is not unusual for ambassadors to the UN to serve short terms, it
remained unclear the reason Haley did not complete two years before pulling out of
the job prior to the midterm elections.
Meanwhile. there have been speculations that she was leaving to take a run at the
presidency come next elections but she refuted, saying she had no plans to stand in 2020 and would be
campaigning for Trump.
In her resignation letter,
Haley said she was going back to the private sector, although she said
she expected to “speak out from time to time on important public policy
matters”.
Both the president and the outgoing envoy heaped praise on
each other, to portray that she was not leaving on hard terms.
Hence, she showcased her departure as the act of a conscientious public servant. “I think you have to be selfless enough to know when you step aside and allow someone else to do the job,” she opined.
When asked about Haley’s successor, Trump stated there were “a number of
people that would very much like to do it”, saying that Haley had made
it “a more glamorous position”.
Among the possible candidates is the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and Haley went out of her way to praise her as well as her husband, Jared Kushner
who acts as a presidential adviser on the Middle East and is presently
working on an Israel-Palestinian peace plan, though its unveiling has
been delayed multiple times.
“Jared is such a hidden genius that nobody understands,” Haley said,
crediting him with the replacement of the Nafta trade agreement and
claiming the Middle East peace plan was “unbelievably well done”.
She added: “And Ivanka has been just a great friend, and they do a
lot of things behind the scenes that I wish more people knew about.
Because we are a better country because they are in this
administration.”
Another candidate is the former Deputy National Security Adviser, Mrs. Dina
Powell who spent last weekend with Haley and their families on a boat
in South Carolina.
Mr. Richard Grenell, the US Ambassador to Germany who spent eight years
at the mission to the UN, is a third leading contender. He has
maintained a high profile since he moved to Berlin in May 2018, appearing on
conservative media to speak forcefully in support of Trump’s foreign
policy.
The former governor of South Carolina, Haley has been one of Trump’s most high-profile lieutenants,
acting as the international face of an administration that has lacked a clear foreign policy doctrine. However, she pursued an outspoken policy direction that was sometimes
at odds with the White House, particularly on the subject of Russia.
While Trump has been reticent about criticizing the Kremlin,
Haley was a persistent, trenchant critic of Russian policy in Syria and Ukraine,
and over the chemical weapon attack against a former Russian spy on the
UK in March this year.
She equally spoke out on human rights issues more frequently
and fervently than others in the state department.
On other issues – unconditional support for Israel, unflinching
hostility to Iran, North Korea and Venezuela – she was the most
articulate exponent of hardline positions.
Earlier this year, she announced that the
US was withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which she described as a “cesspool of political bias”.
The timing of Haley’s departure caught diplomats at the UN by
surprise. She appears not to have given any indication of her intentions
to colleagues on the security council.
But few of the diplomats she worked with expected her to stay in the
UN role for the full four years of Trump’s presidential term. She was
universally seen as a politician using the UN post to burnish her image
and bide her time while it served her presidential ambitions.
“I thought she would go after two years, but two years isn’t up. Why would she go before the mid-terms?” a senior diplomat thought aloud.
The diplomat speculated her departure could have been influenced by recent demands for an enquiry into her
use of private jets
last year provided by a South Carolina businessman, but expressed doubt
over whether the allegations were serious enough to trigger an early
departure.
Her departure will raise anxiety levels for US allies at the UN.
Despite her pointed rhetoric – warning any country who voted against the
US that she was
“taking names” and making lists of friends and enemies
– she acted as a bridge between Trump and the UN-despising Bolton. She
succeeded in convincing Trump that the UN served a useful purpose for US
national interests.
However, her relative position within the administration had been
diminishing since the arrival of Pompeo at the head of the state
department. Under Pompeo’s predecessor Rex Tillerson, Haley had a free
hand, as Tillerson took a low-key approach to his job and was frequently
at odds with Trump, who often ignored him.
It's noteworthy that Mr. Pompeo, by contrast, quickly became the primary spokesman for Trump’s
policy, and Haley’s importance faded.
Bolton, meanwhile, is said to
have clashed with Haley when she tried to defend the UN as an
institution. Haley also lost a battle with the White House hardliner ,
Stephen Miller over the administration’s refugee policy.
